Once Upon An Ethan

"Quack!" Ethan looked up at the rubber duckie that someone was sticking in his face. Then he looked over, and saw that it was Ben who had that damn thing. As usual.

"If he doesn't get that out of my face soon, I'm going to do something I don't want to do."

"Ethan! Why don't you love my duckie routine anymore? You used to laugh at my duckie routine. What's wrong with my duckie routine? Don't you think my duckie's cute??" Ben complained for the millionth time that hour. For some reason he seemed to think that the rubber duckie he'd so aptly named Virginity was adorable. Ethan didn't get it. I mean, he loved Ben with all his heart, but he just didn't get the duckie thing.

"Ben, I've told you once I've told you a thousand times - rubber duckies are not considered erogenous!" No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the door burst open and Mel came running in.

"You guys! Come here! We have news on Sisters Marina and Ted! Rumor has it they're on their way!!!"

"Oh, shit" said Ben and Ethan at almost exactly the same time.

Mel looked at them, and started cracking up. "Just kidding."

Ben and Ethan sighed, relieved. They'd been running from Marina and Ted for months, and hadn't even come CLOSE to getting caught. Or so they thought.

Mel pulled a ring out of her pocket, and looked at it. She ignored Ben and Ethan and their arguments over who was cuter. They both looked at Mel, and became very quiet. Mel had broke out in a cold sweat.

"My ring... I can see... things... I can see... Oh, shit. We have to get out of here. I can see Franny coming around the corner, but she's being followed... by the evil twin spies, EMMA AND JESSICA!"

They all looked at each other, before running out the back door into the alley behind the house. There they ran smack into Ruth, who was busy spray painting song lyrics onto someone's garage. She turned to them, blushing a little bit and said "I won't tell if you won't!" Ben gave her one of his famous 'whatever' looks and they all kept running. A few minutes later, they realized that a very hyper Ruth was following them. "Hey... can I come with? I've always wanted to be part of a chase. Actually, I was one time when I was nine. A moose started chasing me and Rick and we had to run and we ended up hiding in a canoe in the boundary waters canoe area in Minnesota. That wouldn't have been weird, but the moose started chasing us while we were in Hawaii. I'm still not sure how we got across the ocean, but apparently we did because..."

Ethan gave Ben and Mel a 'god, is she ever going to shut up?' look, and Mel caught the drift. "Ruth? Shut up! You can come with. But you have to be quiet." Ruth looked happy and shut up, much to their relief. They all started to run again, but it was too late. In the time it took Ruth to tell her riveting tale of running away from a moose, Emma and Jessica had caught up. Jessica reached inside the trench coat she had on and pulled out one of those high-tech looking laser guns. Ethan was terrified for a split second, but then he started laughing maniacally.

"Oh great," thought Ben, "he's started one of his laughing fits again. This is just perfect timing." He looked sorrowfully at Ethan, who was laying helpless on the ground, laughing hysterically. "Look, you guys. I'm really sorry about this," started Ben. "He's just.. I don't know. This shouldn't last too lon-"

"Silence!" shouted Emma and Jessica at the same time. Jessica pointed her laser gun towards Ethan, and pulled the trigger. All of a sudden, Ethan jumped up and started acting like an ape. Ben wondered to himself what the gun did, exactly. Then he noticed that Ethan's skin had turned purple. Emma pointed her laser at Ben and pulled, and he grew shaggy green fur all over his body. Mel and Ruth, who had been watching silently this whole time, looked up at Emma and Jessica.

"I thought you'd never show up!" said Mel in a relieved tone of voice. Ben and Ethan were busy picking fleas off of each other. Apparently acting like an ape was one of the side effects, and not just normal behavior. "We've been trying to distract them for a while. Thankfully Ruth showed up before they completely got away. I don't think they suspected a thing..." The ape formerly(?) known as Ethan all of a sudden took off running down the alley, and Ben, purple skin and all took off after him.

"Shit!" yelled Emma, sprinting off down the alley after them. All of a sudden, she was distracted by Mikhal Baryshnikov, who was offering to give her private lessons for free. In a trance like state, she wandered into his backyard.

"Emma! Emma!!!! Come back!" shouted Mel, who ran after her while Jess took of after Ben and Ethan, who were going pretty fast, considering their disabilities. Finally she caught up with them. She grabbed the laser thing that she'd been hiding for some reason and changed Ethan and Ben back into semi-normal human beings. Then she whipped out her pink fuzzy handcuffs that she keeps in her back pocket for just this sort of occasion and cuffed Ethan and Ben to each other. At that very second, Ethan felt a cold wave of fear washing over him. He thought that at the end of the alley, he saw the neon green ice cream truck. He remembered that ice cream truck...

The neon green ice cream truck drove right past the end of the alley. Then did a classic movie double take and drove backwards into view. Slowly.

"Shit!" yelled Ethan.

He started to run but he forgot the handcuffs that linked him to Ben abd so insted tripped on a brick and fell over. Ben fell next to him and they lay on the ground shaking with fear.

The truck screeched to a stop and two cloaked figures got out. The opened the back door and pulled out a box. The ywalked towards Ethan and Ben slowly and deliberatly. They looked around desperatly but everyone seemed to have dissappeared.

Cloaked figures stopped at their feet.

The boys scrambled to their feet and started running. It took them only a minute to figure out when to step so as not to run in opposite directions.

They had just looked back to see how far away the ice cream truck people were when they ran into someone.

They lay on the ground again. They were starting to get used to this.

The person in front of them had her hands on her hips. She looked farmiliar but they couldn't tell who it was because of her costume.

She had on pixie wings and a weird headband with long floppy bunny ears on it and groucho marks glasses. Her hands looked like they'd been dipped in a vat of glitter and she had on striped tights and ballet shoes.

Suddenlt Ethan's eyes and then Ben's eyes fixed on the girls hair...."Fiona?!" they yelled!

"Um... yeah. Hi guys." she said. "Look, I know those people who are after you, and let me tell you, they are crazy. I can help. Come with me." Fiona started running and got about three blocks before she realized that Ethan and Ben weren't following her. She ran back and used her special powers to unlock the handcuffs. "You know what? I'm not even going to ask about the pink fuzzy handcuffs, because I just don't want to know." she gave them a look "Now come on!" She took off running again and Ethan and Ben actually stayed with her this time.

After running for a long, long time, Fiona came to a sudden stop. "Shhhh" she said, as she peered around a corner. All of a sudden, she jerked her head back around the corner, and it was lucky, too, because at that very second, a neon green blur went whizzing past, leaving behind a trail of eerie... ice cream truck music.

"Dammit" thought Ethan "That stupid ice cream truck always goes too fast. And I really could've used a popsicle about now"

"Look. Just forget about the damn ice cream truck will you?" she said. "I told you. The people in it are all nuts."

"Who's in it?" asked Ben with wide eyes.

"I'll tell you later 'kay? Right now we just need to find the convent."

"Not the nuns...." groaned Ethan and Ben together. It was scary the way they were saying everything at the same time.

"Nonono. Not the Nuns. But they have something we need and we're going to take it!" Fiona said with an Evil looking grin on her face.

They crept in the back door at the convent and went straight to the kitchen where Fiona started digging around in the flour bin.

"I know it's in here somewhere" she muttered.

Flour flew up in puffs. Just then Ethan looked out the window.

"Uh-oh" he said. They were trapped. The ice cream truck was parked outside the door.

The cloaked figure walked through the door.

One of them had a mouthful of diasies and the other had on a pair or retro-vision glasses. Fiona looked up and turned her flour-covered head towards the door.

"Franny?? And Rael??? What the hell are you doing here? You're not- Oh my god, you are!!" she exclaimed. "You guys," she said quietly to Ben and Ethan, "we have to get out of here, and fast. So when I say go, Ben, yell something about Ani DiFranco and Joni Mitchell being in the living room, and Ethan, yell something about fencing and computers also being in the living room. After you do that, RUN." I'm going to see if they left the keys in the truck, because Franny's dad has this tendency to do that, so maybe she'll have done the same thing. Now GO!" Fiona spoke rather commandingly, so Ben and Ethan decided it would be best to do what she said. There was a lot of noise as Ben and Ethan distracted Franny and Rael, and Fiona bolted out the window (rather painfully, but efficiently) and jumped into the truck. Score! The keys were still there. Ben and Ethan came barreling out of the back door and into the truck just as Fiona started the engine up.

"Uh, Fiona? Do you know how to drive this thing?" asked Ethan, not really wanting to hear the answer.

"Nope! No idea! It should be just like driving the bumper cars, though, right?"

"Oh no.." thought Ethan and Ben at the same time. Somehow, they always managed to think and say things at the same time. Fiona looked at them.

"You guys? Stop doing everything in unison" she said as she pressed her foot down on the gas pedal and the truck peeled out of the driveway.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!" Ben and Ethan yelled at the same time.

They sped down the streets and tore around corners. Ethan and Ben screaming and Fiona grinning and turning the radio up.

"Fiona! Stop! Right now!" Ethan yelled.

Fiona was so surpirsed to hear him talk indepentdantly of Ben she did. She slammed on the breaks and the truck crashed to a halt. She did as Ben directed and moved over so Ethan could drive. The ride was....slower...after that. Ethan leaned forward in his seat. He seemed to know where he was going.

Meanwhile, back in the convent, Franny and Rael had made their way to the living room.

"He said Joni Mitchell and Ani DiFranco were here" Franny said with her lip trembling. She sat down on the floor and burst into tears.

Rael was examining the sword on the wall. It was draped with ribbons and in a glass case. With one swift movment he broke the case and grabbing the sword in one hand and Franny's arm in the other he ran for the door.

Back in the truck Ethan pulled up in front of an old crumbly apartmen building.

"Aha! Just in time?" he said as he pointed to a flag hanging out the top window.

"In time for what?" asked Fiona and Ben at the same time.

"Oh god, don't you guys start that now" said Ethan "And we're in time for the duck tape convention. Duhhhhh."

Fiona and Ben exchanged glances.

"Ethan, give me the driver's seat back" said Fiona. Ethan shook his head stubbornly, so Fiona and Ben grabbed him by his ankles and arms and hauled him into the back seat, but before Fiona could get to the wheel, the doors all opened.

"Hi!!" said a very perky looking girl. "My name's Carolyn!" She then threw rolls of duck tape at all of them. Ethan caught six of them. One in each hand, one on each foot, one in his mouth, and he somehow curled his stomach around one. Fiona and Ben each caught two, and as Fiona jumped out of the truck, she took the one from Ethan's stomach, and Ben took the one from his mouth.

"HEY!" shouted Ethan as he jumped up and started walking towards the building, but then he realized that he still had ducktape on his feet, so he took them off and started running to catch up with Carolyn and Ben and Fiona. He went into the building and realized that there wasn't very much duck tape in there. He decided to remedy that, and as he walked he left chunks of duck tape on the walls. Finally they came to a big open room where people were putting duct tape on everything. Just as he sat down with Ben and Fiona to figure out how to make a whole fooseball table with duck tape, the door burst open with a large cloud of dust and a loud bang. The dust finally cleared, revealing none other than Mel, Jessica, Emma, Ruth, Franny, and Rael. "Oh no" thought Ethan, Ben, and Fiona all at the same time.

"Ani and Joni my butt!" yelled Franny angrily as Mel marched into the center of the room and stole Carolyn's megaphone.

"Attention. We are seizing this duck tape convention by force." said Mel.

"Yeah, but there are more of us than there are of you" pointed out Carolyn. "And besides. You're my wife. You can't steal it from me. This is mine. It's in the prenuptual agreements, too, so even if you divorce me, it's mine."

"Good point" said Mel, jumping down from the table and signalling to Franny, Rael, Jessica, and Ruth that they were leaving. At that same time, in burst.... add more