Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.
PART II
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
DEADLIEST CATCH
"Smee saved you? SMEE!?" Hook exclaimed.
"Stop shouting or you'll break the damn mirror!" Regina growled, shoving him out of the way.
Back on Hangman's Island, Emma and Neal were huddled around the compact mirror (they'd found in Ariel's massive stash of junk) which just happened to have been Regina's in Neverland that she gave to Henry and the other half just happened to be in Tinkerbell's giant handbag that she also used for stealing.
It's a wonder those two never banged in Neverland, Emma considered.
"Yes, Smee saved us," she confirmed. "He was knocked off his lobster boat while laying traps and got pulled through the same portal we did. So, are you going to come and save us or what?"
"Um... about that," sighed Regina. "We're actually-"
"Being held hostage in the walk-in refrigerator at Granny's!" Tinkerbell pushed her way into view. "Mer-bitches have taken over the town. They're going to exsanguinate you all over that douchey prince Eric's - may he rest in piece... or pieces ha - kingdom and do some kinda alchemal blood magic ritual with that crystal Hook's douchey brother stole from them back in the day that led to the war that got him killed - and then they're going to drown us all in a cataclysmic magical earthquake tsunami tag-team apocalypse like happened to those Minoan people I saw bite it on the History Channel to make Atlantis 2.0... which, really, considering this is the Land Without Magic - as far as the majority of the population knows - makes me rather suspect of that station's fact checkers... And inclosing: I don't want to go out ripped to pieces and drown in an underwater magic portal disaster! You have to save us!"
Emma glared at Tinkerbell while Snow was heard off-mirror griping about a crazy fairy going through withdrawals.
"Aye, we would appreciate some saving," said Hook with a nod, "and if you could find me a free bilge pump in that pile of junk seeing as the mer-bitches have taken all my doubloons..."
Emma glared at them through the mirror. "Oh, so now I have to save you? The other day I was a big fat lying piece of trash impostor with a bad weave."
"Oh, you heard me say that, did you?" gulped Tink.
"Obviously!"
"Everyone heard you say that," Ruby groaned. "You were standing on a table making a big announcement about it and people were cheering and you got them changing; 'Lock her up! Lock her up!'"
"Oh... right, forgot about that part," Tinkerbell said, earning glares. "What? I'm a tweaker. I forget lots of crazy shit I do when I'm high."
"REHAB!" everyone shouted.
"FINE!" Tinkerbell growled back. "Look, I'm sorry, it was an exaggeration. You're not big or fat and it's not a bad weave, it's mediocre extensions. But, come on, really, girl, you should embrace your thin, limp, dishwater blonde hair instead of trying to princess it up. Look at Aurora? She used some magic shit to perm her hair into that 'I just got fucked' do and now she's dead."
"I don't think those two are related," said Emma, "and that's not exactly an apology!"
"YOU BURNED DOWN MY HOUSE!"
"Fair point," conceded Emma. "Fine, we'll just... find some other portal. There's probably something in this massive pile of junk. Emma out."
She swiped the mirror to deactivate it and then gave Neal a sour look for sniggered at her. "What?"
"'Emma out'?"
"Shut up and find a portal. Just try not to fall down it without me and Rat Man."
"Really?" sighed Neal, offended.
"Hey!" Smee called out from the traps he was sitting on, "I'm not a rat anymore!"
"You tried to gnaw on my arm, man," Neal pointed out.
"It's not my fault your old man's magic didn't reverse itself right when your grandfather sent us all back to this shitty land!"
"Fair point," conceded Neal.
"Both of you shut up and start looking for portals before Ariel gets back!" Emma growled.
"Why are you pissed off, woman?" complained Smee. "You on the rag or something?"
Emma punched him in the face, then walked off muttering about whether or not Ariel had stolen any boxes of tampons because she was not making Mulan's nasty-ass period-stopping tea from some berries that smelled like ass and tasted even worse.
"I hate my life," complained Smee.
"Maybe it wouldn't suck so hard if you hadn't spent most of it as a lying piece of scum who had no problem offing kids?" suggested Neal.
"Yeah, because karma was so spot on for you, Mr. Good Guy," scoffed the ex-pirate. "And I wasn't always a villain, you know. Sure, I was a liar and thief and a con-man, but I only lied to, stole from, and conned assholes like Hook."
"Who was more sadistic than you gave him credit for and he played you, man," Neal told the stocky former first mate. "And you still wanted to murder me."
"Only because that would've been kinder than being mutilated by Pan, molested by Felix, and eaten - not in a sexy way - by mermaids," Smee defended.
Neal sighed. "Fair point," he repeated, "but still not cool, man."
"Yeah, well, you trusted Pinocchio to-"
"Oh my god!" Emma called out.
"What?" Neal exclaimed, ready to go into panic mode.
"An entire cargo container's worth of rubber duckies!"
It was true. At the center of the pile of trash, like the yummy nougat inside a nasty shredded coconut covered white chocolate was a cheerful yellow mass of identical rubber duckies spilling out all over the sand.
"Wasn't there something on the news years ago about a cargo container of rubber duckies that fell overboard in a storm?" recalled Neal. "How did she even manage to collect so many?"
"Magical hair net?" shrugged Emma.
"Dude," Smee interrupted as he dug through the duckies, "there's something rusty under the bath toys."
A bit more digging began to reveal that there were not as many rubber duckies as there first appeared to be, but instead they were covering a large piece of rusted metal in the shape of a giant suppository with fins on one end.
There was writing on the side, which Emma read, "Operation Castle. Do not attempt to remove arming rod for strike. Attach arming shackles... remove safing wire..."
"What's Operation Castle?" wondered Smee.
Neal answered, "A series of tests from the nineteen fifties involving thermonuclear hydrogen bombs, one of which they fucked up big time and completely blew up an island."
"Holy shit! This is a nuke!?" Smee cried. "That lunatic is hoarding a rusted nuke! What if it's leaking? What if we're gonna die of radiation poisoning!? I hate my life but not that much!"
"I doubt the protective coating of rubber duckies was keeping Ariel and her minions' skin from falling off," said Emma. "Still, we'd better find that portal. The last thing this world needs on top of crazy-shit magic is nuclear weapons blowing shit up."
"Unless nuclear weapons destroy magic," considered Neal. "Belle was going on about this Harry Potter fanfic the other day that she had printed out and was pissed that it got burned up in the fire that had some sort of AU plot that Voldemort was going to use nuclear weapons to destroy all magic."
"Exposition too much?" Emma retorted. "And that's a worse idea than throwing the Goblet of Fire down the well"
"Just thought I'd throw it out there," he shrugged.
"Hey, guys!" Smee called out from where he had walked over to put some metal junk over his junk.
"You know that only works if it's made of lead, right?" asked Neal.
"Not that! That!" huffed Smee, pointing to a desiccated magic bean. Actually, there was an entire bottle of them which had broken on the sand.
"You know," recalled Emma, "Anton did mention that he couldn't find any traces of the magic beans he knew had sprouted on the vines Regina torched. We assumed she took them before she burned the field. Ariel must have paid Storybrooke a visit before Regina summoned her in Neverland..."
"Maybe she was even helping Pan," considered Neal. "His initial plan was to restore Neverland until we escaped and he had to body-swap with Henry. He got Neverland, she got to sink Storybrooke to make her own kingdom. She could have been scouting for him, looking for Henry, since he obviously didn't trust Greg or Tamara with the real plan."
Emma fumed. "If that bitch was helping turn our son into a sacrificial victim, then she is so going down. I will stab her through the heart with a stingray spine!"
"As much as I'm sure we'd all enjoy that," said Smee, "these aren't much use unless your magic powers can restore them."
"This might work," Neal suggested, pulling out a small vial from a cord around his neck. "Water from Neverland. Stuff my father used to make that potion for your dad," he told Emma. "Obviously, he was holding out on how much be brought back himself, so I nicked some from his supply before the... er... memorial service cruise what with Ruby mentioning the whole evil mermaids threat thing. Also brought some squid ink. Too much exposition again?"
"Yeah, yeah, you're Magical MacGuyver," grouched, Emma and she poured a drop on one of the beans which instantly was restored to its glittery original appearance.
As Ariel was in the middle of giving a fascist speech to her minions on the beach, holding up the Eye of the Storm, the water suddenly began to retreat and a blue glowing portal appeared sucking it in - and spitting out three people and a huge pile of junk that rained down, causing the merfolk to flee from dinner forks, toilet seats, traffic cones, car batteries, crab traps, and hundreds of squeaking rubber duckies.
"Noooooooo!" Ariel cried and swung her trident.
Emma was ready with a sword from the junk pile and struck the trident with a loud clang.
"Did you help Pan find my son!?" she demanded.
"Maybe I did!"
"I'm going to turn you into fish bait, bitch!"
"You and what army?" Ariel taunted. "Your people all hate you for forsaking them and exposing them to threats like this one! You're no one's savior and they're not your soldiers!"
"Maybe not," Emma hissed, getting in a strike that grazed Ariel's shoulder and instantly paralyzed her with squid ink, "but I have your precious gemstone."
She plucked the Eye of the Storm from Ariel's hand before Neal and Smee picked the stiff-as-a-board mermaid up and carried her toward town, past the merfolk who looked uncertain of what to do with their queen taken hostage.
"Try anything and the bitch gets it!" Emma threatened, holding her sword Ariel's throat.
"You wouldn't!" Miranda called out.
In response, Emma stabbed Ariel in the right shoulder. She had to admit, she didn't feel too bad about it either.
"Next one's in the heart."
Miranda glared and the crowd parted and let them down Main Street to Granny's, which was open, but the freezer had some kind of magical sea-creature stuck to the door that seemed to be sending out pulses of magic to keep everyone inside. Emma stabbed it with Ariel's dreamshade-tipped trident and it instantly shriveled up and turned to ash.
Upon opening the door, they found everyone (but Hook) huddled together on one side of the freezer while the pirate was on the other eating out of giant can of Beef-A-Reeno.
"Oh, thank god!" they all cried, quick to flee the freezer along with a rather potent fart smell.
"Mom! Dad!" exclaimed Henry, hugging them.
"You're grounded!" they both shot back and Emma held out her arm, glaring.
"I guess I expected that," he sighed and removed her anti-magic cuff.
"So, what do we do now?" asked David.
"Clearly," said Regina, "we hand this nutjob over to Ursula and put an end to this insanity!"
"What's Princess Ursula going to do?" groaned Snow. "This whole cult started up in defiance of her and Poseidon."
"Not that Ursula, the real Ursula."
"You're sure this is going to work?" asked Emma as night began to fall and Regina wadded into the water dressed up like a Disney villain... just not her Disney villain.
"Positive. She told me if I ever impersonated her - and this badly - again, she would personally show up and murder me," Regina insisted while trying out her tentacles. "It will work."
She was right.
The water began to boil and churn within minutes, and out of it emerged a sea goddess who might well have been the Princess Ursula's ancestor and looked absolutely nothing like the Disney version... aside from, well, being just a bit heavyset. Her dark hair was done up in a poofy do contained by a wreath-like crown of golden shells which also covered her ample bosom.
"Woman, I told you that if you tried that shit again, I would cut you!" Ursula growled, many tentacles writhing and twitching, ready to rip the former Evil Queen limb from limb.
"I was just trying to get your attention," Regina huffed, turning back into her real appearance. "We need you to clean up your own trash," she gestured to Ariel who was no longer paralyzed, but handcuffed and had bloody gauze on her shoulder. "This nutcase was trying to sink two kingdoms and carry out a coupe against your descendants. Also, she has brought a nuclear bomb to the Enchanted Forest which could destroy magic, effectively destroying life on both land and sea."
Ursula turned to Ariel and demanded, "Is this true?"
The redhead sniffed. "Humans are polluting our world, plundering the seas of our resources. Something had to be done!"
"Perhaps," Ursula conceded, "but mass murder of their people is not the answer, nor is destroying your own society for this warmongering ideology. Poseidon's diplomacy may not have reaped quick rewards, but he has encouraged many kingdoms to crack down on piracy and privateering, the humans who most disrespect our waters."
"Crack down? He has us murdered!" interrupted Hook.
"You're still alive?" groaned Ursula. "How did the syphilis from your whore mother not kill you, pirate scum?"
Shrugging, Hook answered, "Dr. Whale said I'm more of a carrier than afflicted. Like some chick named Mary who gave loads of people typhoid. They all kicked it while mostly she just had the sniffles and coughed a lot in people's food. Lucky me, eh?"
"Yeah, lucky you," muttered Belle darkly.
Ursula turned her attention back to Ariel. "You will be punished, Ariel. This is not the way.
"All of you will return to the sea at once!" she called out, voice bellowing loudly and summoning the other merfolk, seemingly against their will.
Once in the water, their jewelry shattered and another portal opened and sucked them all in.
After the sea was calm again, Hook mused, "You know, she reminds me a little of that actress on that show about the college for stupid old people."
"You mean where you'd go if you knew how to read?" taunted Henry.
Hook punched him in the arm.
"Child abuse!' Henry called out.
Neal sighed and Emma shrugged and said, "This time I'll allow it."
"Can I give him a wedgie?" Hook inquired, brow raised.
"After smelling pirate farts for an hour because of Henry's blatant disregard for parental authority and common sense," grumbled Regina, "why not?"
"Can it be atomic?" Hook gleefully asked and at everyone's shrug, Henry swore and took off running down the beach with Hook in hot pursuit.
"I had a witch charm my hook just for atomic wedgies, lad! Just ask Smee!"
"No way you'll catch me, fat-ass!" Henry called back right before tripping rather spectacularly over a rubber ducky.
"Could that bomb really destroy magic?" Emma asked, ignoring her son's calls of distress and Hook's maniacal laughter.
"Of course not," scoffed Belle. "That's fanfiction bullshit."
"Well, Ursula seems to have bought it, so that's all that matters," shrugged Neal, wincing in sympathy but also not going to Henry's aid as the kid cried out in discomfort and abject humiliation.
"Wow, that really was atomic," Ruby commented as Hook lifted up the band of Henry's underwear on his hook like a trophy.
A few days after the merpeople mess, the citizens of Stroybrooke gathered for a fish fry and clam bake on the beach that doubled as a clean-up for all of Ariel's portal-transported junk and rubber duckies, all of which Emma had looked over in a unsuccessful search for Mr. Quackington.
"Well, as far as crazy magical adventures go, this one wasn't so bad," said Hook while devouring a crabpuff. "I mean, it was only one day, and I found a functional bilge pump in that loony wench's clutter. I call that a win-win."
"You spent the day locked in a freezer eating free food and farting like an old dog while me and Emma nearly got gutted by Ariel and her mimbo henchmermen and we had to hang out with Smee," Neal pointed out while reading a newspaper article about an old atomic bomb washing up on some island in the Pacific.
"Oh, true. You have my sympathies for having to endure Smee's company, mate," Hook told him. "I still can't believe he did two things useful in one day."
Ella and Thomas walked past then with Alex/Alexandra, their possibly magically hermaphroditic - no one wanted to ask - kid who'd seemingly re-grown to toddler age and was clutching a rubber ducky. He/she wasn't the only one as quite a few kids on the beach had new bath toys.
"At least all the former forest hobo kids are happy," sighed Emma, watching them tote around their free rubber duckies.
"Maybe it will encourage them to actually bathe," mused Regina.
"That's an awful thing to say," Snow huffed, then conceded, "but true. We really need to institute a hygiene class and probably some sort of Town Hall meeting for the parents, because Parent-Teacher night is coming up and I might have to wear a gas mask. At least Robin smelled 'of forest' instead of unwashed ass."
"Don't mention that word!" moaned Henry, who was sitting very awkwardly on some drift wood. "I can't believe you guys all let the pirate scum do that to me!"
Hook harumphed at being called 'scum' for like the bazillionth time.
"Well, now you can bond over your butt hurt," shrugged Emma. "He is your great great grandfather. Just try not to embrace what psychopathy you might have inherited."
"Speaking of Henry's psychotic grandfathers, where is Gold?" asked Regina, finally noticing that he hadn't been present for any of this mess.
Everyone looked at Belle who shrugged. "How should I know? We're taking a break."
"You take more breaks than all the celebrity couples in Hollywood combined," snorted Ruby. "Either get a divorce or own up to being married to that old power-hungry jerk with a small dick and embrace the perks of trophy-wife-ism."
"I am not a trophy wife! And Rumple does not have a small dick! It's perfectly average sized!"
"Average, eh?" snorted Hook.
Neal defended his father's manhood, "At least it's not an uncircumcised STD trap with unevenly hung balls."
"My balls are not uneven, you take that back!"
"They are uneven by like an inch," Emma reported, "and I hate that I know that."
"Yeah, well, your right tit is smaller than your left one," Hook told her, "and yes, I know that from using my spy glass to watch you bathe and when you took your top off in Neverland to get sand out of it and I had pretended I went to look for firewood in the other direction. So, there!"
"I'm your great granddaughter, you pervert!"
"I didn't know that at the time!" Hook huffed. "And you should consider it a compliment that even though I knew you had an uneven bosom, I still pursued you. Granted, it was mostly to spite Baelfire and piss off your parents, and drunkenly seduce you into sleeping with me so that I could shame you later-"
Emma, Neal, Snow, and Charming all punched Hook in his arms, causing him to drop his plate of food onto the sand.
"Bugger, look what you idiots made me do!" he howled.
"Gonna cry about it, man baby?" taunted Henry.
"All right, enough of this nonsense!" Regina declared and yanked Henry by his increasingly grubby scarf. "You're coming home, taking a bath, and then burning this dreadful striped monstrosity."
"Nooooooooo!"
"Gonna cry about it, not-a-man baby?" sniggered Hook.
Tinkerbell smacked him upside the head. "Stop being a dick and go back to stuffing your face."
"Only if you help me install my bilge pump later," said Hook, wagging his brows.
Everyone groaned and threw their plates at him before walking away.
"Fine, walk away!" Hook called after them. "But you'll need my ship again like you always need The Crocodile's evil, back-stabbing, magical intellect and then you'll come crawling back and act like you never insulted me and treated me like cra-"
The pirate stopped short and scowled as that brought about a rather unpleasant revelation. "Bloody hell, I actually have something in common with Rumplestiltskin. I think I really have lost my appetite!"
While everyone was wondering where Mr. Gold was, and while the U.S. Military was trying to explain how an unexploded nuclear weapon from 1954 had washed up on a beach in the South Pacific, on a different beach, a rubber ducky was washing up just as a family of four wandered down the beach with towels and plastic pails at the end of their daytrip to the shore.
The little brown-haired boy of about five who was wadding ahead of his parents and sister picked up the toy with a shout of, "Mommy! I found a ubber ducky!"
Of course, his toddler sister squealed, wide-eyed with instant enamoration of the toy, and the little boy, if somewhat grudgingly, handed it to the toe-headed girl who shoved the thing her mouth to chew on, eliciting a look of disgust and dismay from the little boy.
His dad ruffled his hair for being a good big brother and his mom suggested they get ice cream. On the way they discussed names for the rubber ducky, settling on "Miss Featherfanny" because it made them all laugh, and later the gender-reassigned toy joined the kids in the bathtub with another somewhat bedraggled rubber ducky who'd been given an 'evil goatee' by the little boy, but wasn't evil, of course since it was just a rubber ducky and magic wasn't real, after all!
And so it was that while things yet remained undecided for Emma Swan and the people of Storybrooke, Mr. Quackington, at least, had gotten a happy ending!
AN: And so ends the story of Mr. Quackington/Miss Featherfanny! The Bomb is inspired by the Robot Chicken "Disney Princess War" sketch in which everyone makes fun of Ariel the entire sketch for her junk collecting and she ends up blowing them up with an old nuclear bomb. Operation Castle was the real project name, the one that included "Castle Bravo", the nuke that was accidentally 1000x more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb because of a miscalculation/misunderstanding of how a particular isotope they didn't normally use responded to the fusion process. Operation Castle was the successor to Operation Crossroads (the title of Part 2 Chapter 53). There are no reports, of course, that any bombs were left undetonated under the ocean, though historically some unexploded atomic bombs have been found around the world, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that one could have been lost in transport if a ship sunk (or encountered a magical portal that the U.S. Military would have covered up and probably attributed to a new Soviet weapon!) And finally, I really do remember reading, long ago, a Harry Potter fanfiction that had something to do with nuclear weapons being a threat to magic.