Bargaining For Time Judy's attempts to outfox Slick have consequences. Dire consequences.
Plot
When the Get Out Of Jumanji Free card was handed over to Alan it glowed yellow and a wind picked up.
"It's working!" Alan gasped.
"Yes, of course it is. With J Hieronymus Slick, satisfaction is guaranteed!" said Skick. He waved the group of four goodbye as they dissolved into glowing particles and vanished.
Alan and the kids arrived back in the attic.
Peter felt giddy and took time to accustom to being transported or disapparated via an arcane force.
"It worked! I'm finally home!" Alan gasped. He looks around the attic.
"Cool beans!" Peter cheered.
Oscar glared at Peter. He hates silly catchphrases.
Judy gave a smug smile at Peter, confident nothing would go wrong. We did it, this time…
Oscar was too busy day dreaming about a spinach pop tart. He had a glazed look in his eyes as he gawked up at the rafters.
"Caloo! Calay! Ohohoho!" Alan cheered, glad to be home.
"Kallae Kistnaeeeee…" Oscar rasped in a demented manner.
"So Mr never tell a lie. Sometimes it pays to bend the truth…" Judy smirked.
"We'll see… just hope Jumanji doesn't catch on that it's been scammed with a broken wrist watch…" Peter gave here a hard look. He learned from his brief experience as a monkey that Jumanji hates being cheated or lied too.
Oscar was still away with the fairies, or at least his mind was as he was still thinking about a spinach pop tart.
However Alan ran downstairs cheering. "I'm hooooome!"
"Oh no! What if Aunt Nora sees him?!" Judy groaned.
"I dunno, Hey Aunt Nora, this is Alan, a hairy jungle man who lives here…." Peter follows her downstairs as the siblings head off after Alan.
Oscar heads off after them.
He arrived back downstairs on the second floor landing. Judy gawked concerned because he was wearing a blond girly wig he found in the attic.
"What?" Oscar posed and played with his new fabulous hair.
"Take that off now and put it back!" Judy yelled.
"Nuh uh…" Oscar refused.
"Hey! Ow! You're just jealous 'cause I'm pretty!" Oscar whined as she snatched the wig from him.
Peter grimaced, looking freaked out at Oscar.
Oscar for whatever reason wanted the wig back. Because he's fruity sometimes… He felt a burning, raw, intense power erupt from his very core, the backlash of which had sent him into blissful blackness.
"No, my dark side…. We're not hurting anyone…" He hissed, fighting back against his inner darkness.
"Oh come on… I haven't killed someone for ages.." said a raspy, angry sounding version of Oscar's usually cheerful tone of voice in Oscar's head.
"Will you too stop fighting…" Peter groaned, gesturing to downstairs where Alan went.
…
Downstairs Alan runs through the foyer yelling at the top of his voice. "I'm hooooooooome!"
Peter trotted downstairs shortly afterwards and hushed him. "Shhhhhh!"
"I'm home I'm hoooooome!" He runs outside the front doors and hugs a tree. "Oh home sweet home!"
Then Alan noticed something was not right… "Unusually quiet today… even the birds ain't singing."
Then he saw that everyone was frozen, trapped in a second of time for all eternity. A kid was riding a bike but frozen like a statue. It was like walking into a photograph for Alan.
"Uh… hello… anybody…?" Alan asked.
"Judy one day your little white lies are gonna…" Peter sighed.
"Look, you either got it, or you don't…" Judy smirked.
They both then saw that the world was frozen in a moment of time too.
"Uh what happened?!" Judy asked.
"Looks like someone hit the pause button on the TV remote…" Peter added his two cents.
"Coooool!" Oscar cooed.
"Not cool…" Alan said softly. "I have a bad feeling about all this…"
Oscar frowned.
"This is freaking me out…" Judy gulped, staring at a dog, frozen in time about to catch a yellow frisbee.
"Guys look at Aunt Nora!" Peter yelled.
Aunt Nora was frozen too. She seemed more like a shop mannequin than a person.
"Oh no! Aunt Nora!" Judy gasped.
Oz winced when he saw a blond guy on the porch ringing the doorbell and holding a bouquet of red roses.
Oscar raised an eyebrow and frowned with the other in a quizzical manner.
"Aunt Nora… hellooooo…" Judy waved her hands about. Aunt Nora did not respond.
"Judy look!" Peter was checking out the grandfather clock in the foyer. It had stopped permanently on a second.
"The clock stopped! So what, big deal…" said Judy.
"But what about Aunt Nora…" Peter asked.
"No you don't get it… the clock stopped. The whole world has stopped…" said Alan deeply concerned.
Oscar seethed as steam shot out of his ears. "Judy what did you do?!"
"Your broken watch! You sold it to Slick!" Peter gasped.
"And…?" Judy frowned.
"You told him it keeps perfect time.." Peter gave her a hard look.
"And now Jumanji is keeping time, perfectly still…" Alan warned ominously.
…
"Oh great..l just great! Now we're stuck outside of time! Because Judy had to be a liar, liar, pants on fire!" Oscar yelled like the Collector from Owl House.
Judy sulked.
"Cooooool! Way to give us unlimited free time, forever Jude!" Peter laughed.
"No Peter! Not cool! We have to fix this! Aunt Nora doesn't look so good…" Judy whined.
Aunt Nora stood completely still and frozen like a mannequin.
"Uh correction. You have to fix this Judy." Oscar glares at Judy. "Your mess, you fix it… alone…"
Judy sulked.
"Hey, what's the rush? We've got all the time in the world!" Alan strangely wanted to goof off…
Judy winced at him.
Peter cheered and ran outside with Alan to muck about.
"Guys please! This is no time to be monkeying around!" Judy yelled running after them.
Oscar follows while singing The Monkees, Hey, Hey We're the Monkees.
Judy did a zip it gesture at him. Because he's annoying…
However as if by the laws of irony, when Judy mentioned monkeys, the three monkeys who threatened them with crossbows on their first night in Jumanji scampered downstairs hooting. The large, dumb monkey. The scowling one with a scar, and the little, mischievous one.
The three monkeys climb on Aunt Nora and mess up her hair, taking it out of her bun style.
The large monkey puts some of her lipstick on his lips. Um…
Oscar winced at him.
The monkey with a scar played with some scissors, deciding to give Nora a makeover…. The three monkeys giggled.
Oscar catches up with everyone. He gawked and grimaced freaked out. Peter decided to put buckets on everyone's heads…
"Peter why…" He asked.
"Why not? Wouldn't you?" Peter asked.
Oscar saw Rock was frozen still in the midst of beating up a kid wearing glasses. Oscar frowned. "I'll do one thing for a laugh…" He pulled down Rock's pants, so his underwear was visible to everyone…
Peter chuckled.
Judy takes a rose from Nora's date and takes it to give to a boy on his bike, frozen in time. She also went to collect a newspaper he was tossing However the three monkeys nearly knock her to the ground as they blunder past her.
"Oh you banana brains!" Judy yelled.
Alan groaned. "Oh no! Not these guys… We have to go back…" he sighed.
"Do we…?" Oscar asked. Alan gave him a forlorn look that meant yes.
"Also that ain't the newspaper delivery boy. That's Tommy who yells "Express Delivery!" Who delivers newspapers…" Oscar frowned.
Peter winced at Oscar.
"Oops! Spoilers!" Oscar tugged at his turtleneck collar.
…
"Just when everything seemed so peaceful…" Alan sighed.
The monkeys jumped on the cars.
Then they pulled down Officer Bentley's pants, and put a fire hydrant on his head.
Peter laughed hysterically.
"Peter how is that funny…" Judy sighed.
"We better catch those three banana brains before they hurt someone…" Alan sighed.
"I am not getting bitten trying to stop them…" Peter frowned.
Alan sighed as they ran through town after the monkeys.
"Dash it all… we lost them…" Oscar sighed as the monkeys were too fast.
They stopped to catch their breath and groaned, lamenting their bad luck.
"What shall we do now?" Peter asked.
"I'm gonna play naked basketball!" Oscar cheered gleefully,
"No you are not!" Judy grabbed his arm to stop him.
Oscar glared at her.
"Oz, don't suggest weird things…." Peter groaned.
"We better not delay, we better get home…" Alan sighed, feeling bitter over his freedom from Jumanji being snatched from him because one of his new friends got caught out playing dishonestly by Jumanji again.
"Wait, I got it! We stop at the general store so I can eat a nice stick of creamy butter!" Oscar suggested.
Peter and Judy grimaced in disgust at him.
"I uh like to eat butter…" said Oscar.
They eventually found the monkeys at the front windows of an electronics store. The TVs in the windows were all on and showing the flying monkeys attacking Dorothy in the woods scene on repeat.
The three banana brains monkeys were engrossed in the clip from The Wizard of Oz.
Peter gawked baffled. Judy twirled her finger about her temples as if to say "They're crazy…"
Alan hushed the three kids and quietly led them away. The monkeys remaining content by a distraction was a good thing.
"We've not a moment to lose… let's hurry…" They head home to return to Jumanji.
Peter is dawdling for some reason.
"Come on Peter! What's slowing you down?!" Judy called back to him.
"This…" Peter groaned. Jumanji had one of its turn Peter into an animal hybrid moments. Peter was wearing a turtle shell.
"Peter where did you get that shell from?" Judy asked.
"Coooool! He's a Koopa Troopa!" Oscar cooed.
Judy gave him a hard look.
…
Peter twigged his transformation was a punishment from Jumanji. As if freezing time wasn't enough.
"Peter you're becoming a turtle…" Judy gasped.
"I'd say a tortoise…" Oscar cuts in. "Yeah I'm British…"
Judy grimaced at him.
"I don't wanna be a tuuuuuurte…" said Peter talking slowly in a deeper tone.
Oscar smirked at his new manner of speaking.
"It's not fair! Judy sold her broken watch!" Peter whined.
Judy scowled and sulked.
"Jumanji isn't fair, I should know…" Alan pats Peter's green turtle shell.
"Well it should be! It's the first to punish us for not playing fairly, ie cheating, misleading the characters inside its world… It should punish fairly… Ie the rule breaker at the time, Judy…" Oscar lectured the group and Jumanji, if it was listening.
Suddenly Peter's green shell faded and he felt lighter as his orange t shirt returned. Judy groaned as she felt heavier as her pink shirt and dungarees morphed into a heavy, rigid green turtle shell.
"That's fair now… charlatan…" Oscar smirked with a smug look.
Judy scowled.
"Come on let's get that watch back…" Alan sighed.
"I dunno… turtlenecks suit Judy…" Oscar chuckled.
Judy glared at him.
"This never would've happened if I got my rocket launcher…." Oscar sighed.
They walk with Judy slowing them down because now she was afflicted with the turtle curse.
"Thanks for standing up for me…" Peter pats Oscar's left shoulder.
"I wasn't doing it for you, I was reminding Jumanji fairness goes both ways…" Oscar said in a sharp hissing tone. "You both need to stop cheating or we'll never free Alan…"
Peter shrugged.
"Ugh…" Alan groaned in disappointment. What was the point in finally returning home after countless years only to find his world frozen in a moment of time, forever.
Judy panted as she tried to keep up because of her heavy shell.
"At least people aren't running in a mass panic screaming about the apocalypse…" said Oscar gawking at the frozen people.
Alan sighed and nodded.
"At least I'm not a monkey this time…" Peter said with modest glee.
"Oz you have powers… fix this…" Judy muttered.
"I can make rubber lightning bolts or start a war between cubes and spheres… I can't undo this time freeze!" Oscar snapped. "And if I could I really don't wanna make Jumanji even more angry with us!"
Judy sulked.
"Can we play football indoors? The lounge is the end zone…" Peter grinned.
"No Peabuddy… we have to save the world and get time moving again…" Alan sighed.