Peering down into the sinkhole where the zombie creature Venturestein was trying to climb out, Hank asked, "Need some help?"
"Going home..."
Hank looked thoughtful for a moment then turned to his brother. "Give me your belt."
"Sure." Dean fumbled with the buckle before drawing out the strip of leather. Hank had already pulled his belt loose and tied the two together. He looked at Triana speculatively.
"Sorry, I don't have a belt," she told him.
"What about the hosiery, doll-f- - er, Triana?" Hank was once again in character.
"Hosiery?" Triana asked, not because she didn't know what he was asking about. She just didn't believe that people - not even Hank Venture - still used words like that.
"You know, the gam glamours, the nylonorinos, the silken slipcovers."
"They're socks, Hank. just plain ordinary socks."
"But they come up over your knees?"
"OK, then stockings."
"We just need a couple more feet and we should be able to reach Venturestein."
With a sigh, Triana kicked off her shoes and rolled down her stockings. As she handed them to Hank she added "if they get a run in them you're buying me a new pair."
Hank knotted them to the end of the belts. He tugged on the make-shift rope to make sure all the knots were secure, then, leaning over the rim of the pit, dropped the rope down. After a second he pulled it back up.
"Dean. I'll need your pants," he announced.
Dean promptly unbuttoned his pants and started pushing them down. Hank was also taking off his pants. Triana sighed and turned away. "I don't care how much you need it, I am not giving you my skirt!" she told them.
"This should be enough," Hank said knotting one leg of his pants to the rope and the other leg to a leg of Dean's pants. He handed that end of the make-shift rope to his brother. "Hold on while I scale down. I'll tie Venturestein to the end and you can pull him up." Hank wrapped his end of the rope a couple times around his wrist, then slipped over the edge of the pit and started walking down the side.
Curiousity got the best of Triana and she turned around to watch Dean wearing a button down shirt and a pair of super-hero underroos playing out the line to Hank. He was leaning back against Hank's weight. Triana walked up beside him. She'd offer to help but didn't know what to do. It looked like Hank and Dean knew what they were doing. It always amazed her when they did, because it was always when doing something she'd never have a clue about.
Hank was about half way down when his foot slipped away from the rock face. He spun around on the make-shift rope and fell a couple feet, sending a jerk up the rope. The jerk caught Dean off guard or maybe was just too much. He was a lot lighter then his brother. With a cry he tumbled over the edge of the pit, taking the rope with him.
"Dean!" Triana screamed. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew he was OK since she hadn't heard his death scream but at the moment all she saw was a friend plummeting into a deep hole.
"I'm ok," Dean called back, shakily. "I think."
"He ought to be," Hank added. "He feel right on top of me!"
"Hank! Are you alright?"
"Oh, sure, it takes more than a little fall to put ol' Hank Venture out of commission."
"Thank god," Triana said. After a moment she added, "how are you going to get out of there?"
"We'll throw the rope up to you. Catch it and we'll climb up it."
Triana had her doubts about the last part. She'd never done well on rope-climbing in Gym class. If she couldn't pull herself up a rope how was she supposed to hold on while Hank or Dean, who were much heavier than her, pulled their way up?
She knelt down at the rim of the pit and leaned over. Hank was balling up the pants at the end before hurling it up at her. The pants unrolled almost immediately and slowed the rope to a stop well beyond her reach. He pulled in the rope and tried again. Again it fell short.
"Put a rock in your pants pocket," Triana suggested.
"There're no rocks down here," Hank answered. "it's all soft dirt."
Dean was scuffing at the dirt. "Maybe if we can dirt down enough we'll find some loose rocks," he suggested. They dug for a few minutes, making a hole a foot deep but the dirt merely got harder, more packed together.
"Nothing," he reported.
"I'm going to call 911. I'm getting a signal out here," Triana said.
"Don't bother," Dean told her with a groan and sat down on the dirt to mope. "They won't come out."
"They have to. It's an emergency!"
"He's right, sweet-cheeks," Hank drawled in his detective voice. "Them coppers don't care about us Venture Brothers, no way, no how! We're on our own, toots, and I like it like that."
"Dean, talk some sense into your brother," Triana ordered before realizing that Dean was no more capable of being sensible than his brother.
"It's true, you know," Dean called up to her. "We get attacked so often that the local police and fire departments no longer respond to our calls. There's too much risk of them getting hurt in a cross-fire."
"But you're not being attacked by anybody, and you're on state property."
"Doesn't matter, Toot, - too- Triana," Hank stammered. "They don't like us."
"O Molock!" Triana muttered. "Who knows when Gary and your father are getting back. I suppose I could take one of your bikes back to the Compound and get a rope. Any idea where a rope might be?"
"We try not to keep rope around the place. People use it to tie us up," Dean answered.
"Of course." In a Venturecentric universe it made perfect sense to avoid keeping rope around. Triana knelt down by the rim of the hole and stared down at the two boys and tried to think of some way to rescue them. She recalled the story of the magpie that got water out of a bottom of a pitcher by dropping pebbles into it until the water reached the rim. Assuming there were any rocks around here, it would still take a awful lot of them to fill in the pit. What about a log? If she could drop one end of a log, or a large branch into the pit the boys could climb up the log and out. Except there were no trees anywhere close. Triana sighed.
"Double llama!" Hank suddenly shouted.
"Of course, double llama!" Dean stood up. He stuck his fist in the air with two fingers in the air, forming a "V." Hank followed suit. They touched fingers together and shouted, "Go, Team Venture!"
Triana tried not to, but she ended up rolling her eyes. Wmat mooks. She had no idea what a double llama was.
Hank picked up the make-shift rope and wrapped it around his waist. The boys then lined themselves back to back then reaching up interlocked their arms. Slowly, one step at a time they walked towards the sides of the pit, leaning back to keep their arms linked. "Ready to plant?" Hank asked, speaking in his normal voice. Dean said yes.
"OK, plant!"
Together they raised their left feet and placed it on the wall of the pit.
"Ready?" Hank asked.
"Ready."
"On three, plant!"
Triana could see them push against each other,becoming as rigid as boards. At three both raised their right leg and planted it on the wall of the pit next to their left foot. They were hanging a couple feet off the ground, wedged by main strength against the wall of the pit. Hank counted to three and they simultaneously moved a foot up, keeping braced against the wall with the other foot. Hank counted to three again and they moved up the other foot. Slowly they were climbing up the side of the pit.
Triana watched they maneuver with rapt attention. She's never seen the brothers work together so well. Or recognized how strong Dean had to be to keep up his part of the human bridge. And it surprised her that after knowing them for so long we had never seen this side of them before, confident, thoughtful, clever, not just focused on their situation but proactive in solving their problem. Normally they were so naive and clueless, then, like a switch turning in their brains they were world-class boy adventurers!
They were most than half way up before Triana realized there would be a problem. They were doing great walking up the wall of the pit but how were they going to grab hold of the rim and pull themselves out without losing hold of each other? They needed something to grab on to. Triana also recalled where she'd seen this before, in that old cartoon movie about the Aztec Emperor. Things are always easier in cartoons because bodies only obeyed gravity when they're required to. In the real world gravity was something that couldn't be ignored.
What was there that she could hold out for them to grab?
A look around the rim of the pit showed nothing useful. No branches, no rope, There was just her. And they'd pull her right in if she just reached out to them. She needed an anchor. Another glance around - maybe one of the hover bikes would do that.
She ran back to where they were parked. The boys had turned therm off and she couldn't figure out how to start them again. She got back off and started pulling one after her as she returned to the pit. The bike hit a small bump on the rock surrounding the pit and jammed there. It was only a couple feet from the edge. She considered that maybe that was close enough.
She looked over the edge. The boys were just a few feet from the top. She sat down and looked for a way to hook a foot around the bike to anchor her. Try as she might, there was no place to hook her foot in place. The simply tubular design just didn't offer a place where she could anchor her foot. She would have to hold on to the bike with her hands. She turned around so she could get a hold on to the bike, then she inched herself away from the bike, extending her legs into the air over the pit.
Her legs instantly sagged in the air. The strain from holding her leg straight was something fierce. she'd never practiced keeping her body straight like this. Her muscles ached almost at once. She touched something soft and fleshy in the air.
"Careful!" Hank called.
"Is that you?" she asked.
"It aint the abominable snowman," Hank told her.
"Can you reach my foot?" she asked.
"Too far," Hank said. "Can you push yourself out any farther?"
Triana inched out some more, extending her arms over her head now so she could hang on to the bike. She felt with her toe along Hank's leg, to stay in touch with him. She stopped with a jolt when her toe touched cloth. Gritting her teeth she inched along the underoos until she reached more flesh, hopefully that was Hank's stomach.
"I don't think I can go any further," she said. Her hips were hanging in the air over the pit. She could straighten her arms out a little more but then most of her weight would be over the rim and wouldn't be able to keep her weight off the boys.
"That's ok,"Hank told her. "Hey, bro, ready to hold on?" he asked Dean.
Dean gasped out a 'yeah.'
"On three," Hank said and started counting.
On three he heaved himself up and disengaged one arm from his brother. He grabbed at Triana's ankle. He'd barely got a hand around it when the human bridge he and Dean had formed collapsed. As Hank lost traction against the wall of the pit he he fell dragging Triana's leg with him. He swung against the wall, hitting with a breath-taking jolt. Dean swinging from Hank's arm, hit a moment later. .
Pain seared through Triana's body as the weight of the two boy's jerked on her leg and at her arms. For a moment she was sure her leg was going to be ripped off. Just as the pain was dying down new pains shot up her leg.
"Hank? Dean?"she called. She couldn't see into the pit to know if they were ok.
"We're here," Dean gasped, panting. I'm climbing up Hank now. I'll be up to you in a second."
The jerking continued then a new hand clamped on Triana's leg. Then a second hand gripped her and pulled painfully on her leg. A moment late the hand wrapped itself around her hips. Dean's face smashed into her thigh then he swung a leg out and grabbed for the rim of the pit. A moment later he had scrambled to his feet and was holding on to Triana as Hank climbed up her leg and scrambled onto the surface.
Triana hung half over the pit. She tried to swing a leg up and scramble out like Hank and Dean had done but her legs felt leaden. She could barely move.
"A little help," she said and the boys were grabbing her arms and pulling her up just like that. She took a step and her legs gave up under her. She leaned against the hover bike and rested. She had never thought of either Hank or Dean as being athletic before. She was amazed how easily they had walked up the wall of the pit. And that they had even thought about doing that.
Hank had unrolled the make-shift rope and tied an end to the force projector of the hover bike. "We should have thought about this before," he said as he eased himself over the edge and lowered himself once more into the pit. A moment later he called out "Haul Away," and Dean started pulling in the rope. Venturestein was lashed to the other end.
Dean untied the zombie and tossed the rope back down to Hank. As he turned to see how his brother was doing, Venturestein turned on his heels, oriented himself in the direction he had been going and started walking.
Straight for the pit.
Again.
"Dean!" Triana cried, struggling to her feet. Dean turned and tackled Venturestein before he could fall into the pit again.
Dean and Triana struggled to restrain the patchwork man while Hank finished climbing out of the pit.
"I don't know what's got into him," Dean said, "but if we don't restrain him he's going to keep on going where-ever he's going.
"No problem, bro," Hank said, untying the parts of the rope. Using the belts they tied Venturestein's arms and legs together. He finished disasembling the rope, handing Dean his pants and Triana her stockings. She looked at them and decided against putting them on. She was glad when, a moment later Hank asked for them again. Venturestein, despite already being hog-tied, was still trying to squirm loose and continue going North by north-west - and straight into the pit. They had to cinch him to Hank's hover bike with Triana's stockings. She was glad to loan them since it meant Hank and Dean could put their pants back on. She didn't want to admit it, but seeing Hank and Dean in their childish underpants was more than just a little unsettling.
The flight back to the Venture Compound was uneventful. Triana asked Dean to lag back because the cries of the tortured spirits locked in Venturestein's body was giving her a headache. She was beginning to regret going on this expedition. It had seemed fun at first but now that every joint and muscle in her body was wrenched it seemed more like a bad dream she had to endure until it was over. She as determined to draw a hot bath as soon as she got home and soak till morning. And the worst of it was that in probability Dean had looked up her skirt when he was climbing out of the pit. If he ever so much as said anything about that! - she was just going to lose it.
The X-1 was still out when they got back. Gary had implied that they'd be back from their New York adventure before this. The boys had talked about what to do with the mixed up creature. Since he seemed determined to keep running to where ever he was going, he couldn't be left alone anymore. The room he had in the residence couldn't be locked. It didn't seem right to lock him in the panic room. Dean remembered the small office in the hanger. It was lined with maps of the world so it must have been where Jonas Venture planned his world-circling adventures. But it had an old fashion door that could be locked from the outside and not unlocked from inside. They decided to put him there until Gary and their father got back. Then they'd leave it to Gary to figure out what to do.
Triana hopped of Dean's bike as soon as it came to a stop. "Gotta go," she said. "headache,"
"Oh, I thought we could order in a pizza and have a..." Dean began, but she just waved her arm. "Later."
"Oh, finkleberg!" slender boy swore. He was still uncomfortable using actual profanity. As Triana was disappearing through the overhead doorway of the hanger Dean recalled some advice he's seen in a teen magazine. Always be truthful in your relationships it had advised. "Triana," he shouted, "I'm sorry I looked up your skirt. "I didn't really see anything!"
The girl stopped in her tracks. She seemed to slump down for a moment, then turned and gestured mystically at Dean, before stalking out of sight.
"What was that all about," Dean asked his brother. "Oh. That." he grumbled, as a tiny bolt of lightning struck him from the equally tiny thunderstorm hanging over his head. A tiny shower of rain fell upon him. "What did I do wrong?"he asked his brother. "The magazine said you should never keep secrets from your significant other."
Hank have falling to the floor laughing.
"I thought stuff like this only happens in cartoons? It's meteorologically impossible!" Dean stalked towards the family residence, followed by his faithful black cloud of gloom.