(A/N: I didn't realize this chapter was going to be so long! Also, Tulio and Miguel finally manage to fool around a little bit, so if that squicks you I guess this is your warning…)

Part 6: Tulio Has Had It With This Fruit

"Okay, Tulio, I realize we're pretty good at blending in and pretending to be people that we aren't exactly."

"Uh-huh."

"It helps to not be very distinct-looking, I suppose."

"Uh-huh."

"I mean, we were even able to pretend to be gods for a while."

"Uh-huh."

"But correct me if I'm wrong...we - don't really have a feasible way of pretending to be skeleton zombie pirates, do we?"

"Huh-uh."

Miguel sighed. Tulio seemed pretty glum about the whole thing; he was probably berating himself for not coming up with a better plan than this. Even Miguel had to admit the situation looked pretty bleak. They were hiding in the thick upper branches of a fruit tree of some sort, just beyond the halo of light that surrounded LeChuck's stronghold. The glow came from a couple of big bonfires and numerous smaller torches, lighting up the compound, which milled with LeChuck's various henchmen in the faint haze of the very early morning - none of them too conspicuous in appearance, save for the fact that none of them had any skin or organs. Like the two who'd kidnapped Tulio, all of these minions were the undead.

"We've got to make it in somehow," said Miguel, still trying to get Tulio to speak.

"We do make it in somehow, that's just it," said Tulio, finally.

For a brief moment Miguel was confused, but then he remembered. "Your prediction back on the ship!" he exclaimed. "You saw us with the gold."

"Yeah," said Tulio, almost too quickly.

"...That's not all you saw," realized Miguel. "There was something else."

"No, that was pretty much it."

"Well you clammed up awful quick for someone who isn't hiding anything."

"I just want you to hush so I can think about this, Miguel."

"Fine, fine," he said, figuring it was best not to push it. He sighed again and turned away from Tulio, back to LeChuck's little anthill, and that's when he and Tulio both saw them.

Their ticket in.

Emerging from the jungle around to their left a little were a pair of men, who began talking somewhat animatedly with a messenger of LeChuck's as soon as they encountered him. They were wearing sarongs and had giant fruit-shaped masks on their heads, but they seemed to be sporting a good amount of flesh and blood on their bones, and that was all that mattered. After their brief discussion with the skeleton drone they were allowed to enter the compound freely.

Miguel looked at Tulio. Tulio looked at Miguel.

"We've got to get us some masks!"

xxxxx

"Guybrush!"

He was instantly awake.

"E-elaine?"

"They're gone!"

Now he was definitely awake, and stumbling out of the tent. "Whoa, what?"

"Those oh-so-trustworthy conmen you hired on as crew have vanished into the night," she informed him, pointing angrily at the empty tent for emphasis. "I can't believe this. I can't believe them."

"Now hang on," said Guybrush, "maybe they're just out foraging for some fruit for breakfast."

"We've got plenty of food!" she insisted. "Plus, I highly doubt there's nothing missing. Surely they've taken that can of voodoo with them that Miguel had - "

"Well, I've still got the Ultimate Insult, and - "

Guybrush groped for it, found nothing, and froze. They said it at once.

"The talisman!"

"Great," groaned Elaine, "so they've clearly got something planned where they're getting far away from us - "

"But wait," said Guybrush suddenly. "This may just be my brain working a little screwy first thing in the morning, but if they've got the talisman, why hasn't LeChuck managed to attack us yet?"

This finally paused Elaine's tirade, and Guybrush was about to sigh in relief, but she merely started up again. "Maybe he just hasn't realized we're accessible."

"Someone as hell-bent - uh, no pun intended - as LeChuck? I doubt that."

"Well maybe he just can't attack anything so close to his own location."

"He managed to scare most of the cannibals off the island, and now they just come to pay homage at their grave pit once a month!"

"Well maybe - ugh, I don't know, where's the spell?"

"We don't have the one for the anti-Insult talisman, though."

"We've got the one for the Insult, don't we?"

"Oh, right."

Dodging the waves of sizzling hot anger rolling off his wife, Guybrush rooted around in his bag until he found his log book, into which he'd paper-clipped the instructions and warnings he'd pieced together about the Ultimate Insult. There was the list of ingredients and the way to assemble them...there were some notes he'd taken about the ancient Monkey Kombat language - ah, here! The description of its vile power. He read it aloud.

"The Ultimate Insult's strength as a weapon stems from its power to crush man's very ego with its sheer derogatory force. Even the bravest of men are reduced to cowards under its ancient might. The only way to defeat an Ultimate Insult is by using another.' That's where it cuts off. I don't see how we're avoiding it."

"Sheer derogatory force...bravest of men reduced to cowards...crush man's very ego - wait!" cried Elaine.

"Uh, what?"

"Crush man's very ego. Even the bravest of men. Don't you see? We're repelling the Ultimate Insult because I'm a woman!"

Guybrush blinked at her. "Okay, there is no way that's it."

"Well what do you suggest, then?" she demanded, instantly cross again.

"If that were the case, it couldn't have come from monkeys!"

"Did you ever battle a female monkey in Monkey Kombat?"

"No, but - "

"And does LeChuck have any female zombie minions working for him, that you've ever seen?"

"...Come to think of it, no, but - "

"Then this is the best we've got to go on, Guybrush! Now come on, let's get going! We've still got the Ultimate Insult and we've still got to defeat LeChuck. Especially if we want to get there before those two jerks take all the gold."

She was already packing things up to go, so Guybrush started helping her with it, but he was still missing something.

"This may just be my brain working a little screwy first thing in the morning, but... We don't really need all that gold. And we're still safe to stop LeChuck. Why are you still so angry about all this?"

"Because," she said with a bit of a pout, "I was finally starting to trust them."

xxxxx

Tulio looked at their reflections in the river and scowled. Was this really the best they could come up with?

"I think they look quite nice," chirped Miguel. "For such short notice."

Miguel was wearing his pants and shoes, his shirt tied around his waist by the sleeves, and a tree stump, hollowed out and outfitted with eye holes so he could wear it over his head. The roots still stuck down from the bottom, scraggly around his shoulders. Over Tulio's head was perhaps the single largest fruit he had ever come across. They'd scraped it out inside down to the rind - even eaten some of it, it had tasted a bit like mango - and given it eye holes, too. He was down to his vest and his pants. His short was wadded up around his hair inside the fruit to keep it from getting sticky. They looked ridiculous.

"Well, it's sure a step down from royal robes and holy headdresses," he grunted, "but I guess it could be worse."

"It's all in how you play it!" agreed Miguel, voice echoing inside the log. "Now come on, quickly!"

And so, exuding as much of his false confidence as he could muster, Tulio strode calmly next to Miguel up to the edge of LeChuck's territory. One of the undead workers approached them almost immediately.

"Oh, there's more a' ya today?"

"Um, yes," Tulio said with a cough. "I'm - Mangolio and this is - "

"Stumpy," Miguel offered.

"All right, I guess you're cleared, Just follow the other guys. Hey Captain! We got a couple more cannibals here!"

Cannibals?

"Arrh," boomed an angry, massive-sounding voice, "just tell 'em to be quick about it!"

Not anxious to stick around, Tulio and Miguel scampered in the direction that the other two masked men - cannibals! - had been heading earlier. When no one appeared to be looking - though who knew, with the peripheral vision in these masks - Tulio yanked Miguel behind a small cabin and began panicking.

"Cannibals? That's who these guys are?"

"It doesn't really matter now, does it?"

"I did not sign up to pretend to be a cannibal!"

"Look, I don't think anyone's going to offer us a nice human sandwich while we're out and about over here, so let's just get the gold and go!"

"Right," said Tulio, trying to be calm. He let Miguel up off the wall of the cabin where he'd had him pinned, and he got back up and walked jauntily straight past Tulio.

"You know, if it weren't for these masks," he said, "I'd've quite liked the rest of that."

By the time Tulio had worked that out - him, with Miguel pinned against a wall, all sweaty from the jungle and shirtless to boot - Miguel had disappeared, and he was dashing to catch up.

xxxxx

It was an awful lot of gold.

They'd had a bit of difficulty trying to remain inconspicuous, but the security was surprisingly lax (or else surprisingly gullible) and the cannibal disguises had gotten them just enough clearance to sneak around and find the trap door to the treasure keep, and now that they were inside, well...it was an awful lot of gold.

"I haven't seen this much since - "

"El Dorado," Tulio agreed. "We can't carry all of this."

"Well, not all of it's worth anything," Miguel pointed out, and he was right. There was an awful lot of junk in there, too. Sacks of wooden nickels. Crates of dull, rusty weapons. A huge antique cannon. Several books of voodoo spells, some of which were so old the pages were rotting out. A giant chicken suit.

Miguel wasn't touching that one.

"Okay," said Tulio, "I have had it with this fruit." With a bit of struggling, he tugged it and his shirt off his head and sucked in a huge gasp of air. "So nice to not be breathing in that smell, you have no idea."

"I believe it," said Miguel, tugging his mask off as well and shaking bits of bark out of his hair.

They looked at each other, flush-faced and grinning.

"Miguel...we've really done it this time."

And it was about then that Miguel knew he was done for, because even with his hair matted and sweaty, his face sticky and smudged with dirt, all of him smelling nauseatingly sweet, Tulio was absolutely gorgeous. He was quickly piling on as much jewelry as would fit under his mask, necklaces and earrings and a huge diamond crown, but Miguel was moving almost in slow motion. When Tulio saw that he wasn't doing much of anything he waved him onward. "Well, come on!"

"Hang on," said Miguel. "Just - don't move."

He tugged on the one necklace that was halfway over his head already, and then he grabbed his best friend by the side of the face, leaned in, and kissed him for all he was worth. And it didn't stop for a good, long moment.

And both of them were clearly enjoying it.

When it was over Miguel was backed against a stack of books and chests, and Tulio was grinning.

"I guess it was inevitable," he chuckled.

"You...you saw that already. From the jar," Miguel panted, embarrassed.

"Yeah," said Tulio. "But I think I like it better from this end."

Miguel's heart soared, but just as they were leaning in to start again, a huge thundering cry of "Threepwood!" shook the whole base, and a book fell from the stack and landed at Miguel's feet, open to a very, very crucial page.

"We can't do this," he said after a moment.

"The con? Or the kissing?"

"The former," Miguel clarified, pointing at the book. "I hope to be doing the latter quite a bit more from now on."