Hi again, everyone. Here is the 3rd chapter. I also had decided to post new chapters ever 2 weeks to give readers time to read every chapter. I hope you'll enjoy this chapter!
Previously on The Bad Guys: The Baddest Trip...
Piranha: Welcome to Letifecto.
Prima: Aah! My little hermano has finally come home!
Primo Sr.: We are gathered here tonight to celebrate the return of little Pepe. The prodigal son has finally come home.
Piranha: If Papà finds out about me became part of a criminal gang, he'll be furious, guys! And he depends on our family to have a good reputation for the whole town!
Prima: Pepe is a criminal, and he and his friends are a wanted criminal gang called 'The Bad Guys,' and our reputation is ruined!
Primo Sr.: Do you know what you put yourself into?!
Piranha: The only reason I have sacrificed my own likings and happiness from your pressure and expectations for all of us to be good and perfect is for this family to be happy and complete and to satisfy you like everyone else did for you and the whole town!
Prospero 172: Papà, you've always been too hard on Pepe, especially ever since Mamà died
Learning Japan
The Bad Guys were up for another around-the-world trip. Shark took a sip of the champagne while watching the sky and the clouds through the window. It was a good view of the ocean.
"Do you think we have a chance to stop by in India?" he asked before taking a bite on a shrimp.
Snake took his blindfold off and groaned about the topic, "I don't wanna go back to India. I dated a tapeworm once, and she made me barf."
Shark and Tarantula glanced at each other and cringed in disgust about that fact from Snake.
Meanwhile, Hornet set up a board plan that pinned pictures of vacation sites per country to decide where to go next.
"Has anyone tried China?" Wolf called from the cockpit.
Tarantula rolled her eyes and gagged, "Don't get me started. They want me to wear those chopsticks, and it didn't work out for me."
Suddenly, the turbulence shook the jet and caused some of the pictures to fall off. Hornet caught some of them, while others reached the floor. When Hornet readied to scoop the fallen pictures, he encountered a picture of the city of Tokyo, Japan.
As he stared at it, Hornet began to think what it was like in Japan. He also realized about his species and figured out where they came from. This idea came to Hornet as he wanted to try it for himself.
"Hornet, are you okay?" Piranha approached him from behind, feeling concern for his boyfriend.
Hornet appreciated that his boyfriend was looking out for him. He turned to him and gave out a smile, gesturing he was okay, but Hornet looked back at the board, staring at the photo of Tokyo, and sighed, "I always wondered what it was like to be in the origin of my species. I was called an 'Asian Giant Hornet,' but another term for that was a 'Japanese Hornet.' But I don't feel Japanese."
"It's because you've never been to Japan," Snake overheard Hornet's confession.
"Why don't we go there?" Shark suggested.
"Yeah, I mean, we got a chance to visit my home country, and it was a bust," Piranha recalled, "Now let's try yours."
Hornet felt hesitant with this idea, but this was what he wanted too, so he couldn't say no to this once-in-a-lifetime offer to visit his origin, "Yeah, I think that would be okay."
"Yay! The Bad Guys are going to Japan!" Wolf howled before hearing the bang of a gong.
At the cabin, it was Shark banging the gong as he held it with one fin and the other held its mallet. "What? I always wanted to do this," he struck the gong again.
The jet flew in a different direction to head for Japan.
When Wolf found a hidden place to land the jet, just behind Mt. Fuji, the other Bad Guys packed up the stuff they needed for the trip in Japan, but Snake wasn't so excited for this trip. He has no bag to bring this time, not for this country.
Wolf noticed Snake's grumpy face as he sat beside him. "Come on, Snake. Japan will be fun. You liked The Last Samurai."
"That's not how I remember it," Snake uttered. "Besides, if we wanna see Japanese people... we could have gone to Harvard University."
"Snake!" Wolf exclaimed for Snake offending Japanese people.
"What? The guy who runs the academic program is Japanese. His name is Satoshi," Snake explained. "He's in my book club."
Meanwhile, Hornet found a brochure and told his boyfriend, "Look, Piranha, the brochure was written in haiku!
Best restaurants here.
Flowers dance in air.
Watch for street races."
When the Bad Guys traveled to Tokyo, the Bad Guys found themselves a hotel where the bellhops bowed to them in their presence as they passed through the door.
"Wow, they bowed so much, they never noticed us or figured out who we are," Tarantula whispered to Hornet, who chuckled at her observation.
"Japan is so welcoming and polite," Wolf stated after receiving the key from the front desk.
The Bad Guys found themselves a room after checking in, and the doors were Shoji.
"Here's our room," Shark declared as he walked through the doors, ripping the sheets of Shoji paper.
"Shark, you're supposed to slide those doors open," Wolf scolded as he and the other Bad Guys walked through the hole Shark created.
"I don't have time for that," Shark then threw their bags into the closet that also has a shoji door. Like what he did to the door, Shark refused to slide the door open as he threw the bags through the doors, ripping the sheets and punching a large hole through it.
And just like the last two doors, Shark walked himself through the Shoji door to the bathroom. There, he encountered a talking toilet.
"Welcome. I am honored to accept your waste."
Shark pushed a button on a nearby keypad, and the toilet made dancing water like a fountain, "They're years ahead of us."
Meanwhile, while settling in. Snake turned the TV on and saw Shark above the toilet bowl.
"Hey guys. Check it out. Shark's on TV," Snake called his friends, and they gathered around to watch Shark without realizing they were watching through the toilet.
Back in the bathroom, Shark removed his pants and sat on the toilet to take a number 2.
"What a relief!" He sighed but failed to hear his friends screaming at the bedroom when they were watching TV.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!" The other Bad Guys' screams muffled in Shark's perspective.
At the window, Hornet was sightseeing and could see all of Tokyo from up there.
"It's breathtaking." Hornet smiled as he saw one of the tourist attractions, "Look. There's the Himeji Castle." Then, he saw another one, "The Nara Park!" and shifted to a factory that has a 'Hello Kitty' logo on it, "The Hello Kitty factory."
As one of the trucks drove away, the cats yowled loudly from the factory inside, and smoke fumed out of the smokestacks.
Hornet looked back at his friends and asked, "Who's up for some exploring?"
"Hey, I'm still checking out Japanese TV." Snake turned the volume up. "Isn't this that cartoon that causes seizures?"
The Japanese cartoon showed a little Pokémon-like monster was ready to attack while the foreground and background rapidly flashed bright light onscreen.
The flashing light caused Snake to fall to the floor; his muscles jerked and stiffened and twitched uncontrollably.
"Snake, what are you doing?" When Wolf turned to the TV to see what Snake was watching, he had the same reaction as he fell to the floor and his body twitched like crazy.
Hornet turned to the TV as well as his eyes widened, "Hey, what the—" He fell to the floor with his wings stiffened, unable for him to flap, and twitched uncontrollably as well.
"Hey, what is tha—?" Tarantula crawled on the bed to see what was happening and had her eyes on the TV before falling on her back; her body stiffened and twitched.
Piranha took a look at the cartoon and had no effect on him at first. "This cartoon won't give me any—" But he stared at the TV for another second, and it caused him to stiffen and twitch too.
Shark came out from the bathroom and watched his friends twitching on the ground. He didn't know what was going on, so he shrugged and said, "Hmm, alright." He fell on the ground and twitched alongside them.
When the show changed to the commercial, the effect of the seizure wore off from the Bad Guys, and they got up in their normal state.
"Whoo! All that seizing made me hungry," Snake said.
"Me too. Let's go to an authentic Japanese noodle house," Hornet said excitedly.
"The toilet recommended a place called Americaworld," Shark noted.
"Shark, we didn't come halfway around the world to eat at Americaworld," the little insect pointed out.
"I'd like to see the Japanese take on the club sandwich," Piranha commented, "I bet it's smaller and more efficient."
"We now return to 'Seizure-fighting Mightymons,'" the TV proclaimed as it switched back to the episode, and it gave the Bad Guys a seizure again as they fell on the floor and their bodies twitched.
In the AmericaWorld, the tables were shaped like the states of the USA and were arranged by the right location, and on stage, there were animatronics dancing that all looked like American models, like the Statue of Liberty, Abraham Lincoln, Snoopy the Beagle, Marilyn Monroe, Muhammad Ali, and Neil Armstrong.
The Bad Guys found themselves a table that was the state of Arkansas.
"I can't believe they stuck us at "Narc-can-sas!" Shark complained as they sat down, "Hey, you know, I once knew a man from Little Rock."
"And?" Tarantula asked,
"Let's just say the stories about him are greatly exaggerated."
"Howdy, neighbors," a Japanese waiter greeted them, wearing a blue shirt, orange pants, and a cowboy hat. "I am average American Joe salaryman waiter."
Tarantula looked at the menu and complained about the price, "These prices suck. 20,000 yen for fries?"
"Don't you serve anything that's even remotely Japanese?" Hornet requested.
"Don't ask me. I don't know anything." The waiter responded, "I am a product of the American education system. I also build poor-quality cars and inferior-style electronics."
Shark laughed, "Oh, they got our number."
Later, the Bad Guys were exploring the city when they stopped by the fruit stall.
"One square watermelon, please," Shark asked as he gave the vendor a bill, and he gave him the square watermelon.
"Oh, my goodness. Shark, those are $1.50," Tarantula calculated.
"It's worth every cent. I'm tired of fumbling with round fruit," Shark admitted before the watermelon in his fins expanded into its rounded shape, and he accidentally dropped it on the ground.
"Well, maybe we should just head back to the hotel," the team leader recommended.
"But you promised me we'd do something Japanese." Hornet pleaded
"Oh, of course you're right!" Shark exclaimed, "You know, I read about the Children's Peace Monument... where it commemorates Sadako Sasaki and the thousands of— Run, Snake!" He blurted out as he and Snake rushed away from the team, deciding to explore Japan on their own.
Snake and Shark ended up in the Sumo Stadium, where they could watch Sumo wrestling. The sumo wrestler was pouring salt all over the ring while the audience was watching.
"Mmm. Fifty-dollar popcorn," Shark hummed before noticing the wrestler, "Hey, what's Baby Huey doin'?"
"Says here they throw salt before they wrestle to purify the ring," Snake replied, reading the brochure.
"Hmm," Shark looked at his food as he figured he wanted some salt on his popcorn. Shark climbed up on the ring and asked the wrestler, "Spare some salt, chubby?"
"'Chubby?'" The wrestler spoke in Japanese, "`Po tchari' to iu namae wa kizutsukimasu. Watashi no taijū no mondai wa sen ni yoru monodakaradesu. Anata wa sore o taberu tsumoridesu ka?" The wrestler snatched the popcorn from Shark, "Yoink."
"Hey, that's mine!" Shark whined as he charged at the wrestler to retrieve his popcorn, but the wrestler pinned him down.
At the edge of the ring, Shark was able to reach for Snake. He held his fin to him as Snake offered his tail to him. Shark tagged his tail with his fin, which meant to pass the fight to the one who tagged the other.
It was his turn to fight as Snake grabbed a chair and beat the wrestler with it, claiming him defeated. "Like we say in my county, 'Hasta la vista, baby.'" Shark said as he retrieved his popcorn.
Just then, Emperor Naruhito arrived, mistaking Shark for a sumo wrestler, as he approached him on the ring, "Congratulations. I am the emperor."
"Yeah? And I'm " Thrasha-minus," Shark also thought the emperor was another sumo wrestler as he lifted him up, spun him in the air, and threw him into a box of Sumo Thongs.
"All hail Emperor Thrashaminus," Shark cheered for himself, but the audience booed at him, and Snake facepalmed, knowing Shark screwed this up.
Snake and Shark were sent to prison, where they were both wearing kimonos. Shark was pouring tea on a small table, and Snake was painting Mt. Fuji.
The Japanese police unlocked and opened the prison bars and declared, "Your friends have paid your bail, Misutā Sunēku and Misutā Shāku."
Wolf, Piranha, Tarantula, and Hornet were standing right beside the cop, revealing that they were the ones who bailed them out.
"Thank golly. Couldn't take another minute in this hellhole," Shark said nervously before eating a bowl of noodles before giving the finished bowl to the female Japanese, and they bowed to each other.
When Snake exited the opening door, Shark passed through the Shoji door instead, ripping another hole through the sheets.
After they left the police station, the Bad Guys walked at the park, but Hornet was still saddened that they wasted their time and money to bail Snake and Shark from prison.
"Now can we do something Japanese?" he begged.
Shark groaned in frustration, "Oh, I'm sick of doing Japanese stuff. In jail we had to partake in this dumb tea ceremony where you sip from a bowl instead of a cup... and I wanted to have biscuits, but they made me eat dumplings."
"Then we had to do two hours of origami... followed by flower arranging and meditation," Shark added, expressing his exhaustion at jail.
"Karera ni kokoro no heiwa no himitsu o oshierubekideshou ka?" Shark asked Snake in Japanese.
Surprisingly, Snake replied to him, also in Japanese, "Īe, karera wa gaikoku no akumadesu."
"Mi amor, I know you wanna see Japan... but we're down to our last million yen," Piranha explained as he took out the last paper bill.
"Don't worry, little bug. I'll show you something Japanese," Shark gently ruffled Hornet's head before taking the money from Piranha and folding it into a crane.
"Oh, it's beautiful, Shark," Hornet complimented impressively.
"It's a crane. The Japanese believe they bring good luck."
"Oh, be careful. We need that money for the rest of our trip. Besides, we landed our jet very far, and we won't have enough money to pay for the hotel and a trip back," Wolf cautiously warned.
But then, the wind blew, and it took the folded money with it, making the paper crane fly away.
"No!" Wolf and Piranha shouted.
"Īe" Shark yelled in Japanese.
Since the Bad Guys have a little money left, they forced themselves to have a temporary job. They were now working at the seafood factory, where they had to cut the fish open, remove its insides, and throw them back into the pile.
"Every truckload of fish we gut brings us 31 cents closer to our trip home," Wolf said as he kept cutting fish before removing its insides.
Hornet felt hesitant to kill the fish and remove their insides, but he tried not to think about their deaths. He still feels bad for them. He sobbed all the way, "Oh, why do they have to die?! Why?!" He then whispered to the one he was killing, "Don't worry... you can't be hurt anymore."
"And I think I finally found what I was put on this Earth to do," Piranha chuckled joyfully as he kept slicing fish open and removing their guts. "Knife goes in, guts come out. Knife goes in, guts come out."
Just then, Piranha found a fish that could talk as he cried for his mercy, "Spare my life and I will grant you three wi—AAHHH!" But Piranha failed to see or hear the talking fish as he kept slicing him open and pulled its guts out.
"Knife goes in, guts come out," Piranha continued his ramble.
After that hard work for hours, the Bad Guys earned some money, enough to pay the hotel service. They traveled back to the hotel by foot. They didn't want to spend more money on taking a cab.
"Great. We earned just a little," Hornet mentioned as they arrived at the hotel.
Wolf decided to go ahead of his friends to give half of the money they earned to the counter, "Let's just pay back the hotel, and we'll use the money we have left to get back to the jet."
While Wolf paid the bills, there should be another to get back to the jet, fast and easy. Then, Hornet looked up, and there was a large banner hanging from the ceiling that showed an illustration of a train. This gave Hornet an idea, "Do we have enough for a train?"
Snake, Shark, Piranha, and Tarantula gazed at Hornet, readying to listen to him.
After checking out from the hotel, the Bad Guys got their bags and headed to the train station. A lot of people walked in different directions as it was one of the busiest places in Tokyo. Everyone in this country liked taking the train more than driving their cars or riding in cabs.
The Bad Guys found themselves in a line where they had to pay for their tickets for their train.
When they reached the computer, Tarantula managed to check on which plane they should get into to get to Mt. Fuji. As a tech wiz, Tarantula knew what she was doing. When the boys gave her the money they had left, she put it all into the ticket computer, and the screen showed 4 different kinds of trains: blue, red, yellow, and green. One of them could get them to Mt. Fuji. Tarantula chose green, and the machine slot slid out 6 green tickets; one for each of them.
When they got the tickets, they were trying to find where the green train was. They just had to follow the colored lines below their feet. They followed the green line, and ahead was the green train, just arrived. The gang let a line of people pass first, and when it was clear, it was their turn to move ahead to reach for the green train. But a dozen other passengers stampede on them, pushing the Bad Guys to the wrong train: a blue train! They were squeezed in very tightly in the train as there was no way to get out.
The doors were closed; the train was leaving the station. The train moved fast, like a speeding rollercoaster. The shockwave of the fast train caused the road to snap off, and the cars were flown off the ground. They were stacked in towers now. The train moved onto elevated tracks as the passengers inside were bumping into each other and the walls while trying to keep themselves standing. This caused the Bad Guys to shift from their spots and accidentally split up from each other.
Though the boys ended up near the exit of the cart, Tarantula was left behind to where they were a second ago.
"Guys, guys, where are you?!" Tarantula called out to her friends.
"Webs, we're here!" She could hear Wolf's voice, but not nearby.
Tarantula climbed out of the crowd and saw his friends at the end of the cart. Then, she had to come to them. Tarantula dove back into the crowd and crawled up on one man's sleeve. He jumped to another man and came out from the other man's jacket through the opening of its collar. Tarantula then crawled into a nearby man's jacket and appeared from the shorter man's hat. Her legs were shown from under the hat, and she crawled up to the taller man's head, which she tripped on the wig, and it landed on the shorter man's bald head. Tarantula dropped her "hat disguise" as it fell on the taller man's head, and she jumped onto the next man's pocket. Tarantula tried to squeeze herself out between two people with her rear end coming out first but didn't notice there was a sharp spike behind her, which poked her rear end and caused her to yelp.
Tarantula noticed the next group of passengers was wearing spiky clothing. With no way through without getting poked, she opened the briefcase and got herself in before lifting herself up like an elevator to the man's newspaper. She passed above the spiky passengers using the tsurikawas. Tarantula finally made it to her friends, who cheered for her for passing through that crowd and landed on Shark's shoulder.
"Good work, Webs," Shark commented.
"Now let's get…" Hornet turned around, and before he could finish, something else blocked him.
There was a fat guy blocking the Bad Guys' way to the exit with no gaps on both sides to slide in. The Bad Guys didn't know what to do now until they noticed the green train was heading the same direction as the blue train. Realizing they might have a chance to catch up with the right train, the Bad Guys weren't ready to give up. They had to find a way to get through this giant guy.
Shark was confident that he could take this guy down as he shoved his friends aside. "Step aside, my friends. Let me handle this."
But Snake held Shark's grip with his tail, recalling the incident the latter made hours ago, "Oh no. You had quite enough since that sumo ring."
"Guess I'll do what I can do best," Piranha volunteered to fix this problem.
He took his shirt and shoes off and made his pants into a loincloth. Piranha whistled to the overweight man to get his attention. When the man turned to the little fish, Piranha gestured to challenge him into a sumo wrestling match by marching both his legs apart.
Knowing this gesture, the overweight man accepted the challenge as he ripped his clothes off, having nothing but a loincloth. The overweight man and Piranha were ready to engage in sumo wrestling. The two charged at each other with screams until Piranha slid below the giant man between his legs, which fooled the larger man to crash into a crowd of commuters, giving the Bad Guys a way now to the exit.
The Bad Guys were impressed by Piranha's strategy without using violence.
"That's impressive, Piranha," Wolf clapped his paws.
Piranha smiled confidently before receiving his clothes back when Hornet saved them for him. "I'm glad I tipped that off," he put his clothes back on.
The Bad Guys had a chance to climb over the crushing crowd to reach for the exit.
Now they were outside, the Bad Guys clung to the roof of the blue train as it raced along the tracks. The train was so fast as its tracks were curved and dove down like a real rollercoaster ride. When they stood up, ahead where railroad signs as the Bad Guys narrowly avoided them all, no matter how fast this train was. They continued to keep their feet on top of the train as it headed into a tunnel.
Inside the tunnel was like a pixelated video game, similar to Super Mario Bros, when the Bad Guys hopped, dodged obstacles, and collected coins and hearts for lives.
After the blue train exited the tunnel, the Bad Guys showed to be handling a bunch of cold coins from the game. They immediately kept them in their pockets and bags, or in Snake's stomach in this case, to save them when they needed them. They then noticed the green train had pulled up alongside the red train, and they tried to jump to its roof. But their attempts to jump got interrupted when a billboard was blocking their way. They tried to jump again, but another billboard was ahead of them. They tried to jump again but were repeatedly interrupted by more billboards until the green train drifted away from them and headed down below, where the Bad Guys could no longer reach it. Eventually, the blue rain crossed over a bridge that passed over the green train's path. Seeing this opportunity, Wolf had an idea to reach the train.
"Guys, we gotta jump!" He suggested.
The rest of the Bad Guys exclaimed in disbelief," What?!"
"Are you crazy?!" Snake yelled.
"Trust me. We must jump when I say so!" Wolf instructed.
The Bad Guys leaned in closer together, waiting for Wolf's signal to jump. When the green train passed by below the blue train's bridge, it was their chance to catch the train.
"NOW!" Wolf shouted.
All the Bad Guys jumped off the blue train and fell downwards, passing the flock of ducks, and finally landed on the roof of the green train. Wolf's pants suddenly left behind, but he got the chance to retrieve them.
Right on time, the train arrived at its destination, near Mt. Fuji. When the passengers of the green train went in one direction, the Bad Guys rushed in the other direction, where they found their hidden jet plane.
Finally, they could leave this country.
Wolf started the jet as the Bad Guys fastened their seatbelts in the cabin, and they could finally rest from their complicated trip in Japan.
"Goodbye, Japan. I'll miss your teriyaki chicken and your complicated storylines in anime!" Piranha waved goodbye at the sight of Japan through the window as the jet was taking off.
"Oh, Japan, isn't it beautiful?" Hornet sighed as he gazed on the home country of his species one last time.
"I hope you're not disappointed we didn't do anything Japanese," Tarantula apologized as if Hornet was upset about their trip.
"Eh, it's fine. At least I get to see Japan and know the origin place of my species," Hornet admitted, much to his friends' delight. "And I'm never coming back to this place ever again," the bug confessed, flying into the other cabin.
The other Bad Guys were frozen in shock at Hornet's thoughts about Japan.
Cast:
Michael Godere - Mr. Wolf
Chris Diamantopoulos - Mr. Snake
Ezekiel Ajeigbe - Mr. Shark
Raul Ceballos - Mr. Piranha
Mallory Low - Ms. Tarantula
Eugene Lee Yang - Mr. Hornet
Hiroshi Kamiya - Emperor Naruhito, Japanese police officer
Kenjiro Tsuda – Talking toilet, Commercial announcer, Sumo wrestler
Gedde Watanabe – Japanese waiter, Talking Fish
Author
I.M. Rally
Co-Author
MasterClass60
Next on The Bad Guys: The Baddest Trip...
Snake: Come on, Piranha, out of all the world, why do you want to go to Spain?
Piranha: I lived in Bolivia, but I feel Hispanic in Spain.
?: Worried that you might get lost? I think I can help with that.
Piranha: Fuchsia?
Shark: Wow, she seems very nice.
Piranha: Yeah, I'd never seen her this nice before
Fuchsia: That's my Pepe… That's my Pepe.
Hornet was based on the "Asian Giant Hornet, aka "Murder Hornet, which originated in Japan, so I decided to make a chapter about Hornet's origin country.
Half of the chapter was referenced to "The Simpsons: Thirty Minutes over Tokyo." Masterclass60, and I made a couple of changes for this fanfic.
Emperor Naruhito made an appearance here since he was the current emperor of Japan. The scene where the Bad Guys got the seizure from a cartoon show was a reference to a real-life incident when a Pokémon episode, "Electric Soldier Porygon," caused viewers and children to be sent to the hospital because of a seizure caused by the flashing light effects.
The other half of the episode was referenced to Mickey Mouse shorts: Tokyo Go.
Inside a train tunnel was reference to the 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System video game Super Mario Bros.
Fun fact: At the end of the chapter, Hornet confirmed he hated Japan and didn't want to go there ever again.
Japanese translation:
'Po tchari' to iu namae wa kizutsukimasu. Watashi no taijū no mondai wa sen ni yoru monodakaradesu. Anata wa sore o taberu tsumoridesu ka? - The name 'Chubby' is hurtful, as my weight problem is glandular. Are you going to eat that?
Karera ni kokoro no heiwa no himitsu o oshierubekideshou ka? - Should we tell them the secret of inner peace?
Īe, karera wa gaikoku no akumadesu - No, they are foreign devils.
Īe - No
Special thanks to Masterclass60 for helping me with this chapter.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter. See you soon! Sayonara!