16
Private Pop Makes Good... The Scalding of the Nipples... Bulu's End
For General H. G. Peckerham of the Alolan Air Force, things were beginning to come to a head—no pun intended—concerning the disconcerting matter of his scorched penis. After the successful raid on Akala, he and his troops and their Charizards had flown back to base feeling high on victory. But uncertainty began to cloud his mental horizon as he retired to his quarters to take the next round of penis pictures. To call Peckerham surprised to discover that the penis was still burned even after the completion of the second raid would be like calling the sun a mere flashlight. Peckerham was at a loss for words as he sat on the edge of his military cot with his pants unzipped and his damaged pecker peeking out at him like a rebuke.
Swelling, he thought furiously. Stinging. Inner thigh redness. Blisters increasing.
Still, Peckerham would persevere. He had slogged through his share of dark days in the past. Perhaps the very darkest of all had come in his thirteenth year, when his father had ushered him into manhood by locking him in a cage with his prized Bidoof and then flinging cherry bombs through the bars until Bidoof went for H. G.'s jugular. In the end, the boy had triumphed over the Pokémon—had, in fact, wrenched the life from it with his bare hands—and had been a boy no more. Yes, he thought, wringing his meaty paws together, my dad can take some of the blame for my darkness. But my new enemy Moon Child is certainly responsible for the rest.
Tea, H. G. Peckerham decided. He would settle for tea now that he had officially declared coffee an undrink. Tea and another double application of Vaseline and maybe a few episodes of Wife Swap (his favorite show) would see him off to a restful nap. Peckerham lunged up from the edge of the bed like an old man and trudged through the barracks to the kitchen. He had to walk carefully to avoid bumping his tenderized shlong against his thighs, and he eventually became so tired of this that he simply unzipped and let the shlong swing free. Enlisted men and officers going about their business tried their best not to stare as the General waddled past them with his reddened mini-banana drooping over the top of his zipper.
"Private!" General Peckerham snapped at a man blocking his way to the microwave. The man turned around and had a strange, shocked moment when his brain tried to insist that H. G. Peckerham was not addressing him by rank but rather trying to draw attention to what was flopping out the front of his pants like a limp thumb. The Private clutched at his chest and, with effort, managed to drag his eyes away from the General and move aside.
Peckerham filled a mug with tap water and started the microwave. For a while he watched the mug spin lazy circles on the center of the heating tray. Then he turned around and leaned against the edge of the counter with a sigh. He looked at the Private, who was still looking at him.
"What's your name, son?" Peckerham asked.
"Pop, sir," the Private said.
"What!" Peckerham cried. "Is that your first name or last name?"
"Last, sir," the Private explained. "My first name's Ignatius."
"Ignatius Pop," Peckerham said thoughtfully to himself, as if tasting it. He nodded as the microwave dinged behind him. "A good, strong Alolan name," he said to Private Pop. "I'm promoting you."
"To Major, sir?"
"To General," Peckerham replied at once. "You are to be my new right hand. And I will be your right hand. Or, wait—I'll be the right hand. You be the left."
General Pop didn't know what to say. And he found he had even less to say when General Peckerham opened the microwave, slid his fingers around the handle of the non-microwave-safe mug he had chosen, screamed, fumbled the mug, and spilled boiling water onto his chest, where it scalded both his nipples.
Even before he had stopped screaming and dancing away from the microwave and the goggle-eyed General Pop, General Peckerham decided that Moon Child was going to find out just how dangerous a General with parboiled erogenous zones and a new left hand could be.
While all this was going on, Moon Child was entering Tapu Bulu's cave locked and loaded, with Salazzle in her left hand and Alolan Raichu in her right. She was prepared to deliver a brutal ass-kicking to whatever stood between her and her acquisition of another guardian deity. But before she could hurl Salazzle into Tapu Bulu's face, Tapu Bulu surprised her with a girlish scream.
"No! It—" then he paused. "Wait a minute. You aren't him."
"Who?" Moon Child asked, frozen halfway through her throwing motion.
"The Demon of the Desert," Tapu Bulu said. "The blonde guy who yells all the time."
Moon Child popped her Poké Balls back in her bag with Rotom and tried to get a good look at Tapu Bulu in the gloomy interior of the cave. Tapu Bulu looked like a stocky little lamp, or a foot wearing a sombrero. His body terminated in a short tail that had a bell attached to the end. Moon Child decided right away that she didn't really want this Pokémon for either her team or her PC.
"How'd you get here?" Tapu Bulu wondered. "The Demon has kept all of my worshippers at bay for years uncounted. And his magic is so powerful that even I cannot kill him."
"I have two friends who were tripping balls on mescaline and spirit-guided me," Moon Child said.
Tapu Bulu nodded wisely. "That would explain it," he said, floating and tinkling about. "Did you come to sing my praises?"
"Nah," Moon Child said. "Came to beat the shit out of you and put you in a ball, but… I mean, you can talk and all. It seems kind of weird now."
"Beat and enslave me?!" Tapu Bulu roared, flinging the bell on his tail left and right and producing a series of hellacious warning rings.
"Chill, homie," Moon Child said. "I don't want any talking Pokémon. I'm more of an introvert. It's bad enough that Rotom talks to me all day and night."
Rotom buzzed sorrowfully inside Moon Child's watermelon bag.
"I would never talk to someone like you anyway!" Tapu Bulu cried.
Moon Child laughed. "You're talking to me right now," she said.
Tapu Bulu swished its tail against the wall, ringing the bell with tremendous fury. "For these insults you shall faint, heretic!" he screamed.
"Go, Salazzle!"
Youngster Joey and Officer Jenny, outside, shrieked in panic and dove to the ground just in time to avoid a blast of fire that shot from the mouth of the cave like gamma rays escaping a supernova. The concussion of Salazzle's Flamethrower temporarily deafened Officer Jenny and replaced her hearing with a long, steady hum in which she was able to perceive arguing voices, thanks to the mescaline. Youngster Joey's eyebrows were cooked off his face.
Moon Child came out of the cave a minute later as blackened and sooty as a coal miner. She was holding Tapu Bulu's tail bell. Then she dropped it and crushed it beneath the heel of one of her Chuck Taylors.
"Did everything go well? Did you catch Tapu Bulu?" Youngster Joey asked. Officer Jenny was making sand angels in the dunes a few yards away.
"I sure did," Moon Child said.
"Wow! What was that bell you just stepped on?"
"Just some bell," Moon Child said. "Come on. Let's get back to town."
They collected the newly deaf Officer Jenny and set off aback Tauros, returning roughly the way they'd come. An hour or so later the loud hiker known to Lord Bulu and the ancient Alolans as the Demon of the Desert crept up to the mouth of the cave and admired the long scorch mark Salazzle's Flamethrower had left. He peeked inside. He sniffed. Tapu Bulu's corpse was already drawing flies.
"Victory!" the loud hiker bellowed. His voice was so loud inside the cave that the stone vibrated and somewhere deep in the earth something shifted with a violent thud. "Victory over Bulu at last!"
The Demon of the Desert hurled Tapu Bulu's charred remains out into the desert and began cheerily setting up camp inside his new cave.