14 Doug Unplugged

Chapter Fourteen Doug Unplugged The explorers all followed the bunny back through one of the tunnels it had dug. Abigail was the last in line. It was so dark, she could barely see Elias in front of her. Foggy, exhausted from flying around the planet, lit the way with a dim light from his chest. The poor robot was so tired, he couldn't even fly out of the ravine. Abigail was in shock. They had come so far. They hadn't stopped the planet from splitting, but they had reopened the flow of lava so the planet could heal. They had even made it back to their ship and been ready to fly home to the Marlowe. But then Finn ruined it. No, not Finn. Doug ruined it, by using Finn to steal their pod. Finally, they climbed out of the bunny's tunnel. They were near the edge of the forest. They collapsed, too tired and too sad to move.

Vale looked up. The explorer pod was disappearing into the upper atmosphere of the planet. "There he goes," said Vale. "I can't believe Finn did that."

No one said anything. No one could find the words to make things better. "Did what?" said a voice from behind them. "Saved everybody? Yeah, Finn is such a chucklehead." The explorers all looked up. There was Finn, walking toward them, smiling. "What the—?!" said Elias. He stood up and grabbed a small stick. "Stay back, Finn! We know you're controlled by Doug!" Finn put his hands in the air like he was surrendering. "It's me, Elias, I swear," he said. "I was just pretending to let Doug take control of me. You guys saw how powerful he is. I knew that he would never let us get off the planet. He would just take control of me, or one of you. I had to trick him first, before he could trick us." "What a great trick!" said Vale. "You gave him our only way off this planet and left us behind to climb through one of the bunny's gross tunnels! You really showed Doug!" Finn laughed. "Don't you see? I knew Doug would leave me behind. I kept seeing myself fly away with the aliens. But I knew it was fake. He

always showed me drinking lemonade, and I hate lemonade. So I knew that would never happen, and he'd leave all of us here. A guy like that doesn't think of anyone but himself. So I pretended I was following his instructions and stole the pod." "But your head was red," said Abigail. "Yeah," said Finn. "Doug was really trying. It took everything I had to resist." "Yeah," said Vale. "That's really cool and everything, Finn, but what about our pod?" "Oh, I preprogrammed its destination. I noticed one of the moons of this planet as we were flying in. It was bright blue." The bunny laughed. "That thing is basically just a giant chunk of ice," he said. "Exactly," said Finn. "So I set the pod to fly to that moon. The aliens have no idea how to fly the ship. That's why they needed me and Vale in the first place. So Doug is officially stranded." "Now he's on a floating iceberg in space," said Abigail. "And once we alert the Marlowe, they can just autopilot the pod, without Doug, back to the space station. Not bad, Caspian."

Finn looked down. "I'm sorry I betrayed you guys," he said. "Forget about it," said Abigail. "Someone was literally controlling your mind." "No, before that," said Finn. "We're an awesome team. And we're an awesome team because we're all good at what we do. I should have listened to you, Abigail."

"Yep!" said Abigail. "Everyone remember this day. Finn Caspian finally admitted he needs to listen to me." The explorers all laughed. Finn blushed. "Forget about it," said Abigail. "You figured it out, and you saved the day. So I guess we can forgive you." "Actually, I saved the day," said Vale. "I got the lava river flowing again." "But it was my ladder net that kept that giant from crushing us," said Elias. "So I think I saved the day." Finn stepped between them. "Actually, Abigail is the one who found the way to stop the planet from coconutting," said Finn. "Great work, Captain."