Chapter 9: The Hunt for Joseph! … Wait, do we even really want to find him?
"Alright!" Yugi said forcefully to Tea and Tristan, pointing at a map of Domino with a stick. "Here's what we know so far:
1. Joey was supposed to meet his sister yesterday.
2. He did NOT.
3. He might be dead.
4. He has been missing for about twelve hours, and nobody knows where he is.
5. Come to think of it, he probably IS dead. No big.
6. If he's NOT dead, we should find him. If he is dead, we should find his corpse. And, y'know, bury it.
"HERE," Yugi said, motioning with his stick, "Is the route Joey would most likely take from his house to the hospital." Yugi traced the path with from Joey's house (which was circled in red) to the hospital (Which was covered in black scribbles). "This black mark is to illustrate the vortex of black, foul, reality-warping evil energy that has sprung up over the hospital, likely due to Serenity (Who can be awfully scary sometimes) losing her temper over Joey's idiocy. So troops, our mission is to find Joey, or proof of his death, and deliver he/it to Serenity before she consumes the Earth. Any questions?"
Tea raised her hand. "Who am I again?"
"Tea."
"OH, YEAH! MY NAME IS TEA! I JUST LOOOOOOOOVE MY NAME!"
"Anything else?"
Tristan raised his hand.
"NO, we are NOT going to poke anything with a stick!"
Tristan lowered his hand.
"Okay, Tea… Tea? TEA::SIGH::… you, the girl."
"OH! MY NAME IS…"
"You search all the main streets. Tristan, you search all of Joey's favorite places to hide from impending doom. I'll look at his house again. Fall out, troops!"
Three long, wasted hours later…
"WHERE… THE… HELL… IS HE?!" Yugi roared.
"Who?" Tea asked.
"JOEY!"
"Oh, I'm sorry! That squirrel must have distracted me so much I forgot to even look! Tee hee!"
"… … … … ah. Tristan, any results?"
"Oh, yes! I have succeeded to a degree previously thought to be impossible, even to me!" Tristan said proudly.
"You mean you found Joey?"
"Oh, no."
"… … … … … … … … … You do, of course, realize we were LOOKING FOR JOEY, YOU MORON?!"
-Let me kill him!- Yami begged. -Please, PLEASE let me kill him!-
"Oh, I know, but instead I built this robot!" Tristan said proudly, as a mechanical creature that looked like a rounded garbage can with wheels trundled up next to him. "I have named it TristanBot X-12!" he said, crossing his arms and smirking arrogantly.
"… you built a robot."
"Yup."
"Instead of doing what you were supposed to do, you built a robot."
"Yup."
"And you don't see the problem with this?"
"Nope. And neither will you when you hear what this robot can do!" Tristan proclaimed.
"I… I… alright, I'll bite. What does your robot…"
"TristanBot X-12."
"… what does TristanBot X-12 do?"
"TristanBot X-12 has been programmed to do one thing, and one thing ONLY! He will sweep the entire town one block at a time, searching desperately for any hint of Joey until…"
Just then, TristanBot X-12 opened its lid and shot a clear stream of liquid into Yugi's face.
"AHHHHH! AHHHH! OH, SWEET JESUS IT BURNS MY EYES! AHHHHHH!" Yugi screamed, rolling around clutching his face in agony.
"Oh… I forgot it also has a cannon that shoots rubbing alcohol. I thought that was kinda cool."
"Oh, it IS!" Tea chirped. "I just LOOOOOOOOOOOVE liquid cannons!"
"OH LORD IT HUUUUUUURTS!"
-NOW can I kill him? Please?-
"Y'know, it's kinda funny. Just when you think 'Hey, my little brother isn't so bad. I think I'll forgive him!', you get a phone telling you that HE'S IN JAIL AND HE'S A MORON AND HE'S NOT AS BAD YOU THOUGHT HE WAS, HE'S WORSE!" Isis roared. "Does that about cover it?"
"I'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorry I'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorry…" Malik whimpered, trying to squeeze himself through the floor.
"Sorry? SORRY? SORRY?! Not as sorry as you WILL be, you vile, evil little worm. You've dragged the family name through the mud for the LAST TIME! Honestly, why do you think it is that nobody ever invites us to dinner parties? It's because YOU always steal their souls! Why our friends never invite us to casual get-togethers? Because we don't HAVE any friends because you STABBED all our friends with your freakin' rod-knife! You…"
"Now, lady Isis, your brother may not be PERFECT but…" Odion began.
"You probably want to shut up before I think about how YOU have disgraced the family."
"Shutting up now."
"Now, little brother… wait, where was I?"
"Nobody likes us because I'm so evil," Malik said helpfully.
"Oh, yes, thank you. You're a horrible little human being, and it is past time you suffered for your horrible transgression! NOW YOU PAY, INSECT!" And with that, Isis stepped forward, raised her hand menacingly… and kinda slapped Malik on the wrist.
"That's… that's IT?!" Odion asked in disbelief. "But you didn't even DO anything!"
"Yeah, I know. But what can I say? I'm already late for my facial, and I just didn't set aside the time I'd need to destroy you today! Ironic, considering that I saw this coming three weeks ago." And with that, she left.
Malik looked down at his wrist, which was turning a little red. "Ow?"
"Um… well, what do we do now?" Odion asked, apparently still not exactly sure what had just happened.
"Thank God?"
Joey, sore, broken, and bleeding, let out a low groan. With some effort, he managed to pull his damaged head off the concrete and open his eyes. His eyes shot open, then blinked rapidly as he tried to comprehend exactly what he was seeing.
"A trashcan? With wheels?"
"Joey found! Joey found!" TristanBot X-12 said.
"Were you looking for me? Are you some kinda help robot?"
"Joey found! Joey found!"
"Um… 'kay… could you go get me a doctor or somethin'?"
"Joey found! Joey found!"
"… what kinda crap robot are you?! Don't you DO anything?"
TristanBot X-12 fell silent for a few minutes as it processed this question. Then it opened up its lid and shot Joey in the face with its alcohol cannon.
"OH, SWEET JESUS IT BURNS! OH, IT GOT IN MY BEATIN' WOUNDS AND IT STINGS SO BAD!"
Beeping happily, the little robot wandered off. Then, demonstrating the incredible genius that Tristan's programming was capable of, it got hit by a truck.
"You deserved that, ya little #$&)(#$. Well, I better get to da hospital before Serenity shows up to finish me off." Joey said, and started dragging himself to the hospital with his teeth.
Yami cleared his throat. "Alright, let's go over our new information. Since a three-hour search has produced no results, we can assume that Joey has apparently developed some sort of superhuman cloaking field which prevents us from finding him. Thus, the only way for us to locate him is for ME to use my dark Egyptian magic to locate him. Now, to be fair, I don't really KNOW any magic that would do that, but I figure that sacrificing Tristan couldn't hurt, so any objections?"
"Oh, I just LOOOOOOOOOOOVE dark human-sacrifice rituals!" Tea squealed.
"I object!" Tristan shrieked from the dark altar that Yami had chained him to for the dark ritual.
"Tristan, Tristan, Tristan… you have to understand. Plan: Look has failed. Plan: Robot has failed. The thought that Joey could conceivably be somewhere that we didn't look on our first try is beyond ridiculous. Therefore, our only choice is to use you as a human sacrifice to power a foul black magic. It's LOGIC. Plus, we have to consider that I hate you. That's important! And Tea agrees with me, so that makes the vote two-to-one. You lose."
"Just remember that friendship is very important for human sacrifice! You should be smiling." Tea advised cheerfully.
"Oh, don't worry about him. I'm smiling enough for both of us," Yami said, smirking wickedly.
"BUT I DON'T WANNA DIE!"
Yami shrugged. "You probably should have thought of that before I… well, now that I think about it, you really didn't have a part in this decision. Sucks to be you. Tea, my Sacrificial Dagger of Dark Magic!"
Tea giggled and handed Yami a kitchen knife that had 'Sacrificin' Knife' written on the handle.
Yami raised the knife menacingly and said "Don't worry, it only hurts until you die."
Suddenly, just then, out of the blue, the door burst open! A shadowy figure appeared in the door and fired its weapon into Yami's face, knocking him away from Tristan.
"OH RA IT FREAKIN' BURNS! OH, THIS #(&# SUCKS!" Yami screamed, trying to get the alcohol out of his eyes.
"TristanBot X-12! You came back to save me!" Tristan gleefully shouted.
"Joey Found! Joey found!" the badly mangled but obviously still functioning robot said.
"Really? That's great! Untie me so we can go find him!"
"Joey found! Joey found!"
"Um… okay? Could you untie me, please?"
TristanBot X-12 beeped a few times… then shot Tristan in the face with its alcohol cannon and trundled off.
"OW! THAT'S A BAD ROBOT! OH LORD IT'S BURNING MY EYES!"
Tea, meanwhile, was trying to make friends with a spider.
Joey staggered through the hospital doors and into a war zone.
All the furniture of the lobby was piled against the entrance to the patient's ward, behind which a sickly gray light was violently pulsing. All the surviving nurses had piled shattered furniture against the door and were desperately shoving against it. Coming from somewhere off in the mists of the catastrophe, voices could be heard screaming:
"Oh, the horror! THE HORROR!"
"WHERE IS MY LEG?!"
"… … … … has anybody seen my contact lens?"
"JOEY! WHERE ARE YOU, YOU DESPICABLE BASTARD?! I AM GOING TO DESTROY YOU!" shouted a vicious, demonic voice that echoed throughout the entire building.
"Serenity, PLEASE calm down! Joey will come, I swear!" Mrs. Wheeler said from her position holding the door closed with the nurses.
"Mom? What's goin' on?"
Mrs. Wheeler, a dark, haunted look in her eyes, turned towards her son. "JOEY?! Oh, thank god! Serenity, your brother's here! Please, kill him and spare the rest of us!"
"Hey!" Joey protested.
"Sorry, twerpo. There comes a time in every mother's life when she has to sacrifice one of her children to save herself. Nothing personal." And with that, Mrs. Wheeler grabbed her son by the collar and threw him in to face his sister.
"JOEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!" Serenity roared.
"Now, sis, I can explain…"
"YOU HAD BETTER!"
"I was on my way here, really runnin' too, like sprintin', and then I ran into some punks and they forced me–against my will, mind you!– into a duel and…"
"A duel?"
"Yup."
"They forced you into a duel."
"Yup."
"Joey, for YOUR sake you had better mean 'pistols at dawn', because if you are trying to tell me that you missed my eye surgery to play cards, you might as well shove your head into a meat grinder right now."
"I… um… well…"
"You DID. You missed my SURGERY, my VITALLY IMPORTANT AND PERSONALLY TERRIFYING SURGERY, to play #(& CARDS!"
"Um… oh… oh hell… ALRIGHT, I was so amazed by how… how cool you are!… that I forgot what actually happened to me! First, I was running here…"
Half an hour later…
"… and that's how I defeated Godzilla!" Joey finished. "And that's why I was late! Really!"
"I don't know… how did you get away from the aliens?" Serenity asked doubtfully.
"I showed them a picture of YOU, and your beauty and grace and 'INCREDIBLE NEVER-KILL-YOUR-BROTHER QUALITY' made theirheads explode. With how cool you are."
"What about…"
"He died. From being too close to ME, because I'm an unworthy piece of trash for being late to your surgery for ANY reason, even one as pressing and unavoidable as the one I have which is completely truthful."
"Weeeeeeeeeeeell… I GUESS with all that stuff, I can maybe forgive you. This time. Maybe."
"Please, PLEASE show moicy! I'll do anyting! I'll stop talkin' in my inexplicable Brooklyn accent dat I have but none of my friends or family do! I would even give up my rarest card, the red-eyes black dreegen… wait, I lost that to those guys on the way here." Joey remembered. Then his eyes widened as he realized exactly what he had just done. "Oh, #$."
"Lost it HOW, Joey?" Serenity asked in a cold, dead voice.
"… … … … … … … … would you believe Godzilla took it?"
"You… STUPID… little…" She growled.
Joey spun on his heel, jumped out the nearest window, and hit the ground running.
-You know, Bakura, we really haven't done much at all for a while. Maybe we should get out more?- Evil Bakura thought from inside the Millennium Ring.
I could sing! Bakura suggested brightly.
-No, that joke isn't funny anymore. Besides, you've already spent a couple chapters singing that idiotic Gilbert and Sullivan song. We need to do something new, and DARING! It's been far too long since we've really gotten out and done EVIL! We'll teach that two-bit loser of an author to ignore US!-
Just then, Yami ran by chasing Tristan with the sacrificin' knife. Malik and Odion were on the other side of the street, trying to hotwire a car so they could try to get away from Isis before she decided to fit in their horrible deaths between her appointments. Not ten seconds later, Joey sprinted past, chased by a homicidal Serenity (Who appeared to be both flying AND glowing).
-… … on the other hand, maybe we should just be happy the author can't think of anything to do with us.-
Just then, Bakura felt something tug on his pant leg, and he looked down… right in time for TristanBot X-12 to shoot him in the face with its alcohol cannon.
"OH, BLOODY HELL!"