17
Mina Turns a Corner... A New Plan... Peckerham Takes His Medicine
Professor Kukui decided the only thing to do after Moon Child murdered Tapu Bulu was to call another meeting of R.A.T.T.A.T.A. This found the Professor, Lillie, Hau, Mina, and Lord Rattata seated around an outdoor table at a restaurant on Poni Island, which was both Mina's hometown and the last piece of Alolan civilization not yet ruined by Moon Child.
"Horse shit!" Mina screamed. She clawed viciously at the table. Her brain was having a bit of a time transitioning from her Heahean weed coma to yesterday's psilocybin stupor to today's enraged Adderall frenzy. She wasn't normally a big fan of uppers (they made the pot leaves she drew get too spiky and harsh looking), but she had wanted to be awake enough to participate in the Professor's meeting. Naturally she had overshot the dosage, and now her mind was blazing along at about eight hundred thoughts per second, all of which were of an uncharacteristically hawkish nature.
"Calm down, cousin!" Kukui cried as a drop of sweat lashed itself off Mina's bangs and landed in his eye.
"Appeasement?" Mina shrieked. "Are you insane?"
"It's the only avenue we got left, ya?" Kukui explained. He tried his best to rub his eye against his shoulder while he talked. "We let Moon Child keep her Tapus and rule over Alola. It's already over for us. This is simply reality, cuz. But we can blockade Poni Island and with Team Flare's help, stand Moon Child off with the threat of mutually assured destruction."
Mina scratched angrily at one armpit and let out a furious huff. As a peaceful psychedelic artist who was basically too sleepy to even do her job as a Captain in all but the most ceremonial sense, she couldn't believe what was about to come out of her mouth until it did: "It didn't stop Hitler and it won't stop Moon Child! We have to crush the snake under our heel before all is lost! Do you understand what the future for Alola is if we let her continue? It will be a size five Converse tennis shoe, stomping on a human face, for all eternity!" She sniffed. "Besides, no one has mentioned Team Flare in years. I wouldn't be surprised if Moon Child put them all in a camp somewhere."
"Mina is acting really weird today but I think she's right," Hau said. He crossed his arms and gazed at the ocean. "After Moon Child is finished ruining Alola, what's stopping her from moving on to her native Kanto? Or Johto? Or what if she gets bored of Pokémon altogether? What if she moves on to Diablo? Are we prepared to deal with a Moon Child decked out in legendary items, casually laying waste to entire dimensions while she watches Netflix?"
Professor Kukui lowered his head and said nothing.
Lillie stared at Mina, who was writhing and gnawing on the lining of her mouth. Mina's position on the Moon Child situation had turned a complete 180 from yesterday, when she had been ready to offer a tepid surrender. Lillie wondered what had gotten into her. Then she remembered: amphetamines.
Even Lord Rattata was on board. He mashed one tiny paw into a fist and pounded it into the palm of his other front paw. "Rattata!" he growled.
"All right, cousins," Kukui said. He looked up from his chest with a lunatic grin on his face. "We'll stop her with the ultimate move!"
"Sit down, you idiot," said a blank-faced G-man to General H. G. Peckerham later that morning, and pushed the General back onto a plush office couch with the palm of one hand. The General looked astounded.
"But we've cornered her on Poni Island! Trapped like a rat! My boys can wipe her out for good!"
The G-men turned their heads slowly toward one another. Perhaps they exchanged a look behind their sunglasses. Then the one who was doing the talking turned his attention back to the emasculated General.
"Regime change is not always a negative thing," the man said mildly. "Tapu Bulu and his worshippers were notoriously difficult for our organization to deal with. Even finding his cave was always a completely fucktangular, multi-day project. The Demon of the Desert regime is already much more transparent and has expressed a willingness to engage in a lucrative quid pro quo arrangement with the Alolan government. Frankly, we've come to understand that Moon Child's aims—namely the subjugation of all Pokémon—align fairly closely with ours."
"What is this absurdity?" General H. G. Peckerham bellowed.
"It's business, General."
"It's cowardice. I won't tolerate cowardice. Moon Child will fall, and my penis will be avenged!"
The G-men exchanged another slow, bland look.
The four of them, two G-men and Generals Peckerham and Pop were currently forty-seven stories up in Kanto's Alolan Embassy. None of them seemed to know exactly what General Pop was doing there, including Pop himself. He stood away from the G-men and Peckerham in a corner as if he had been hired to clean the office and should not be paying the proceedings any attention. From time to time one of the G-men would turn a blank expression on General Pop. It was not certain they even knew he was a General.
"Regardless," said the G-man, "we don't want you to do any more bombing runs. On either Ula'ula or Poni Island."
"But my penis—!"
"Have you tried Vaseline?"
"Of course!" General Peckerham snarled. "Double applications."
"What about just letting the penis hang free of your trousers where it won't chafe?"
"What do you think I've been doing?!" Peckerham screamed. He indicated his bare penis, drooped unceremoniously over the V of his fly.
"Well, I'm sorry, General. But you'll simply have to try something else. No more bombs."
Peckerham's jowls shivered with his fury. To be spoken down to, and by a faceless government goon!
"This isn't the last you'll hear of me or my scorched member," he said vengefully, collecting General Pop by the elbow and throwing open the door leading to the hallway. A pretty secretary seated at the reception desk saw General Peckerham's pecker and dropped the phone she'd been speaking into.