Chapter 14

Meanwhile, everyone back at the navigation room was trying to figure out how to get London in front of the scanner. Unlike Cody, who went under even with his reservations, the rich girl was not going to go easily.

"Come on, it's only for a few seconds! Get…over…here!" Alia said as she struggled to drag the gold-plated reploid to the red laser in the back of the room. London was surprisingly strong for her petite figure, so Bailey had to pitch in, and eventually, so did Cali. Cody just stood there, staring at the scene it quiet awe. He had not pictured this when he woke up this morning.

"No way! I'm not going anywhere near that thing!" the girl in question protested, pulling away from the group.

"You know, you could actually help instead of standing there like a post!"

"Huh? Oh, um…right," Cody replied, stumbling out of his trance with all the grace of a brick. He didn't have many options to lure London to that scanner. Except…

"Well, there is one thing we could try…"

Alia's voice came out exhausted and desperate. "What is it? I'm kind of willing to try anything at this point!"

Cody shot Bailey a look that the latter understood all too well.

"No. No way. We're not going through that again."

"Look around. Looks like we don't have much of a choice if we want to leave with everyone's arms intact."

"Let me handle this."

Zero calmly walked up to the scene and picked up London, running her through the scanner himself.

"Okay, then." Nobody knew what to say to that. Even Cody was at a loss for words.

Axl broke the silence. "What did you mean when you said 'we're not going through that again'?"

Boyfriend and girlfriend looked at each other uneasily while London took a moment to recover from the scanner and being manhandled by Zero.

"C'mon, what's the big story?" the navy reploid pressed.

After a quick look around revealing that his twin was nowhere in sight, he sighed heavily.

"Fine, just don't tell Zack about this. This isn't something he's proud of."

With that, he began his discourse.

The so-called "wisdom tooth incident" brought back less-than-pleasant memories for everyone involved. Everyone (especially Mr. Moseby) had been prodding London for weeks to get her wisdom teeth taken out, only to be met with her constant refusals. In her mind, she could deal with a "wizard tooth". No tooth with magical powers was going to put her out of the public eye for a week. To everyone's chagrin, she kept onward until the pain was excruciating and she was practically drooling rivers. Even after a parade of her friends and family took turns trying to make her see reason, they still couldn't get her off of the boat. Running out of options, Mr. Moseby called up everyone that he thought could help. The girl wasn't convinced even when Esteban, Arwin (who even offered to do the surgery himself), and even the twins' mother, Carey joined the chorus of pleas. One late night, an emergency meeting was called in a last-ditch attempt to end the crisis. Here, Marion Moseby did the unthinkable.

"Zack… Got any ideas?"

"You, asking for my input?" Mock surprise tinted the boy's voice. He couldn't help but revel in the very unusual development, despite the circumstances. "Gee, the apocalypse looks…oddly peaceful."

Cody shot his brother a disapproving look, but he didn't seem to notice.

"This is serious," the cruise ship manager hissed, though mentally, he agreed with him. Would've thought the end would've been hotter.

"Alright, alright." He thought for a few seconds. "Mr. Moseby, get Mr. Tipton on the line."

"What're you…"

"Trust me."

Ordinarily, the mere idea of trusting Zack with his past would have been laughable. Unfortunately, this situation was anything but ordinary. He sighed deeply. Do not make me regret this, Zackary Martin, was his only thought as he did as he was told.

Zack continued giving orders. "Cody, Bailey: I need you to convince London that she's going to a photo shoot."

The taller twin was reviled at the unethical nature of the idea. "You want us to lie to her? To take advantage of her?"

Bailey put her hands to her hips. "You do realize that she's our friend, your friend, right?"

Zack closed his eyes tightly. "Yeah. I also know that the only ways to get London Tipton to do anything she doesn't want to do is to trick or bribe her. Remember how she got on the ship in the first place?"

"I still don't like this," Cody said flatly, unable to argue with his brother in this one instance.

"Neither do I."

Convincing her of the photo shoot idea was actually the easy part, as it turned out. The hard part was finding a private hospital. Taking London Tipton to a public hospital was practically a death wish, as paparazzi would swarm the area at the slightest hint of her existence. Thankfully, Mr. Tipton pulled some strings and had her put in a very "private" hospital, very much off the radar of any potential prying eyes, ears, or cameras. In the interest of avoiding a fight, the group kept the girl in question sedated thanks to a hypnotism kit Zack borrowed from Woody.

By the time they managed to get the rich girl on the cot, it was 5:30 in the morning and everyone had been up for hours.

Zack couldn't care less about his lack of sleep. The grin plastered on his face might've blinded anyone staring directly at it. Literally everything he'd laid out was going according to plan. By the time six a.m. hit, her tooth would be out, at least one of his schemes would've worked, and for once, he wouldn't be on the wrong side of a set of disapproving looks. Cody and Bailey, meanwhile, was more surprised that nothing had gone wrong. Mr. Moseby was on pins and needles, expecting something to go wrong.

"This is too good to be true, this is too good to be true, this is too good to be true…"

"Look at it this way. If anything were to go wrong, it would've happened already, right?" Bailey asked, trying to calm the panicking manager.

Everyone watched as she was put under. As soon as she was, they were ushered out into the hall to wait.

"I can't believe this actually worked…" The taller twin said in genuine disbelief.

"I can't believe it either," his brother responded, the excitement never leaving his voice. "It really is a beautiful thing when a plan comes together."

"Since when do your plans ever come together?"

Zack knew Cody had a point, but didn't care. As far as he was concerned, nothing could ruin this. "Well, there's a first time for everything, dear brother."

After a few minutes, a loud bang shocked everyone.

"What was that?"

"Not good. That's what it was."

After a couple seconds, they heard mumbling. Female mumbling.

By now, the tension in the hall was palpable.

In minutes, squirming and yelling could be heard, followed by the clanging of metal.

"Pin her down. She keeps moving!"

"How did she shrug off the anesthesia so fast?"

"She shrugged off the anesthesia?" Bailey asked, overhearing the conversation in the O.R.

"No…" Zack whispered to himself. This couldn't really be happening, could it?

"This can't end well…" the manager said ruefully.

The operating nurse came out looking like she'd been in a tornado. "Okay, who's up for some good news and bad news?"

"What's the good news?" Cody asked.

"We got the tooth out."

"And the bad news?" Moseby finished, dread lining his question.

"Your friend here did about $500,000 in damages."

Everyone shot up at once. "WHAT?!"

"See for yourself."

The room looked like a war zone: spilled liquids and expensive-looking machinery lined the floor. At the center of it all was an army of nurses holding down a half-awake London Tipton.

Everybody's jaws dropped in the face of the scene.

"Don't just stand there gawking, help us!" A nurse snapped at them.

Everyone involved had to throw themselves at the effort to restrain the girl. After 30 minutes, the girl was asleep again, the gang was collapsed with exhaustion, and the hospital was assessing the damages.

"This can't be happening…" Moseby gasped as he looked at the sum of the bill. He knew his boss would have his head for this.

"Look at it this way. At least the tooth came out, right?" Zack tried to console the man, even though his own heart was far from in it.

He was met with a glare. "You do realize that this is on your head, Zachary."

"But…"

"I'm tired of being on the losing end of your schemes! Just… just… leave me alone."

With one last look, Zack saw not the usual anger or irritation radiating off of his friendly rival. He was truly tired of him.

So the manager left to explain things to his boss while the boy just stood there, motionless, soundless, thought-less.

In the month since then, nether spoke to each other. They acknowledged each other as if they were going through the motions. When anybody brought up the incident. Both Zack and Mr. Moseby would change the subject on a dime. Perhaps most telling of all, neither were acting normal after the incident: Zack was much more irritable than usual. He didn't do much at all, good or bad. That is perhaps what worried Cody the most. It was like he totally gave up. Moseby was a shell of his former self, barely doing his job enough to get by. It bothered everyone immensely, but nobody dared bring up the day in front of them.

Cody shook his head. "Neither of them have been the same since."

Found it pretty funny, actually," Axl commented.

"Suppose it should be, in a sense…"

A throat-clearing sound got everyone's attention. It was Zack.

"Oh, we were just…" Cody began, hoping his brother hadn't heard what they were just talking about. He was glad Zack didn't have laser vision, or he would've been dead meat.

"Hate to interrupt story time," he began, "But what do you want, X?"

"Well, we need to pass some information to you." The Azure Hunter went on to summarize what he'd explained earlier. As he stepped through the scanner, Zack tried to look unfazed, but couldn't hide his intrigue at the idea. This "variable weapons" thing sounded interesting. Even he couldn't be indifferent to the idea of getting abilities from enemies. Heck, if he'd been in a better mood, he would've been all over the idea.

"Well, what happens now?"

"Follow me," X responded, leading everyone to their next destination.

I'm putting this story on hiatus. Why? I've just got my hands too full right now. Eventually, I'll come back to it...when things settle down, perhaps. For right now, I don't want this story dominating my thoughts. I want-and have-to focus on other things. Thanks so much for your patronage. Until next time!