Ne’er had she felt as urgent as she did there on her knees, her breathing weakening as she felt her heart fail.

She scrabbled for the notebook on her desk & shakily picked up her pen.

I just need to–just need to write a few words.

But when she kept trying to write on the slippery paper, he pen kept jerking to & fro, forcing her to try ‘gain & ‘gain & ‘gain.

All she got down was a sloppy-to-almost-incomprehensible “Lacresha Kirkpatrick’s Will” ‘fore she collapsed onto her back, staring up @ the image o’ her 2 favorite orphans @ the orphanage with crumpling horror in her eyes.

Sir Jordano had to admit–his opponent had him shooken for a bit.

But then the electricity sparked in his brain & he slapped a gloved hand o’er the paper before him. “¡Aha!”

“¿Aha?”

“Look right here.”

His opponent peered closer into the paper, pulling the monocle ‘way from his nose to better see.

“That colon should be a semicolon. You know the Salisbury Law: no grammatically-incorrect deed has any legal authority.” Jordano’s grin tightened. “Looks like your deed’s all wet.”

Then he ripped the zipper on his face down, causing his outer skin to collapse, airless, leaving him in his true form, a goldfish in a fish bowl.

“& that’s how I smash capitalism, bitch,” said Sir Guillermo Jordano.

“You’ll want to hold it this wa–”

“I know, I know.”

“¡B-be careful! If you drop that–”

“I know. I’ve done this before.”

“Yes, well it doesn’t look like it.”

“I’m holding it just fine. ¿See?”

“¡Watch it!”

“Hey, ¡don’t! I can’t–”

“¡NO!”

¡Crash!

“¡You fool! ¡Look @ what you’ve done!”

“If you’d just let me ‘lone it would’ve been–”

He didn’t get a chance to finish. The quickly growing storm jinn spread its weight o’er them & swallowed them in 1 swoop, leaving just dry bones the weeks after the storm finally rested.

“Cap’n Emery, we’re blocked by an iceasteroid. ¿What do we do?”

Cap’n Emery said nothing but simply cracked her knuckles. She hesitated for just a second in wait for that voice to give her her “authorization”; but she quickly remember how she’d drove ‘way that voice–how she relied on her own authorization now.

She marched out into her bedroom & changed into her suit, slowly & deliberately. She knew they had plenty o’ time buffer ‘fore the Krakton carrots they were delivering would rot.

Once changed, she stepped out the ship door as if ’twere the front door o’ a simple house.

She floated o’er to the iceasteroid & stared it down.

“It’s just you & me,” she said.

Madame Deaton’s eyes wandered the starlit waterfall fountain, only for her to stop & jerk when she suddenly saw a change:

‘Twas the woman who glowed in the moonlight, garbed in a crinkly vest o’ multiple layers o’ newspapers o’ varying yellows & grays, patterned with the ant-like lines o’ tiny text, with a primary-colored box with an orange cat & white balloon ‘bove it ‘bove her shoulder.

After a full minute’s pause, Deaton said, “I heard you know the secret to beating the market.”

“Follow me.”

The vest woman turned & walked into the waterfall.

Deaton spent a second looking round herself uncertain ‘fore slowly following.

Then it all broke down with a hiss.

‘Twas Patches’s cloud. Everyone knew that. But Lucky kept poking his nose round it. Patches gave him warning looks, which would cause Lucky to stare @ him wide-eyed & slowly creep back, only for Patches to find Lucky creeping toward his cloud ‘gain the second Patches looked ‘way.

That was when Patches’s patience collapsed & he finally brought out the ultimate threat:

He hissed.

None o’ the other mates’ eyes would e’er forget the scars left by the ensuing bloodbath.

Many thought Senator Azure was doing quite well in the debate.

But then…

“Senator, ¿could you tell us why don’t paperback novels cost a nickel anymo’ like they did when I was young & still had hope in my heart?”

& then…

“Uh…”

The room filled with gasps.

“She said `uh…'”

“She’s indecisive. Wishy-washy. A flake.”

“¡This’ll be the gaffe to laugh them all!”

“¡& that didn’t e’en make sense!”

Polls plummeted.

Sales for her autobiography, No Mo’ Tears, actually written by Melody Pianissima went into negative, which doesn’t e’en make any sense.

Fuck it, total anarchy, & ain’t nobody stop us.

Sweat began to slide down the accountant’s forehead.

“This makes no sense… The #s don’t match…”

“There’s 1 asset we haven’t accounted for yet,” said the executive.

She led the accountant out to the parking lot, to her car. She pulled her keychain from her jacket pocket & pressed a button on it, emitting a soft beep & causing the trunk to pop open.

“This.”

The accountant adjusted her glasses as she peered in @ the giant limestone crystal shard glowing in the sunlight.

“¿Where’d you get tha–?”

This time the executive adjusted her glasses–sunglasses.

“That’s a long story.”

But as we stood before the great red door, ne’er did I expect my heart to skip a beat the 1 beat when it shouldn’t.

We–my step-aunt & I, who shared the need to find all the secrets o’ #2 Morton’s Summit–figured out that the only way to open the door was to link our hearts together & time it so that our hearts beat on the same beat.

I ensured this easily by hooking up a device ‘tween us that measured our natural heart rates & induced just the right level o’ stress to speed & slow one o’ heart rates if it e’er went slower than the other’s so that it could catch up, matching them every 8th beat.

So we chose an 8th beat for the beat that would open the door, li’l knowing that my device couldn’t adjust for premature ventricular contraction.

If I’d imagined that could happen, a lot o’ the ensuing misery could’ve been avoided.

The ne’er thought to look for her in the clouds.

Otherwise, they looked everywhere: in all the grasses, all the holes in every tree, in every dirt divot, under every mushroom. But they ne’er thought she’d glide in in her parachute ‘hind the clouds–& now ’twas too late. By the time they did see her, she’d already be near.

Wasabi Woods got wise, & that was the problem. Then Worchestershire got wise, & the problem multiplied.

But Whisky Woods always solved their problems, & that was why she was here now.