ACT II
ACT III
ACT III+
ACT II
ACT III
ACT III+
After a while, Guybrush was able to relax. From their vantage point high in the Monkey Head, they could see for miles and miles. They'd left Monkey Island™ quite a fair way behind, and were currently wading through the Caribbean. Guybrush didn't have a clue where they were going--the monkey robot seemed to have a mind of its own. But it was doing a good job sticking to the shallower reaches of the ocean, so Guybrush decided to just let it have its way.
Soon, an island appeared on the horizon. It was quite small, and completely void of vegetation. Yet strangely, humans had done some construction work here. Guybrush could see three metal towers, each of varying size. They were enormous--even the smallest was higher than the monkey robot. On the top of the tallest tower was an enormous conch shell.
The monkey robot leapt out of the ocean, and came to a stop. Obviously this was their destination, but why?
"What in the name of Poseidon's pig-sticker is that!?" yelled Horatio.
"Unless I miss my guess, that's an Ultimate Insult Amplification Tower," said Jojo.
"You just made that up, didn't you?" said Guybrush.
Horatio breathed out. "An amplifier...of course. Guybrush, this tower is part of Ozzie's fiendish plot!"
Guybrush nodded sagely. "Ah, I see. He plans to build really ugly towers all over the Caribbean, driving down property values to the point where he can scoop up all the land for a fraction of its real value! How ingenious!"
"What the flimdy-flam are you talking about? Ozzie's gonna use that tower to amplify the affects of an Ultimate Insult a millionfold, so he can simultaneously expose every pirate in the Tri-Island Area™ to the devastating affects of the Ultimate Insult!"
"Are you sure it's not the property values thing?"
"If you wish to fulfill your destiny and save your pirate friends, you must climb this tower and destroy its devilish machinery," intoned Jojo solemnly.
Guybrush sighed. "Somehow I knew you were going to say that..." He reached for the controls.
Luckily for Guybrush, controlling the giant monkey robot proved to be straightforward. He could do it with no thought at all, just as if he was moving his own limbs.
But how to climb that tallest tower? The walls were sheer.
Guybrush looked around, then got the monkey robot to pick up an enormous plank from the ground. This he stuck into the tip of the smallest tower. He climbed the tower, jumped onto the plank, and used it as a springboard onto the middle-sized tower.
There was a plank here, as well. Guybrush jumped on it, and landed them right beside the enormous conch shell. He stopped to marvel at the size of the thing. This was the second largest... no, the largest conch shell he'd ever seen.
A switch stuck out prominently from the conch shell. Guybrush flicked it.
Meanwhile, back on Mêlée Island™....
"Blast!" The Ghost Pirate LeChuck's frustration shook the Mansion to its foundations.
The Australian land developer and the three pirates were assembled unwillingly in the large public room of the Marley Mansion. Pegnose Pete and Elaine were keeping a wary eye on each other--her role was to be a war-prize, his was to guard her. She toyed with the ropes binding her wrists while LeChuck stormed about the room. The Ultimate Insult required a fourth component to activate it, and his voodoo senses told him it had to be here in this room.
Ozzie glanced up from his preparations in a distant corner, where he was arranging the parts of an enormous device resembling a giant funnel attached to a long hose. This pipeline extended up through the ceiling and presumably out of the Mansion. Its sole purpose appeared to be to disfigure Elaine's precious ancestral home.
"What's wrong, you reanimated lump of voodoo flotsam?"
"I'll tell ya what's wrong! This so-called Ultimate Insult doesn't work!" That recaptured Ozzie's attention--he left his strange device and wandered over to the gubernatorial desk.
"I've tried whacking it against every piece of junk in this accursed hovel, but nothing happens!" LeChuck continued, holding up the now-complete Ultimate Insult. The golden diving trophy now held aloft the silver Mega Monkey Mug, topped with Tiny LaFeet's bronze hat. Elaine knew knickknacks and she also knew voodoo, and this was an unusually tasteless specimen of both.
Quietly working to free her hands, she watched the dismay spread across their faces with cynical amusement. "Ha! Well, I guess Grandpa was too smart for you diabolical dodos after all!"
Pegnose Pete nudged her in the ribs with the barrel of his gun. "Quiet, you."
Ozzie took the odd statuette from LeChuck and rattled it. Nothing. He shook it. No result. Eventually he flung the thing to his desk with a snarl. "Grrr."
LeChuck's eyes narrowed. "Grrrrrr."
Elaine stormed over to the desk. "Grrrrrrrrrrr!"
A painted wooden object, flat at the bottom, with a handle just the right size to be held by a delicate hand, shook loose from her breast pocket and clattered onto the desk top.
Ozzie snatched it up before it stopped moving, regarding it with the eyes of a man who sees everything as potential profit. "What in the name of Adam Smith's invisible hand is that?"
Elaine felt a chill of foreboding. "That? Oh, that's nothing.." She smiled with forced brightness. "Just a... piece of junk I bought on my honeymoon..."
LeChuck peered over Ozzie's shoulder. "Daarrrr!" he cried in blinding moment of piratey intuition. "The Gubernatorial Seal of Mêlée Island™. Of course!" He held the little wooden symbol in his undead palm.
"Let me see that." Elaine gritted her teeth as Ozzie brought the Gubernatorial Symbol into contact with the Ultimate Insult. Don't let it work, please don't let it work...
With a sharp hiss and a flare of purple light, the Symbol vanished into the monkey head. The Ultimate Insult glowed softly for a few seconds, crackling with power. Elaine groaned inwardly but schooled her face into an impassive mask. Guybrush, where are you?
Ozzie regarded the humming voodoo talisman with wary delight. "Well, that seems to have shaved the proverbial dingo." He impaled the wooden base of the statue upon a hunting spear, forming an unwieldy staff. "Let's test this bugger out." His flinty eyes searched for a victim. "Pegnose...."
"What?" demanded the no-nosed pirate.
"Would you be so good as to stand over there?" Ozzie waved him over to the center of the room, shifting his grip on the Ultimate Insult staff.
The man was oblivious to his danger. "Look, Mr. 'High and Mighty' Mandrill. I'm getting awfully tired of following orders." He abruptly took the gun off Elaine and trained it squarely on Ozzie's sunken chest. "I think it's about time we renegotiated the terms o' my employment."
"Or what?" The wizened Australian, secure in the power of the Ultimate Insult, didn't blink.
"Or I'll fill yer belly full of lead, you sissified fossil!" Gun waving from Elaine to LeChuck and back again, Pete lurched a few steps toward Ozzie, his eyes full of crazed anger. "No one messes with Pegnose the Pirate and lives to tell the tale." He came closer still. LeChuck abruptly loomed at his employer's side, but Ozzie calmly waved him back. "Why, I'll rip off your arms and I'll beat ya--"
Thud.
It was not a loud sound, nor an impressive one. It was merely the sound of Ozzie rapping his improvised staff on the floor of the mansion. But when the staff touched the ground, a bolt of purple lightning gathered in the mouth of the monkey head, glowing menacingly.
Thud.
The power ran down to the floor, raced in a pitiless line to Pegnose's boots, and completely engulfed him in lavender light.
"Eyaaa!" he screeched as the powerful voodoo magicks flooded through him. Pete was held immobilized for several seconds, then fell to the ground twitching. Slowly he regained his feet, but even then, he rose only to a shivering, whimpering crouch, his gun lying abandoned on the floor.
Ozzie regarded him contemptuously. "You were saying?"
"Please...please don't hurt me Mister Mandrill," Pegnose begged. "I'll do whatever you say from now on, I promise."
"Take a long walk off a short pier, you craven wretch."
"Ah. Uh, right-o, sir!" Pegnose shambled off, exactly like a dog with its tail between its hind legs. Neither Ozzie nor LeChuck watched him go.
"Well, Mrs. Threepwood, it seems as though the power of the Ultimate Insult is finally mine," Ozzie remarked, stating the obvious with true evil-villain ease. He raised it up as though to rap the floor once again, but she put on her coldest expression and refused to react.
Zombie Pirate LeChuck nearly plucked the staff from Ozzie's grip. "Oooh! Let me use it on Elaine!"
"All in due time, Captain," Ozzie shrugged him off. He made his halting way to the tube-and-funnel device he'd been examining in the corner. "But first let's give her a taste of things to come..."
LeChuck laughed in unholy glee. "You're a sadist after my own blackened lump of a heart, Mandrill." He bounced eagerly over to join his employer, shoving the reluctant Elaine ahead of him.
Mandrill carefully positioned himself in front of the old phonograph horn that would channel the energies of the Ultimate Insult and carry them to his amplification tower a few miles away. He turned, feeling for the first time the glorious power of true monopoly. "For years, the Caribbean has been buffeted by the unpredictable waves of runaway piracy. Now, by the power of the Ultimate Insult, I hereby banish those chaotic tempests and usher in a new age of orderly consumerism!!" He swept out his scepter of ultimate power as if to gather in the entire world. "I am Ozzie Mandrill! Look upon my works, ye mighty pirates, and DESPAIR!"
He raised the staff above his head.
"NO!!" cried Elaine in impotent horror.
THUD.
The power rose as purple lightning, gathered in the talisman briefly, and leapt into the waiting funnel.
A bulge of purple slid down the tube and under the ocean, racing for the transmission tower. It rose inexorably to the Largest Conch Shell in the World. Its unstoppable might filled the shell, swelled it with demon magic, found itself blocked, redoubled its efforts. The Shell, bloated with violet light, expanded with a roar..
...and held fast.
Ppzztt... A single, insignificant drop of lavender power fell to the ground below. Guybrush's clever use of the "Off" switch had averted catastrophe.
Back at the Mansion: "Where's the kaboom? There's supposed to be a Caribbean-shattering kaboom!" Mandrill stabbed the antique hardwood floor of Elaine's mansion over and over. "Work, damn your eyes, work!" The staff sparked and fizzled but failed to send another bolt into the waiting tube.
Even the Zombie Pirate's flies looked angry. "AAAAAARRRR IIIIIIIII KNEW this ridiculous plan would never succeed!" he bellowed, bursting into flames at just the right moment. He whirled on Mandrill. "I guess this just goes to show that you should never send an Australian girly man to do the work of a real pirate." He turned on his heel and marched for the door.
"LeChuck, get back here and help me fix this thing," Ozzie snapped desperately, still pounding the floor. He turned. No LeChuck.
"Oh, Ozzzzzzziieee..." cooed a sweet female voice. Elaine snapped the loosened ropes from her wrists and leaped at him.
Far off the coast of Mêlée Island™, a trail of bubbles was forming in the water. Slowly, majestically, the domed head of the silver monkey robot broke the surface, followed immediately by the tip of its proudly-held prehensile tail. The simian face, the narrow shoulders, the great arms, lean body, and opposable toes... Dripping and glorious, trolled by seagulls, it strode out of the sea and onto the broad tropical beach whose white sand gleamed silver-gray under the moon.
The monkey crouched down upon the sand. Three figures became visible beneath it.
"You two stay here and guard the robot," Guybrush ordered, taking off at a run for the steps leading to the top of the cliff and to the Mansion beyond.
"Good luck." That was Jojo Jr., Monkey Prince.
"Try not to break any of my stuff," H. T. Marley yelled at Guybrush's departing back. "Nice kid, but about as sharp as a soggy pancake, y'know what I mean?" he confided to Jojo.
"Tell me about it."
LeChuck ran through the silent streets of Mêlée Township, past scores of pirates who lay in a collapse, exhausted from their long night of work. But it had not been in vain, for the colossal state of Charles L. Charles now stood completed in the center of town. The scaffolding had been removed and lay in pieces all around, offering no means to climb to the top, but this was hardly enough to stop him.
He shifted into ghost form in front of the massive likeness. Surrounded by his own evil voodoo glow, the Ghost Pirate rose into the air and hovered before the smug, supercilious face.
"I'll show that chum bucket pantywaist some real voodoo..."
He bent his ghostly energies outward, focusing them on that prominent chin, and vanished into the statue.
"Honey, I'm home!" Tattered, scorched, and barefoot, the Mighty Pirate threw open the doors to the Mansion...
...only to see Elaine and Ozzie Mandrill inside, locked in mortal combat over what looked like a walking stick. "Guybrush! Look out for–"
The staff flew through the air, bounced painfully off his skull, and sailed away again. Elaine made a wild leap for it but missed. Taken utterly by surprise, Guybrush caught only a glimpse of silver, gold, and bronze before the object was firmly in Ozzie's hands once more. It was...
"...the Ultimate Insult," finished Elaine unnecessarily.
Ozzie, re-armed, was livid. "I don't know how you dimwits managed to sabotage my magnificent Insult Amplification Apparatus," he sputtered, aiming the staff menacingly, "but I'll at least have the satisfaction of annihilating your arrogant pirate souls."
They backed helplessly away from the Australian. There was nothing else to do.
"Somehow, I always knew it would end like this," sighed Guybrush.
"Really?" Elaine was very impressed.
Ozzie raised the staff. "Prepare to meet your doom, Threepwoods!"
BOOM.
A sudden impact, very close by, made the floor shake.
"What the digeridoo is that?"
BOOM.
The sounds were getting louder.
BOOM.
Ozzie lost his precarious balance and toppled, the Ultimate Insult falling from his grasp.
"Let's get outta here." Guybrush took Elaine's hand and they ran for dear life
BOOM.
"You won't escape that easy, you swashbuckling ninnies." Ozzie staggered to his feet and gave chase, careful to keep the staff from touching the floor.
Out in the pale moonlight, Guybrush and Elaine saw the source of the noises and skidded to a halt. Frozen by the sight of what was approaching, they continued to stare even as Ozzie ran out after them.
BOOM!
Ozzie finally turned. He looked up. And up. And still a little further up. "Great Barrier Reef!"
Towering almost one hundred feet over their heads, the bearded, almost benign stone face of the Invincible Pirate LeChuck cackled with demonic glee.
"Arrrrr! Ye be looking like ants from up here!" he boomed. The ground shook and cracked under his mammoth stone boots.
"Guybrush.." said Elaine in an unnaturally calm voice.
"Yes?" he replied in the same manner.
"Am I the only one seeing a giant walking statue of LeChuck on our front lawn?"
"Uhh...no...." Then it hit him. "AAAAAAH!!"
They screamed in chorus and scattered like mice before a 90-foot cat.
LeChuck bent down and snatched up Ozzie in one of his great stone hands. The other was rapidly closing in on the frantically fleeing–
"Elaine!"
Gray fingers encircled her slim body and caught her up into the air. "Guybrush, help!" she cried desperately, now suspended 60 feet above Melee Island in the grip of LeChuck's granite left hand. He could squish her and barely even notice he'd done it. And she hated heights.
"Hang on, I'll be right back," Guybrush called, whirling and running for the edge of the cliff and the stairs to the beach.
Elaine watched her brave pirate husband bravely fleeing for dear life. "Guybrush! Don't you dare leave me!"
LeChuck abruptly raised her to his eye level--a gut-lurching jump of about twenty more feet. "Don't worry, my beloved," he said sweetly. "Guybrush isn't going anywhere."
BOOM.
The statue covered half the distance between the Mansion and the desperately fleeing pirate.
BOOM.
Now they were on top of him. Guybrush glanced over his shoulder to see an enormous foot hanging over him. Even at his fastest, he had no chance of getting clear of it before it came down on him...
Zap.
LeChuck halted in mid-step. Guybrush vanished over the edge of the cliff, out of sight.
Ozzie struck the Ultimate Insult again against the stone hand that held him. The purple lightning had distracted LeChuck long enough to save Guybrush. "Let go of me, you rock-brained monstrosity." Ozzie attacked again, sending purple sparks everywhere.
LeChuck was not amused. "You insignificant mortal flea!" he snarled, stone grip tightening on Ozzie's fragile body. "How dare you wield your pathetic voodoo magicks against the immortal might of the Demon Pirate LeChuck?!" Shaken and nearly crushed, Ozzie wielded his talisman for dear life. "I'll grind yer bones to make me grog, ya triple-..." zap "..timin'.." zap "..bast-.."
ZAP. Ozzie struck the stone fingers with all his strength, sending two forks of purple lightning coursing into the statue's carved eyes.
"Ah, shut up."
The statue of LeChuck regarded Ozzie with an impassive granite gaze. The Australian stared back, just as calmly. Elaine held her breath, wondering what had happened.
Then the Invincible Pirate bent his stone knees and bowed his enormous head. "How may I serve you, Master?" he asked humbly.
She couldn't believe it. LeChuck had been Ultimately Insulted. Thus not-so-incidentally giving Mandrill control of a 90-foot-tall Weapon of Mass Destruction....
"Well, eventually I'll be wanting you to squish every pirate on the face of the earth into a sticky red goo," remarked Ozzie conversationally, now riding up near LeChuck's right ear. "But for now, let's just... kill Guybrush Threepwood!"
Guybrush scrambled up to the cockpit of the monkey robot, interrupting what had apparently been a heated game of Paper Rock Scissors. "Come on guys! We've got to get this Giant Monkey Robot moving now!"
Jojo and Herman Tooth--err, H.T. Marley--stared at him, annoyed. "Where's my granddaughter?" Grampa Marley demanded.
"Um... Actually, that's kind of a funny story--"
"Threepwood!" Ozzie's voice, strangely amplified, made them all jump. The Australian stood perched on the front of LeChuck's enormous pirate hat, with several tons of rock under him waiting to serve his every command. "Where did ya find that ridiculous-looking contraption?" he asked smugly.
Guybrush found his piratey spirit at last. "It was a present," he shouted back. Some amplifier within the robot sent his voice echoing across the distance separating the two gigantic creatures. "From H. T. Marley!"
Elaine gasped. "Grampa?"
"I'm in here, dear!" called Horatio, his own reedy voice amplified as well.
Ozzie snorted. "Well, what an unexpected family reunion." LeChuck and the Monkey faced each other on the pale sand of the beach. "Too bad I have to ruin it by savaging your puny minds with the power of the Ultimate Insult!" He spiked the staff down onto the brim of LeChuck's hat, where it remained standing, acting as a rod for its own self-made purple lighting. Power surged down to collect in a node in front of LeChuck's face, then divided itself into two streams and gathered in his stone hands. The statue posed, lightning dancing in triple streams before him, then gathered it all up and released a purple fireball directly at the monkey robot.
Guybrush flinched; the Monkey's hands came up automatically in a defensive posture. But at the last second, the robot leaped up and fired its own blast of green light. The counterattack completely neutralized the oncoming wave of ego-crushing voodoo, leaving the Monkey standing lightly in the Bobbing Baboon stance upon the sands. It was untouched.
Ozzie blinked. "Now what?" he demanded impatiently
Jojo Jr., Monkey Prince, sat up straighter in his chair. "Now is your undoing, evil one!" His calm voice resonating through the metal frame of the robot sounded like the Voice of All Monkeys, or the voice of doom. "Now is the time foretold in the ancient prophecies of Monkey Island™. Now is the time for the ultimate in....Monkey Kombat!"
The colossal beasts faced each other across the sands. Guybrush was only distantly aware of himself as he sat in the banana chair. He was the giant monkey robot. Its pushrod muscles and well-oiled joints were his to use. Lightly, gracefully, it danced across the sand, taunting the solid and heavy stone statue.
Oop Ack Chee! Guybrush was taken by surprise as LeChuck's energy bolt caught him--caught the robot--in the chest, making him stagger backward. But a quick self-evaluation revealed that the damage had been slight. His eyes narrowed.
Ack Chee Eek! LeChuck caught the return shot in his shoulder and staggered. One stone hand rose to protect Elaine from the blast. He recovered with remarkable speed, looking no more affected than the robot itself.
Ack Eek Chee! Again the Monkey reeled under the blast of the insult.
Ook Eek Chee! Elaine cried out in fear, but LeChuck once more protected her with his hand.
Ack Oop Eek! For a third time, the robot took a hit. Guybrush was incensed now.
He shifted to Drunken Monkey, his strongest stance. The blow staggered LeChuck. Guybrush cringed at Elaine's scream of fear and pain. "Be the monkey robot, Guybrush!" Jojo Jr. urged as he faltered.
LeChuck himself seemed to be casting about for options. Finally, he shifted to Gimpy Gibbon, a stronger stance. The robot stumbled back. Guybrush looked for some way to stall and buy time to think. He shifted into Gimpy Gibbon, forcing a draw.
In the brief pause, Guybrush scanned everything as quickly as he could. There appeared to be bo obvious way to win this. The two fighters were equally powerful and recovered at the same speed. Neither showed any serious damage. Nor could he expect LeChuck to make a mistake--the power that possessed him was too strong.
And besides, even if he destroyed LeChuck, what would happen to Elaine?
Both combatants adopted new stances. LeChuck's was stronger, and he landed yet another timber-rattling insult. But Guybrush paid little attention. He was slowly realizing that, all this time, he'd been fighting the wrong battle. The primal insults were in ape language. He'd been using human strategies....
It was time to start fighting like a monkey.
Elaine was bedraggled and somewhat airsick in LeChuck's grasp. She looked up in fear, waiting for the next blow. But the monkey robot paused, then shifted neatly into LeChuck's stance, forcing another draw.
Baffled, LeChuck shifted stances once more. The Monkey took the hit and imitated him yet again. Guybrush was playing "Monkey see, monkey do."
Another stance. Another draw. LeChuck drew himself up and waggled a warning finger at the robot. Even at this distance, Guybrush could see the rising bewilderment and frustration in Ozzie's eyes. He didn't know how to deal with this situation. He couldn't order LeChuck to walk away, because the Monkey would follow them. He couldn't defeat the Monkey, nor be defeated by the Monkey. He was caught in a stalemate and couldn't break it.
LeChuck had realized this too. He continued to attack, and each blow was heavy enough to rattle Guybrush's metal bones, but each time the monkey robot matched his stance and caused a draw. Some of the voodoo light began to seep out of his stone eyes. His shoulders slumped. His insults were spoken automatically and without spirit.
Finally, after Monkey-knows how many draws, LeChuck refused to fight on. He bowed his stone head in defeat and lowered his hands nearly to the sand.
And as his grip loosened (was it deliberate?) Elaine seized the moment. She let herself dangle from his fingers and then dropped to the beach below. With impressive speed, she dashed across the sand separating the two creatures. She passed the Monkey and kept running, trying to avoid recapture.
"Hey, what's going on here?" Ozzie belatedly realized that he had lost control of the situation. LeChuck rose out of his crouch, and the Monkey did likewise, waiting to see what would happen. The great stone hands began to rise, hovering over Ozzie like clouds of doom
"LeChuck, you colossal idiot, I order you to cease this at once." The statue paid no attention, and Ozzie realized that his demise was almost upon him "Hey, wait a minute...ya can't do this to me! I'm Ozzie Mandrill! I'm the future of the Caribbean!" He backed up slightly, grasping the Ultimate Insult in a futile attempt to save himself. "I command–"
The stone hands rose to hide Ozzie from sight. Guybrush, Grampa Marley, and Jojo Jr. heard only his ancient voice lifted in a shriek, "Stop! Don't!"
Then the hands came down. The three watchers covered their eyes.
ONE..the stone fists smashed Ozzie into the stone plateau of the hat, and TWO..they broke his thin frame into pieces, and THREE..as a frail arm, quivering in death, tried to raise the Ultimate Insult one last time...FOUR..
Thus the struggles and life of Ozzie Mandrill were brought to an end.
LeChuck was not yet finished. The purple, flourescent sparks of the voodoo talisman still burned over his brow. Slowly, deliberately, he raised his mighty stone fist once more. He struck his hat with all his immense strength, crushing the Ultimate Insult into pieces.
Predictably, all Heck broke loose.
Purple lightning raged and flared over LeChuck's face and arms, demanding a focus and finding none. The monkey robot turned and ran for safety. Engulfed in magic, LeChuck lost the battle to contain it--power shot up in a purple column to the heavens. The ground trembled. Sand rose in a pressure dome around the doomed LeChuck...
With a colossal, deafening roar, the Ultimate Insult's power fed back upon itself, and it exploded.
Guybrush tried to look back at the boiling purple clouds, but the churning energy inside raised so much sand that he couldn't see into them. Debris flew out at astonishing speeds. For a second, he thought he saw the dim outline of a stone pirate, flying into space, he couldn't be sure. Had the explosion killed LeChuck at last, or would he land safely on some other shore? Guybrush might never know..
At least not until the sequel.
The monkey robot gathered itself up, returned to the beach. Only a crater in the sand, oozing black smoke, remained to mark the site of the battle.
Guybrush touched his shaky legs to the sand with trepidation. They held. Jojo Jr. and H. T. Marley leaned unsteadily on the gigantic feet of the monkey robot.
A red-haired, slender figure ran across the beach towards them. "Elaine!" Guybrush stepped forward, holding his arms open in anticipation.
She ran right past him. "Grampa!"
"Darling." Horatio Torquemada Marley stumbled forward and embraced the granddaughter he hadn't seen in twenty years.
Guybrush still had his arms out, ungreeted. "Um...Jojo!"
"Don't even think about it, pink boy."
Grampa Marley turned to face him. "Guybrush, how can I ever thank you for reuniting me with my granddaughter?"
"Well, for starters, you could put on some pants..."
The man chuckled wheezily. "Consider it done."
"Also–"
"Yes?"
"Would you please be the Governor of Mêlée Island™ again?"
Marley drew back. "Uh uh. No way, no how. I hated being Governor. Why do you think I went all the way to Australia in the first place? For the cuisine?"
Elaine took his hand, and turned her charm level all the way up to 11. "Grandfather, please. I can't stand being the governor. It's no way for a pirate to live. Guybrush and I need to be on the open seas, waving our swords, swashing our buckles. We're too young to become career bureaucrats.."
Guybrush could see Grampa Marley caving in under the pressure of those pleading eyes. "Well...all right," he said at last. "But you'd better come by to visit.."
"Every month," Elaine promised.
Marley turned to Guybrush . "Aaand I want to start seeing some pirate great-grandchildren."
He blushed. Unexpectedly, so did Elaine. "Um..heh...we'll see what we can do.."
"And so the circle of life continues," said Jojo in benediction.
Elaine's head snapped around. "Hey. You're a talking monkey."
"Oh.." Guybrush knew he'd been forgetting something. "Elaine, I'd like you to meet Jojo Jr., the Monkey Prince of Monkey Island™."
She shook his paw graciously. "Thank you, noble Jojo, for helping to make the seas once again safe for pirates everywhere."
"It was my pleasure, Mrs. Threepwood." Not even a monkey was immune to the ex-governor's charm. "But now, I must be going. Somewhere out there, my monkey brothers and I have a destiny to fulfill."
"Where will you go?" Guybrush asked.
"I don't really know. I hear that Martha's Vineyard is nice this time of year." He paused to open a small door near the base of the statue. "But first, we have a crew member who wants to disembark."
He beckoned. Chittering nervously, a small brown monkey emerged. "Timmy!" Elaine's pet monkey bounded over to her and wrapped its tail around her hand.
Jojo Jr. opened the entrance hatch. "Farewell, everyone!"
"Goodbye, Jojo! We'll never forget you." Guybrush, Elaine, and Grampa waited until the metal door closed behind the silver-haired monkey prince. "Of course I'll never forget him," remarked Guybrush quietly to Elaine, walking away. "I mean, he's a talking monkey. How creepy is that?"
Guybrush, Elaine, and Timmy watched from the cliff as the gigantic robot strode off into the sunrise. "Well, that's it," declared Guybrush, stretching. "We've saved the mansion, found your grandfather, and once again made the Caribbean safe for bloodthirsty, grog-swilling reprobates. Whew. Who knew married life would be so much fun?"
Elaine turned to him with a radiant smile. "Guybrush, now that Grampa's governor again, we're free! We can go wherever and do whatever we want."
He smiled into her beautiful eyes. "I want..." He closed his eyes; she leaned adoringly into him. "A life-sized chocolate pirate ship. And not the hollow kind.. "
Her warmth abruptly vanished from his arm.
Silence.
"....Elaine?"
His beautiful pirate wife was on her way back to the Mansion, shaking her head. What did I do wrong? Guybrush pondered.
Then he heard a tinny voice from behind. "Ook Ack Chee!"
"Yeeaaaaaaauuuugh!!" The impact sent Guybrush over the cliff. He heard monkey laughter from above, and the patter of tiny feet, then silence.
Pirate Rule #1: Never be the damsel in distress.
Guybrush dangled from the root which had caught the back of his coat, in considerable distress. What would Indiana Jones do?
Call for help, naturally..
"Elaine?
"Timmy?
"Herman?
"Lonnie?
"George..?
"Hey, guys? I'm stuck down here..
"Wally?
"Lindy?
"Ooh....long way doowwn...
"Murray?
"Sean?
"Mike?"
And then, much later...
"Jar Jar?"