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PART 3: MONASTERY

In one of the myriad wooden passages of the Monastery of Small Footsteps, the Monk stood in his shabby pirate clothes and stained tricorner hat and brooded.
Something was wrong. Something he couldn't quite put his finger on...
It was in this state of undecided worry that the acolyte, wandering fearfully through the passages, found the Monk. He swallowed involuntarily - Ulp! - and the Monk turned around.
"Largo!" he said sternly. "Have you strung up the ginger as I told ye to?"
"Ummm," stammered the acolyte.
In a patient voice that might quickly turn to anger, the Monk said, "I'm not going over this again, Largo. What is normally used to ward off the undead?"
"Garlic?" said the acolyte.
"And what's the total opposite of garlic?" continued the Monk.
The acolyte, for the life of him, could not work out this step. "...ginger?" he ventured cautiously.
"Yes! SO HAVE YOU STRUNG THE BLOODY STUFF UP YET?"
"Oh yes, LeChuck sir," said the acolyte. "There's a large clump where all the pirates are waiting."
The Monk relaxed slightly - but that wasn't it. Something else was wrong... he dismissed the thought. "Good. Now what was it you were going to say?"
"Well," began the acolyte reluctantly, "there is one small thing."
"Yes?"
"Do I really have to wear this green trousers?" complained the acolyte. "And these false eyebrows are giving me a rash."
"You will do exactly what I tell you to, Largo. Unless you'd like to be a ghost pirate yerself...?"
The acolyte nodded hopelessly. "Green trousers it is, sir."
"Good."
"Er... actually there's something else too." The acolyte stopped. LeChuck was not going to like this.
"...Yes?" prompted the Monk, after two seconds of waiting.
The acolyte took a deep breath. "Ten of your ghost pirates have escaped and taken the ship and we haven't got anything to get after them with."
There was a short pause.
"WHAT?!?!" roared the Monk.
"Ten of your-"
"I HEARD! GET AFTER THEM! I DON'T CARE IF YOU HAVE TO SWIM THERE YERSELF! GET OUT THERE!"

In the shadow forest outside the Monastery, Guybrush stood and watched.
After leaving the Voodoo Lady's presence, he'd gone north, via the route on her map. Traversing dim glades and wormy forests, he'd at last come up to a high rocky bluff overlooking the sea. And down below, on a small peninsula, was the Monastery.
Even from this height, it loomed against the sky - which, owing to a thick cloud cover which had gathered together in the last few hours, was completely black. Numerous torches hung from the outer walls, burning with a bright orange flame. Their light allowed Guybrush to see the many carven wood statues and holy relics adorning the walls of the Monastery.
Guybrush wondered why he hadn't been here before. Sure, the Voodoo Lady had told him there was a force field, but he'd never confirmed this. Did he trust the Voodoo Lady that much? Guybrush hoped not.
He climbed down the steep incline to the beach and entered the peninsula.
And, as he did so, found he was slowing down from his usual pace. The light from the Monastery made him cautious, as if he might be seen at any moment. He picked his route carefully, ducking from one shadowy patch to another.
Finally, he stood at the very edge of the forest.
The entrance to the Monastery was barely twenty feet away, a yawning black hole large enough to let someone three times his size enter.
Guybrush hesitated. Inside, there were over a hundred ghost pirates, their very touch fatal. Even with root beer, it was a tall ask.
Even as he hesitated, he remembered the argument. With Elaine. It seemed like four centuries ago, but actually only fourteen hours had passed. Not a pirate, she'd said. Well, he'd show her! New-found determination began to flow back into Guybrush.
He stepped out of the forest, into the light, and crossed the clearing to the Monastery entrance.

Despite all the lit torches outside, Guybrush soon found himself in a dark, dank passage. A couple of candles dripped wax from the ceiling, but they just gave the air a grimy sheen. It almost felt like he was underground, in a mine.
A set of wooden stairs was leading him down, to a concrete landing. Here Guybrush paused. There was something in front of him, a thin metal structure. Twin pipes, on either side of the passage, led up from the ground to a metal bar overhead. He had to pass through this metal arch, and its possible meaning baffled Guybrush.
He shrugged, and walked through it.
An alarm shrieked, and two red lights set in the ceiling above Guybrush flashed on and off. Guybrush looked around, panicked. And at this moment, Murray the demonic skull flew out of the passage in front of him, grinning inanely.
"Aargh!" screamed Guybrush involuntarily.
"Ha ha!" laughed Murray, elated at this response. "Yes! Boo! Gotcha now!"
But Guybrush had recovered. He knew Murray, and he was not to be feared. "Oh, it's only Murray," he said after a short pause.
"Whadda mean it's only Murray?!" yelled Murray indignantly. "I'll tear you limb from limb you croquet-playing mint-muncher!"
"No offence, Murray, but I think I'll just be walking through that door."
"You what!? You'll be licking snowflakes in hell before you get through here!"
A patient smile on his face, Guybrush walked forward. Or tried to. Guybrush frowned. It felt like there was something in his way, a thin strip of gauze in the air that he couldn't walk through.
He looked up at Murray. The leering skull was enjoying Guybrush's futile struggles. "Ha ha ha! Weren't expecting that, were ya? This whole Monastery is protected by a force field which won't let a single drop of root beer through! We're impregnable!"
"Oh dear," said Guybrush. Guess he'd been right not to trust the Voodoo Lady.
"And even if you were to break through," continued Murray gleefully. "I've got a switch back here which will instantly summon two hundred plus ghost pirates to stitch you up proper!"
"Oh dear again."
Murray leaned forward, staring intently at him. "Does that frighten you, Guybrush? Does it fill your pants with hot excrement? Yeah! Yeah! It does! All right!"
Mostly to himself, Guybrush said, "This isn't going to be as easy as I thought."

He gathered his thoughts together outside. The Voodoo Lady hadn't been wrong, had she? Had be been traipsing all over Cutlass Island when he could just have come straight here?
Well... the Voodoo Lady had said there was a force field protecting the whole peninsula. And he was on the peninsula. So maybe the spell had worked.
And... Murray had said the force field only worked on root beer. What if he was to get rid of his root beer?
Impossible. How could you take on two hundred ghost pirates with your bare hands?
Guybrush remembered the root beer recipe.
Instantly he took out the root beer bottle, opened it, and poured its contents onto the ground. There. No turning back now.
But he couldn't go back in the front way, root beer or no root beer. Murray was watching.
Perhaps there was a back entrance.
Certainly there was a path. It led from the front entrance, tracing a winding route around the side of the Monastery. Following it, Guybrush came to a dark corner. Peering closely, he saw a small door set into the wall.
Bingo.
Before he tried the door, Guybrush took a look at the root beer recipe. In the flickering light of the torches, he read:

ROOT BEER

1 qty. corn syrup
1 qty. sassafras bark
1 qty. orange peel
1 qty. ground ginger.

Combine all ingredients together with desired
quantity of water. Churn.

This could be problematic. He had the corn syrup, but... sassafras bark? Guybrush looked around.
A spindly bush growing by the wall caught his eye. Its trunk had thin, stringy bark. Guybrush wouldn't know a sassafras tree from a lump of wood, but this looked about right. Beside, maybe you didn't have to get the flavour exactly right.
He took a fistful of bark, then opened the door.

When he shut the door behind him, he was standing in a small study. There was a wooden desk in one corner, and a cupboard in another. An open door led out into a hallway. When he turned to look behind him, he saw a metal door with the words FIRE ESCAPE printed on them. Two torches illuminated the room.
Guybrush stood and listened, but he could hear no noise. There was nothing on the desk. He opened the drawers, but the only thing he found was a pencil sharpener. Guybrush tried the cupboards, but these too were bare.
He stuck his head out the door, peered both ways, and stepped out into the hallway.
It ran both ways past the small study. To his right, the passage seemed to end at a small, dark room. On his right, it seemed to widen out into a large hall.
Guybrush went right, keeping his footsteps quiet. He could hear his muscles moving against each other, hear his heart beating worriedly, but otherwise there wasn't a sound in the place.
So it was a shock when, coming to the hall, Guybrush saw stretched out below him a massed crowd of ghost pirates.
"Yi-" he began, then jammed his fist into his mouth to stop the noise. The ghost pirates weren't looking at him. They were lined up together, rank and file, facing the other end of the hall. There were at least two hundred - more than two hundred! Murray hadn't exaggerated. Guybrush watched them, horrified. The ghost pirates stood perfectly still. Not still as you or I might stand - even when trying to be immobile, the muscles of humans minutely contract and relax. These ghost pirates stood completely still. Like transparent, lifeless statues.
The front of the hall, where the ghost pirates were looking, held a small stage and lectern. Formerly where the head Monk had said his prayers before his assembled disciples, Guybrush guessed LeChuck had been using it to make pronouncements to his ghost crew. At the rear of the hall, Guybrush was standing on a small raised platform, about eight feet above the hall. What this got used for, he had no idea.
Slowly getting over the shock, Guybrush started to notice other things about the hall. He looked up at the ceiling, and saw four rows of metal piping, dotted every few feet or so with thin nozzles. This must be the fire sprinkler system. Gazing up at it, Guybrush was distracted by something in the foreground.
He did a double take. A thick green root of ginger was suspended from the ceiling, right next to this platform. Guybrush could reach out and take it.
He did. What was a root of ginger doing here? Well, it was certainly a help. Now he just needed an orange...
Guybrush stepped back from the platform and walked down the hallway, the way he'd come. He passed the study, heading for the small dark room.
It was a dank, oily, little-used room, filled with a mass of complicated machinery. Before him Guybrush saw a baffling network of metal pipes, valves, wheels and buttons.
Fortunately, the sign above said 'Monastery Sprinkler System'.
The idea hit Guybrush right then, an idea so good he had to stop himself from jumping in the air and shouting.
He did jump in the air when he saw an orange sitting there on the piping. Luck, serendipity, call it what you will, everything seemed to be falling his way. Guybrush picked up the orange and turned it over in his hands. Working quickly, he pulled the peel from the orange, which he tossed in a corner.
Guybrush looked at the machinery. There it was... a large bulbous tank near the floor. Guybrush opened the hatch and looked inside. Water.
He ripped up the peel and dropped it into the water. In went the bark. The corn syrup was emptied in after it. Then the ginger root... Guybrush paused. The recipe had said ground ginger. Oh well, the hell with it. The machinery would probably grind it up pretty good. Guybrush threw it in and shut the lid. He looked around.
A large red switch on the wall was labelled 'Emergency Override'. Guybrush reached for it, tensed, then pressed it firmly. Instantly the sprinkler system kicked into gear. The water began churning around in the tank, and Guybrush could hear it flowing at high speed through the pipes.
A thin pipe was set in the ceiling, and ran straight down the hallway toward the main hall. In the hallway, it began to rain...

In the great hall, pandemonium ensued. Ghost pirates ran around, bellowing with pain, looking for shelter from the burning rain. There was none. Every inch of the hall was slowly being coated in the slightly sticky water. As the ghost pirates were vaporised, a massive cloud of steam coalesced in the air, obscuring the carnage from view. But not from ear. The screams were earsplitting.
And then it all died down. The screams stopped. The steam cloud gradually dispersed. The hall was completely empty, save for a greasy substance on the floor, which might have been root beer, or... something else.

"I think it worked!" said Guybrush happily. "Now to find LeChuck..."
He walked out into the hallway. A few feet out from the door, he stopped. A large, shabby figure stood in front of him, looking toward the great hall. It was wearing a filthy pirate coat and a tricorner hat. Black hair sprouted underneath it. From the back, this looked a lot like LeChuck.
Shock sometimes makes people do strange things. "It's LeChuck!" Guybrush blurted out.
The Monk spun around. His eyes lit up with the red flame of anger. "He's here! At last!"
Guybrush was completely at a loss.
Because this wasn't LeChuck. You could tell that instantly. He'd obviously tried hard - the clothes were spot on, the beard was exactly the right length, and even LeChuck's vocal and physical tics were expertly copied. But this just wasn't LeChuck. The body was too tall, the face too thin, the hands too manicured.
"Err..." said Guybrush, confused.
"My mortal enemy has returned," intoned the Monk dramatically.
"Err... you're not LeChuck..."
"Of course I am!" said the Monk. "I swore never to rest until I spilled your blood, Guybrush, and now the time has come!"
"But you're not... what the hell's going on here?"
Before the Monk could answer, Guybrush heard a gun shot.
A look of surprise crossed the Monk's face, followed by some kind of realisation. Then his body fell to the ground at Guybrush's feet. There was a bullet hole in his back, and standing behind him stood LeChuck.
The real LeChuck. Not that Guybrush had ever seen him this way - his face a mottled blue, his arms and legs shivering with cold. But the recognition was immediate.
And so was the panic.
"I believe I can explain," said LeChuck.
"LeChuck!?!" gasped Guybrush.
"You were expecting Donnie Osmond? Of course it's LeChuck! And now, Guybrush, your goose is well and truly cooked."
"I... I don't understand."
LeChuck mused, more to himself, "Of course I could just kill you now and take over the Caribbean. But I think you deserve a special explanation. Brother to brother."
Guybrush tried to pull himself together. "Okay, let's hear it."
"It was very simple," said LeChuck. "You froze me in a block of ice. My body was dead and gone, but my mind remained free and alive. It waited, burning for revenge. Several days ago, I felt another mind draw close. It was this monk, out channelling the Caribbean. I seized the channel, dragged myself across, and in seconds this guy thought he was me."
"No wonder he went insane."
"Ha ha. That's an extra two days in the torture chamber for you. Anyway, using knowledge I taught him, the Monk turned this whole island into an army of ghost pirates. I entered the minds of ten ghosts, and ordered them to steal a ship and come unfreeze me. And now I'm here. The Monk is dead but his army remains. And with that army, Guybrush, I will conquer the Caribbean! No island can possibly stand before me! You see what I mean, Guybrush? It's already too late!"
Guybrush felt a surge of hope. "Too late for you, you mean," he crowed. "I already killed your ghost army. Let's see you take over the Caribbean now!"
The smile faded from LeChuck's face. "What?"
"They're all gone. Run in there and smell the root beer."
LeChuck growled. "You will pay for this, Guybrush. In fact-"
He stopped. An idea had just occurred to him. It brought the smile back to his face.
"-you'll pay in ways you can't imagine."
Suddenly, two ghost pirates appeared behind Guybrush. With their lethal touch, they instantly cut off any hope of retreat.
Guybrush looked at them, very worried. "Hey, what's going on? I killed you guys!"
LeChuck scowled at him. "Arr, yer didn't think the loss of my ghost army would set me back, did you Guybrush? There are other islands out there waiting to be ghostified. With my loyal ten-strong ghost pirate crew, we can be at any in a matter of hours. Actually..." he paused, milking out the suspense, "...there's one not far away. I think I'd quite like to meet the Governor. Mrs-"
"No!" yelled Guybrush. "Not Elaine!"
"Yes Elaine, Guybrush," said LeChuck. "Marrying her was the worst thing you ever did. She belongs to nobody but me!"
"But-"
"No more! I'm taking you with me. You ought to be present at the Governor's... final humiliation." He looked at the ghost pirates. "Take him away!"

Part 4