It didn't take long for all of us to get untangled from Penelope and Uncle Bentley's traps in the courtyard...especially once Uncle Bentley applied the counter-compound to break down the sticky mess holding Mom stuck. Dad got me free of the net, while Uncle Razor and Uncle T-Bone hauled Murray out of the now empty pudding vat. He'd apparently decided to try and eat his way out, only to discover the vat only had enough pudding to cushion his fall into it.
Then came Penelope's story. And boy was it a doozy...
Penelope sat down in the courtyard, staring at the remote in her hands as everyone gathered around. "I...I can't shift all the blame," she said finally. "I got myself into this mess..." She shook her head slowly. "It all started with the time machine plans, and weapons, and...everything else..." She looked up at Coco. "You remember the conversation we had after Bentley went to the hospital for his spinal reconstruction? About...how I thought Sly was holding him back?"
Coco nodded as everyone else turned shocked looks on the pair. "I remember."
"Well, before that conversation...I'd thought if the time machine were tweaked slightly, it could be used to connect two points in time together, altering the events of the past while more or less maintaining the future," Penelope explained. "That I could...go back in time and keep Sly and Bentley from meeting, while still ensuring that Bentley and I met. That without Sly...Bentley would grow up a bit more like me, and he wouldn't have as many hang ups. It was stupid, impulsive, and wrong...especially going to Le Paradox to get the altered machine built."
"And then we talked..." Coco continued. "And you realized that it wouldn't have worked out the way you wanted?"
"Not entirely," Penelope countered. "While I did realize that...I also realized from the talk that if Bentley weren't who he was, if he didn't have those morals and honor code I found so frustrating...then he wouldn't be the nerd I fell in love with." She turned sorrowful eyes Bentley's way. His only response was a warm, comforting hand placed on her shoulder. Penelope managed a smile for a moment, then continued her tale. "So I raced out to a pre-scheduled meeting with Le Paradox to tell him I wouldn't feed him any more of the plans, and I was going to destroy what I'd already given him and what he'd built from it. But...he had an ace up his sleeve..."
"Seft," Sly concluded darkly.
"Yes...Seft was the technical genius he hired to make the plans work," Penelope confirmed. "And Seft was there at the meeting. He...he knew what I was going to say, and before I could speak up..." She shivered violently. "He showed me this remote, and the plans for it. Half a chroniton is suspended inside of it in a time stasis field, the other half inside a communicator worn by an assassin. This means one signal - a one or a zero - can be sent via the remote to a single point in space-time from anywhere, and anywhen, once the field is deactivated at the other end. And the assassin...is just outside Bentley's hospital room, after his surgery."
Gasps of shock and understanding greeted this statement. "That's what you meant," Carmelita concluded. "One of the buttons tells the assassin to kill Bentley, and one to abort mission..."
"And only Seft knows which is which," Penelope confirmed.
"And in the meantime, Bentley's caught in a Schrodinger's Paradox," Razor stated angrily. "Two possible timelines, one where he's alive and one where he's dead, with the course of events slowly diverging and straining his very existence. That's why he's been flickering."
"And why I kept briefly seeing Gyro Gearloose in his place," Coco concluded sadly. "In the timeline where Bentley dies, Uncle Scrooge would have sent him along to help us repair time to fix the Thievius Raccoonus, and stop Le Paradox..."
Penelope nodded slowly. "And...Seft has been holding it over my head ever since, forcing me to work against you all. I...I was willing to go along with it. Do...almost whatever it took to get the remote and knowing which button to push. Almost..." Tears beaded her eyes. "Maybe...maybe I should have-"
"No," Bentley interrupted firmly. "Penelope, don't think that. You've seen the kind of monster Seft is. There's no way of knowing if he would have kept his word. He might have deliberately told you the wrong button just to watch you squirm. And even if he did keep his word..." Wheeling himself forward, he cupped her hands in his cheek. "My life isn't worth putting you through...that..."
Penelope smiled sadly, tears falling as she put one hand over Bentley's. "I think it is..." she murmured sadly.
"Pray, I'm not certain I understand," Galleth interrupted. "You speak of this device reaching through time and space because it contains half of a crouton?" He gestured to the remote where Penelope had set it on the ground.
"Chroniton," Razor corrected. "A time particle, in essence. Splitting it in half causes the halves to resonate with each other, apparently, so anything that affects one half affects the other."
"And why does that happen?" Galleth asked curiously.
Razor and T-Bone exchanged glances, trying to figure out how to explain it. "Because...it wants to be whole?" T-Bone offered finally.
"Aha!" Galleth declared proudly as he drew his sword. "Then I perceive the solution to our problem. We do not need to guess at a signal. We must free the crouton, like so!" And he brought his sword down on the remote right between the buttons, shattering it.
"NO!" Penelope screamed in fear and despair as everyone else rushed forward.
Bentley let out a scream of pain as energy arced around him, flinging him to his hands and knees.
"Bentley!" Penelope called, clinging to him desperately.
"I'm..." Bentley gasped out as he struggled to catch his breath. "I'm okay...just a little...time singed..." He blinked as he shook his head. "There...there was someone in the hospital...he wasn't supposed to be there. The nurses found him in the hall, clutching at his ear. A...a crystal had drilled into his brain..."
"Are you insane?" Razor demanded angrily of Galleth.
"Verily!" Galleth responded proudly. "It runs in the family!"
"It so does..." Carmelita growled as she struggled to calm herself so she wasn't about to pounce Galleth and bite his face off and turn his tail into a warm scarf. Only the reminder that doing so likely would mean Sly would never be born held her in check.
Bentley's eyes stayed wide. "Is...?" Slowly, he pushed himself up...to his feet. Gasps echoed as he staggered against Penelope...but his legs took his weight. "I...I can walk?" he gasped in surprise.
"The collapse of the Paradox..." Penelope breathed in awe. "All that time energy being released, focused on you...it..." She shifted so she could look at his back through her goggles, data racing across the lenses. "It reversed the damage to your spine! Your leg muscles are a little atrophied, but other than that it's like you were never injured to begin with!" She pulled Bentley into a crushing embrace as she wept.
"Gack!" Bentley gasped out. "Well don't break it again!" His words held no true rancor, however, as he happily returned the embrace.
Most would call this a Deus Ex Machina.
I call it luck.
Either way, I'm a sucker for happy endings.
So if you want to fight me on this?
WELL I SUMMON TRIXIE LULAMOON'S ARMY TO FIGHT FOR HAPPY ENDINGS!
Galleth is just that awesome.
...damn it all tats, stop being so perfect with the things that are supposed to be broken messes. And tell that stupid ninja to stop HIDING CHOPPED ONIONS EVERYWHERE!
"Verily! It doth run in the family!", indeed. Even the Fox side has their own brand of nuttery.
8451756
I'd say it's both Luck and Logic. The Time Particle was supposed to send a Signal, not be sent back to it's other half. Since Gallth didn't slam any of the buttons and broke the device, it meant that it was basically just a Blank Particle that was making a Dreadful noise rather than a Confirmed order or a Stand Down Order.
A rather good Take a Third Option with a useful side effect, since it says that Bentley's legs have some slight muscle atrophy, which would mean that he would need some time to recover his leg muscles, so it's not a Deus Ex Machina, since it would have also removed the Atrophy as well.
8451769
Course he is. He's a Maverick!
8451756
*pulls up a hood* In my experience there is no such thing as luck.
Now I must wonder, is the assassin dead, or merely suffering from irreparable brain damage?
8451775
luck, logic, or somewhere in between, Galleth just employed the oldest solution in the book: if all else fails, hit it with a hammer...or in this case a sword...
Hahaha! Gloriousness! good show, good show!
Excellent way of making ignorance of how space and time works being the key to solving the problem. Mariah needs to show up and grab Galleth's ear and start reading him the riot act on being so impulsive. I do like Bentley's legs being fixed, but not to 100%. Now Penelope needs to get a Naughty Nurse costume to help him with his physical therapy.
I think mom can help with that * pipes up coco as sly, Carmelita Penelope and Bentley blush much to the groups amusement 8451836
8451875 You seem to be implying that Carmelita should let one of her love interests best friends see her in a skimpy outfit and that Coco should approve! Not cool.
8451881
I'm pretty sure he meant that Carmelita had a sexy nurse outfit she could lend Penelope, considering she already had a geisha outfit back in the Japan trip.
8451884
What tats said shesh I was using he's humor with coco coming out with inappropriate things at times to shock others or embarrassing them
8451881
Well, that could have ended much MUCH worse.
Galleth seems to have provided quite a cutting edge solution even if it is a wholly hair brained scheme, it wasn't half bad.
8451938
Gah! That pun cut me to the quick... Reading your comments are truly a two edged sword.
Applying the Alexandrian Solution to the Chronitron Knot. Interesting...
The Coopers are all crazy.
Then forrest gump shows up
"UNCLE BENTLY, You got new legs!"
Once again, randomness (or insanity, take your pick) spoils a carefully laid out plan. Goes to show that not even Seft can plan for everything that is Cooper. Looking forward to more.
Keep up the great work. Deus tecum.
8451884
Oh my
#FreeTheCrouton
#FreeTheCrouton
8451884
Hellooooooo Nurse!
EDIT: Anyone know where I can find the Animaniacs?
8452173
Amazon Prime, maybe? I recall watching it there a few times, I think it was free to watch.
Galleth Cooper... Heh... Sometimes the best solution to a complicated problem is a simple one. (Although I kind of wish he would wait for either Bentley or Penelope to come up with a hypothesis on what could happen.)
That was dicey as hell, but damn if it wasn't good.
8451775
Personally what I would have done is gone forward in time with Carmelita and arrest the sucker. I mean, Penelope flat out told them when and where he was, it would have been easy. If they wanted to avoid two people being in the same time, they could have sent an ancestor.
8452346
Actually, I think the reason they couldn't find the assassin, was because the Half of the Time Particle was protecting him, keeping him in a Temporal Anomaly so that only the 'Code' would let him out to kill Bentley.
Of course, that same Particle may have permanently crippled him, since he's got a crystal growing in his brain.
8452444
0.o
No i onder how the assassin got a crysal in his brain. How is that related to the remote?
8452598
The other end of the particle was in a crystal ear piece. If a signal had been sent, a '1' would have caused the crystal to say "engage", while a '0' would make it say 'abort'. When the paradox collapsed at his end, it was all focused in the crystal ear piece from the chroniton becoming whole...which caused the crystal to rapidly grow inward.
8452631
okey. two things.
one thanks for clearing that up.
and two Outch.
8452210
Well darn. First Doctor Who and now Animaniacs. Netflix better step up their game!
8451793
Maybe For him and Bentley maybe the injury hurt the assassin instead of Bentley cause of the Crouton being destroyed
8451884 8451897 Ah, sorry, this is what happens when I make posts at 2 am when I should be getting to bed. My bad. But I think Coco would go, "Mom has a nurse costume she can lend you for his physical therapy!" in as innocent tone as possible.
8451793
Better yet... Can we recruit them for ourselves?
8451775
Makes sense. But there be naysayers. So I summon an army.
8452895
Oh, they are. Ever heard of Legend Quest?
I should have added that but both work if used right 8453379
8453760
No I have not. What is it?
8454599
19th century Mexican boy with the ability to see and speak to spirits/ghosts becomes part of a prophecy to save the world from a mass-extinction event caused by a good god turned evil.
That is the spoiler-free short version.
8454951
Cool. btw have you seen A Series of Unfortunate Events?
8451756
After all, the Sly family has lasted this long partially through luck.
A lot of skill, but a lot of luck as well.
8453519
I arm myself with the scraps of my enemies and in doing so I become their better?
To those that don't understand, allow me to try to explain:
Essentially, by pressing a button, it would send a 1 or a 0 to the Receiver, if it's 1, Bentley dies, if it's 0, Bentley Lives, but there were no labels, so it was a 50/50 shot at guessing right.
Galleth meanwhile Said "Screweth this!" and cut the buttons in half, Creating a form of logical paradox. The receiver got the message '1. 0. 1 and 0. and Neither.' This made the receiver go "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" and self destruct due to having to somehow Performtwo actions that were Mutually exclusive.
Try entering 2 into binary, it flips out and that's pretty much what Galleth did.