Chapter 72

Arlong tries to kill Genzo in order to remind the people of Cocoyasi Village that it is useless to resist the will of the Arlong Pirates. Genzo is saved thanks to Usopp.

Appropriate

Genzo is found to possess several weapons - which are forbidden by Arlong's rules. He announces to the crowd that weapons may be seen as the start of rebellion. As a result, Genzo shall be made an example of the inferiority of humans against fish-men and be executed in front of all the villagers. While the villagers of Cocoyasi Village attempt to save the life of their friend, Genzo begs them to stay quiet as it would mean that what they have endured for the past 8 years would have been for nothing.

When Arlong is about to deliver the final blow to Genzo, he is struck by an explosion. Usopp laughs from the top of the buildings and delivers brave words of having 8,000 hardened killers ready to strike against him. Arlong go berserk, and as an answer to Usopp's insult, he destroys the house on which he is staying. Afraid that their leader will destroy all the village which they need to get money, the Fish-Men restrain him and promise to catch Usopp and take him back to Arlong Park.

After Arlong's departure, and while the Fish-Men are trying to capture the running Usopp, Nami appears in the village. Everyone ignores her besides her sister. She has come to deposit flowers on a grave. She tells Nojiko that she only need 7,000,000 Beli more until she can buy the village.

Meanwhile, in Arlong Park, Zoro who has been freed by Nami, has defeated every Fish-Man at the park and awaits Arlong's return.

Mission 57

As a new day begins at Eden Academy, students chatter about what they did during their midterm break, and Anya confidently walks to her class with a smile. She enters and is greeted by Becky, who notices that she has become a little tan and asks her friend where she went during her break. Anya tells Becky about going to the "Grandest Luxury Liner in all of Ostania." Becky and Damian are surprised by this, the latter saying that the Forgers are worthy of coming over to his house; at least, that is what Anya imagines will happen.

In reality, Becky brushes it off as nothing special, surprising Anya. Anya says her trip was special and struggles to say the ship's name. Becky recognizes it as Princess Lorelei and says she went on it before the start of school, mentioning how she stayed in the Imperial Suite. Anya is shocked and says she stayed in a "third-class prison cell." Emile laughs at her while Ewen remarks how Anya is not embarrassed to admit to staying in a lower-class suite. Anya hears their insults and reddens up in embarrassment and irritation.

The boys brag about their fancy escapades during their break, and Becky talks about how she had her father let her meet the famous starlet Rachel at a party. The other students gather around Becky, praising her and her family, and ask about her meeting with Rachel. Wanting a share of the attention, Anya gets up and exaggerates about the villains on the boat. The students ask about the villains, thinking they are from a show. Anya claims the villains were from foreign lands, making the students believe they are international movie stars and ask who was there. Anya decides to tell them about Sickle-and-Chain Barnaby, who she calls "Sickly Chain Bartebly."

The students have no idea what Anya is talking about and only ask more questions. Anya stammers around, talking about the abilities of the enemies. The students laugh at Anya, saying she got attacked by pirates. One of them points out how it would have been on the news, and Anya remembers how the incident on the cruise was covered up. She tells her classmates that the enemies were secret villains from beneath the sea: the "Octopeople." Anya tries to continue her story of slaying the Octopeople, but the students ignore her to ask Becky about Rachel. Watching from the side, Damian and his friends are impressed by how much Anya is making herself look like a fool. Their teacher walks in and tells the students to take their seats. He asks if the students made the most of their midterm break, and a student mentions Anya's story. The rest of the class bursts into laughter while Anya's face flushes in embarrassment.

At the end of the day, Becky comforts a gloomy Anya, saying she can understand the desire to make oneself look better. She says there is nothing wrong with it if it helps Anya to become the person she wants to be. While Anya is happy to hear this, George interjects, warning her not to lie too much lest she becomes an outcast like him.

At the Forger apartment, Yuri has arrived to see Yor. He jumps and shouts for joy as his sister gifts him a souvenir, and Loid wonders if he has to be so loud. When Anya returns home, Yor notices her glum demeanor and asks if something is wrong. After everyone sits in the living room, Anya tells the adults how her classmates mocked her for falsely boasting about her trip. Loid asks why she felt the need to lie in the first place, and she tells him that she wanted attention. In his thoughts, Loid lectures Anya on casually lying and how to lie. When he speaks, he ends up half-heartedly telling her that lying is wrong. Likewise, Yuri thinks about how he always deals with liars and how they are worthless trash. He then justifies his own lies, saying they are for Yor’s sake and that anything would be righteous if it was for her. When Yuri speaks, he agrees with Loid and says all liars are trash. Yor also agrees, telling Anya to be comfortable with herself and that she will get along better with everyone if she is honest. The room falls silent, and Anya says she will try to stop lying, as being a liar seems pretty rough.

Mercury

Mercurial. A word that evokes volatility, quickness, and cunning. But to compare anything to the speed and wit of the Messenger God Mercury would be to compare a hot day to the searing forge of Vulcan, or a blooming rose to the glory of Venus. It is but a pale comparison. Mercury can leap the space between lightning and thunder, outfox the fox king, and reach tomorrow before the sun.

As an infant, Mercury escaped the watchful eye of his half-brother, Apollo, stole his cattle, fashioned a lyre from a tortoise shell, and snuck in a nap, all before Apollo found him missing. His father, Jupiter, found the child's mischief boisterously entertaining, and awarded him the task of delivering messages for the Gods, traveling between the Heavens, the Earth, and even to the depths of the Underworld.

Now war looms and Mercury races to keep the lines of communication open, though he is often caught in the thick of battle. No stranger to combat, he once slew the monster Argus, the demon with one hundred watchful eyes, using speed and guile alone. But this war is different. The foes are stronger, the stakes higher, and Mercury a pivotal cog in the machine. Should he fail to deliver even a single order the balance could tip, and the time left for this world would be truly mercurial.

Notorious Outlaw

The truth about Tychus Findlay is hard to come by. Stories about him are common enough, but distilling fact from fiction is another matter entirely. Some tales describe Findlay as a scoundrel who would sell his own mother to Kimeran Pirates for the right sum, while others portray him as a loyal soldier who risked his life to save his fellow Marines during the Guild Wars. Even the one man who knows him best, Jim Raynor, isn’t sure if all of the stories are true. He can only attest to what he saw with his own eyes after he and Findlay became friends in the Terran Confederacy's military.

As the war progressed, Findlay became a member of the Colonial Rangers Battalion, an elite fighting force tasked with high-priority missions on Turaxis II. Tychus was an exceptional soldier with a lousy discipline record, and his unit—nicknamed the “Heaven’s Devils”—quickly earned a reputation as a daring and effective military asset. However, soon the corruption of the commanding officer of the Rangers, Colonel Javier Vanderspool, caused both Findlay and Raynor to turn against him after he had planned for their demises, and the two put a bullet in Vanderspool before going AWOL from the Confederacy, a train full of stolen minerals in tow.

Findlay and Raynor spent the next few years on the run as outlaws. Together they stalked the Koprulu sector, pulling off heists and amassing a small fortune. Findlay in particular became the stuff of legend due to his habit of embellishing the details of his exploits to everyone he met. He was well suited to this life of crime, and the credits he obtained allowed him to enjoy what he considered the finer things in life: booze, brothels, and the best cigars in the Koprulu sector. But the good times didn’t last. Vanderspool, who had survived their last confrontation but was trapped in an iron lung, hired a bounty hunter after the duo, forcing them to go deeper and deeper into the criminal underworld to survive. After a bank heist went south, Tychus took the fall to allow Raynor to escape and start a better life for himself.

For years Tychus Findlay was locked away in New Folsom Prison, and put into cryosleep. However, the fall of the Confederacy and the rise of the Terran Dominion, the new emperor Arcturus Mengsk needed an ace in the hole to deal with the now-rebel Raynor and ensure all of his enemies were wiped out. He released Tychus from prison, but made him a deal: if he ensured that Raynor made good on his promise to kill his former lover (and now leader of the zerg) Sarah Kerrigan, he would be free and his past crimes forgiven. Tychus agreed, and was sealed in a suit of marine armor that would shut down his organs if Mengsk saw he was breaking his deal.

Findlay allied with Raynor, coming to him under the guise of an offer from a terran science group named the Moebius Foundation to pay him for the recovery of an alien artifact, and helped him during his attempts to save lives in a second zerg invasion, and even helped him in operations against the Terran Dominion. However, as it was revealed the relic they were trying to get would purify Kerrigan, and Raynor saw this as a chance to bring his lover back, as well as received news that she was key to a prophecy regarding preventing the extinction of the universe, Tychus began to have doubts about his mission, feeling trapped in his "deal with the devil." He tried to dissuade Raynor from attacking Kerrigan's stronghold on Char, but after seeing he would not back down Tychus helped in the operation, purifying Kerrigan with the artifact. As Raynor held the now-human Kerrigan in his arms, Mengsk ordered Tychus to shoot Kerrigan and began to activate his suit's kill switch, which and Tychus remorsefully tried to shoot her. Seeing his old friend's betrayal, Raynor drew his pistol, and used the one bullet he had saved for Arcturus Mengsk to kill Tychus. By this act he saved Kerrigan, but left his former comrade's corpse on the floor of a forgotten Char hive.

Hooky

In the beginning of the episode, Mr. Krabs rushes to the Krusty Krab while shouting and panicking like a maniac, telling his customers of the return of the hooks. The other fish ignore him, while SpongeBob is confused, and Mr. Krabs tells him that he has to try not to go near a hook, or he will be brought up to the surface and eaten, or sold at a Gift Shop. As SpongeBob returns to the grill, Patrick shows up from outside the window, saying that a carnival has come to town, insisting that SpongeBob comes with him. He agrees, assuming that he's not quitting work but just taking a break.

The two friends go to the carnival, but to SpongeBob's horror, the "carnival" is really the site of the hooks that Mr. Krabs tried to warn everyone about. Patrick deliberately hooks himself and shoots up towards the surface. SpongeBob panics with concern until Patrick returns, explaining that he jumped off and floated down just before he reached the surface. Ignoring what Mr. Krabs said, SpongeBob then plays "hooky" with Patrick.

Meanwhile, at the Krusty Krab, Squidward has taken SpongeBob's place as the fry cook for the time being and isn't making the Krabby Patties correctly, causing a mob of hungry customers to criticize his poor cooking skills. Mr. Krabs bursts out of his office to confront the ruckus and upon being told by Squidward that SpongeBob has taken a break, says that no employee at the Krusty Krab has done so since the Chum famine of '59; but when Squidward reiterates what he said, Mr. Krabs becomes angry at SpongeBob for disobeying his work policy and goes to look for him while leaving Squidward at the mercy of angry and hungry customers. Mr. Krabs then finds SpongeBob at Fish Hooks Park playing on the hooks with Patrick, shocked at his disobedience. He then scolds the duo for their dangerous behavior and has them make a sailor's promise never to go near the hooks again.

The next day, SpongeBob is heading off to work and keeps his promise about not playing on the hooks, until Patrick appears and pressures him to ignore Mr. Krabs and play on them anyway. As much as he is tempted, SpongeBob refuses, knowing what consequences pursue him should he break his promise. Eventually though, seeing a hook in the middle of the street, ceases his resistance and then starts playing on it. Unfortunately for him, this time he is unable to get off of it, as the hook is attached very tightly to his pants and runs to the Krusty Krab panicking. At the Krusty Krab, Mr. Krabs has brought water to Pearl and her friends, who are visiting, when SpongeBob goes to confront him outside the restaurant to tell him about his current predicament. Mr. Krabs tries to confirm whether SpongeBob broke his promise and continued playing on the hooks anyway, with the latter trying to hide the hook in his pants from view until he finally admits to doing so in a regretful and apologetic voice. Mr. Krabs tells him that the only solution would be to take off his pants in front of the girls, which SpongeBob reluctantly does. Since the hook has got his underwear too, he is forced to remove that as well, but SpongeBob is very hesitant to out of humiliation. As he is about to be reeled in by the fisherman, he hangs onto the clam pole as a self-restraint method before the hook tears off the underwear instead and SpongeBob is sent flying onto the Krusty Krab doors naked, with Pearl and her friends laughing at him.

SpongeBob runs back to his house, horrified and humiliated. Squidward returns to the Krusty Krab with a fishing pole and SpongeBob's underwear, indicating that Mr. Krabs, Squidward, and Pearl got together to teach SpongeBob a lesson about hooks, and Mr. Krabs has seen that SpongeBob will never play with them ever again. As the episode comes to a conclusion, Patrick is dropped off at his house by the bus, trapped inside a tuna can, asking if anyone has a can opener to free him out of there.

Buggy's Crew Adventure Chronicles

Vol. 25: "Shadows On the Horizon"

バギー一味冒険記vol.25「空の彼方に光る影」

Oda Eiichiro

Recently kids from the neighborhood have gotten into firecrackers. Nothing wrong with that at all but, KNOCK IT OFF WHEN I'M SKETCHING!

近所の子供達が今、爆竹にハマってる。別にいいんだけど、ネーム中はやめろ！