“You doorknob!” Jack shouted at the keeper. “How could you?”
The Beans watched as Noodles’ spherical noggin soared through the air, arcing like a basketball that had been launched for a long pass. Time seemed to slow as they held their breath and watched this dastardly development unfold.
As far as they could tell, it seemed that Noodles’ head would now be lost for good. Their friend would be gone - and so would their only chance of escaping from Smuttynose Island.
The Crab King snapped its pincers in anticipation of the thrown offering, uttering a strange sound that was a bit dinosaur-like, echoing about the interior of the cavern. The keeper chortled with mirth, delighted with how well his gift was being received by his crustacean overlord.
But before the tossed head could meet its target, it was intercepted. Bursting from beneath the surface of the water with an elegant, quick motion came the creature that the Beans had tracked to the cove, but which had thus far remained hidden... it was Pan Gu.
The green dragon moved with an otherworldly grace, its lithe muscles twisting and contracting beneath the scaly flesh of its long body. Claws flashed, water splashed, and streams of smoke erupted from the beast’s nostrils.
It was an ancient creature that operated on instincts that had been honed over thousands of years. Therefore, perhaps it was out of nothing more than reflex that Pan Gu spotted Noodles’ soaring head, opened its jaws, and caught the flying object in its mouth. As it ingested the unconventional projectile, Pan Gu went: Ooomph!
“No!” Neil cried out, fearing retrieval of the robot’s head would be all but impossible, were the formidable Pan Gu to swallow it.
The keeper squawked in a most undignified (and un-pirate-like) manner at the sight of the green monster. His eyes bulged from his head and he held his arms before himself in a defensive gesture that was undoubtedly useless, considering the sheer size of Pan Gu.
“Blow me down and shiver me timbers! What have we got here? What have you miserable whelps brought upon my island?” he demanded.
“That’s Pan Gu! And we didn’t bring it to the island, we followed it here. It’s an ancient monster that can stimulate storms, like the one that caused us to shipwreck. It uses electromagnetic something or other to make - well, you’re probably not up to date on your scientific studies, anyway, so I’ll skip all that,” Neil summarized.
“A genuine serpent! Why, I’ve never seen one, in all my days of sailing the seven seas. It’s like... it’s like a...” the keeper trailed off, his eyes becoming unfocused and watery, his body swaying as he staggered on legs that had become uncertain.
“He’s losing it! Pan Gu’s presence is scrambling his mind, just like what happened to Lefty!” Jack exclaimed.
“We can’t worry about that right now - we’ve got bigger problems,” Neil reminded his friend. “Much bigger, as a matter of fact.”
They didn’t have just one oversized monster to contend with, but two. Just one or the other would have been more than enough, but the duo of giant crab and jade dragon made for a mountain of problems. The Beans would have been happy to run for the hills, if not for the fact that they were still intent on retrieving their friend’s missing head, as improbable as that goal seemed.
Pan Gu’s jaws were slowly working, as it moved Noodles’ noggin about in its mouth. It was as if the beast was trying to determine if what it had caught was something that was tasty and worth eating. While it did so, the color of its eyes transformed.
Originally, they had been of a startling emerald-green clarity, but they were now becoming black in color, swirling hypnotically. As this transformation occurred, the cavern began rumbling with the sound of thunder, and heavy rainfall could be heard as it struck the beach outside. Pan Gu was exercising its strange storm-bringing abilities once again.
The Crab King, meanwhile, had become most agitated with this interruption. The gargantuan crustacean bellowed with rage as its shiny prize was stolen at the moment before delivery. Not willing to let the insult stand, particularly within the cove that served as its home, the creature lumbered forward.
“I think things are about to get crazy in here!” Jack warned.
“Wait a second - do you mean to tell me that things weren’t already completely bananas in here, with a giant crab, a pirate’s lair, and the descendent of Black Beard hijacking Noodles’ cranium?” Neil asked.
“Things are about to get even more bananas!” Jack said, pointing at the pair of half-submerged monsters.
The Crab King closed the distance to Pan Gu, who was still distracted with the process of sampling the flavor of the shiny, metallic object it had caught in its mouth. When Pan Gu had erupted from the depths of the cavern’s water, it had turned toward the ship, in order to catch the thrown head. Therefore, its back was currently turned toward the Crab King, which blindsided the dragon with a blow from one massive pincer.
As the giant claw struck Pan Gu, the force of the impact caused the monster to stumble forward. The serpent’s mouth came open, and Noodles’ head went flying across the cavern, trailing giant globs of drool behind it.
“There it goes!” Jack exclaimed, pointing in the air.
Neil’s eyes grew even wider as he tracked the noggin’s trajectory. “Keep an eye on it and see where it lands!”
The Beans were exhilarated that Noodles’ head was actually receiving a second lease on life. They had thought it was gone for sure, once Pan Gu had caught it within its monstrous jaws.
The noggin went flying into a wall of the cavern. It bounced off of some spiky rocks, struck the pirate’s piano with a clang of off-key chords, and finally rolled to a stop in the sand.
“There!” Jack gasped, pointing.
The boys were elated that they would finally be able to retrieve Noodles’ head. There was only one further problem they had to overcome, as far as they could tell: it seemed that the cavern in the cove had become a wrestling ring for giant monsters, and it was beginning to fall down around their ears.
Chapter Twenty-Five
When Monsters Mash
The Green Beans, Volume 4: Shipwrecked on Smuttynose Island Page 24
