17-year-old high school student Koto Hoshino wants nothing more than to be as courageous as her favourite game character Misuzu. On a school excursion, she visits the Izumo temple, where a ceremony for Misuzu is being held, and is attracted to the temple's tower top when she finds a strange watch. When she gets to the top, she performs a strange ritual, but does not seem to realise. Suddenly, a portal of evil appears. Luckily, she is saved by a boy named Kurusu, who tries to overcome the mirror, but is sucked inside. A girl named Scarlet arrives, but he tells her to protect Koto. The next moment the holy ground shakes tremendously, and Koto is knocked out. When she regains her consciousness, everything has changed. Koto finds herself in what seems to be a parallel world, where Earth does not have a single soul except her and the Cosmopolitan Prayers, priestesses who combat evil. The daughter of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu appears, and explains that Koto was tricked into performing the sealing ritual and imprisoning her mother Amaterasu, who is being held prisoner by the forces of evil. Now, as part of the 'Cosprayers', Koto must fight the evil forces that sealed the Earth. The Cosmopolitan Prayers, a team of seven beautiful girls, pure in heart and body and skilled in spiritual seals, must use their skills to purify the dark towers. But can they overcome heartache and betrayal to become the White Goddess of Light? And can Koto overcome herself to save her new friends and the world?

Each episode in ''CosPrayers'' runs for twelve minutes and has a color in its title. The continuity of many episodes is sporadic which may be due to editing of the original material to fit into the twelve minutes.

All characters of ''Si Unyil'' are hand puppets with the physical appearances of ordinary Indonesian faces. Traditional touch is strongly apparent in the show, from the suit of every characters to the stories that dealing with everyday life. Characters are divided into "good" and "bad" ones, where a group of three young children (''Unyil'' and his two friends) as good, while three other children as bad boys. Conflicts often arouse between the two groups with the ending always with a message to become a good children.

To enhance the story and to be more entertaining, two antagonistic characters were introduced. They are the short-tempered thick mustached Pak Raden and the lazy Pak Ogah. Although the two antagonistic characters were supposed to be unsympathetic ones, they were more popular than other characters. Pak Raden represents a hard working man with a rugged face and strong Javanese background who always wears a traditional Javanese suit. The popularity of Pak Raden came when he became funny and was wrong all the time despite of that he insisted strongly at the beginning that he was right. Pak Ogah, on the other hand, represents a lazy person who does not want to work but only to ask money when people asking for his help. He usually accompanied by his sidekick Ableh.

As described in a review in a film magazine, in 1940, Elmer Smith (Foxe) proposes to Hattie (Perdue), his childhood sweetheart, and she turns him down, saying that she would not marry him if he were the last man on earth. He jumps in his plane, determined to go where there are no women. A strange disease known as "masculitis" develops that kills all the males over fourteen years old. Women now run the world. Ten years later, Gertie (Cunard), a gangster, while fleeing from the police finds herself in a forest and discovers Elmer, who has been living as a hermit. She brings him back and, after he is examined at a hospital, the government buys him for $10,000,000 as he is the last man on earth. Then arises the problem of what to do with him. Two lazy senators engage in a prize fight, the winner to claim him as a husband. His former sweetheart Hattie attends the fight and Elmer sees her. Then it is all off as he rushes to Hattie, keeping the other women at bay. They marry and a year later, twin boys are born.

The story is set shortly after the destruction of the Death Star above Yavin 4. The Empire drives the Alliance off the moon, leaving the Alliance searching for a planet to serve as its next base. Tycho Celchu, an Imperial officer, defects to the Alliance on Dantooine and leads it to a group of scientists on Ralltiir who wish to defect. During the battle to rescue the scientists, Rogue Squadron member Sarkli defects to the Empire. Despite this, Rogue Squadron and the scientists escape safely in a transport craft. The Rebels settle on Hoth, but the Battle of Hoth forces them to leave as the Empire attacks and destroys their base.

The Wedge Antilles campaign takes place after the Battle of Hoth, leading a raid on Bakura to extract rebel hostages from the orbiting prison. Sarkli leads Rogue Squadron into Geonosis' orbit, where he and Wedge both crash following an ambush by TIE fighters and Imperial escort carriers. Wedge fights with stormtroopers and battle droid remnants. By making use of various pieces of deactivated Galactic Republic machinery left over from the Battle of Geonosis, he escapes and flees the system. This uncovers a ploy to wipe out part of the Alliance fleet over Dubrillion, and, in response, Rogue Squadron raids the shipyards of Fondor to destroy a Super Star Destroyer under construction. Emperor Palpatine reveals that the recent battles were manipulated, making the Rebels overconfident. This proves disadvantageous to the Rebels in the upcoming Battle of Endor. Nevertheless, Han Solo, having been rescued from Jabba the Hutt, disables the shield protecting the second Death Star over Endor while killing Sarkli, allowing the Rebels to achieve victory.

Georg Schober, his wife Anna, their son Georgie, and their dog Rolfi arrive at their holiday home beside a lake in Austria. On the drive over, they spot their next-door neighbors Fred and Eva Berlinger accompanied by two young Viennese men whom they do not recognize. The Schobers notice the strange behavior displayed by the Berlingers and the apparent absence of their daughter Sissi. Fred visits minutes later with one of the men, whom he introduces as Paul, the son of a friend.

Shortly after the family settles in, and while Georg is still setting up the boat, the other young unidentified man comes to Anna's kitchen to borrow eggs on Eva's behalf. This man, later named as Peter, gradually overstays his welcome by breaking successive batches of eggs and submerging the family's phone into the kitchen sink water, all seemingly done by accident.

Paul arrives shortly thereafter and decides to try one of Georg's golf clubs, taking Anna's permission for granted. While Paul is outside with the club, Georg hears Rolfi's constant barking suddenly come to a whining halt. When it is clear that Peter and Paul are insidiously imposing themselves on Anna's courtesy, she demands that the men leave. Georg arrives and tries to eject them from the premises as well. Peter then breaks Georg's leg with the latter's golf club. Paul reveals he has killed Rolfi, and taunts Anna with a cruel searching game (during which he turns around and winks at the camera) until she finds the dog's corpse. It soon becomes evident that the two men have taken the family hostage.

Neighbors Gerda and Robert arrive at the family's dock on a boat. Paul escorts Anna to greet them. Anna finds herself forced to introduce Paul as a family friend and to provide false excuses for Georg's absence, but she also tells Gerda that they may come over after dinner.

Over the following hours, Peter and Paul subject the family to sadistic games. Paul, the more eloquent of the two, punctuates the torture with frequent breaks in the fourth wall and warped role-playing wherein he relates contradictory stories of Peter's past and ridicules his weight and apparent lack of intelligence. No explanation of the men's origins or motives is offered, and even their names may be pseudonyms since they also call each other Tom and Jerry and Beavis and Butt-Head on occasion.

Paul places a bet that the family won’t survive until 9:00 in the morning. He then puts a pillowcase over Georgie’s head and pressures Georg to ask Anna to undress. She complies, only to be told to put her clothes back on. Georgie eventually flees to Fred's house, where he finds Sissi's corpse. He is cornered in the house and attempts to shoot Paul but the shotgun is unloaded. Paul returns Georgie to the home, bringing the shotgun and ammunition with him. Peter plays a counting-out game between family members while Paul makes sandwiches in the kitchen. Georgie panics and runs, which results in Peter shooting him dead. Paul berates Peter for being trigger-happy, and the two men decide to leave.

Georg and Anna grieve their loss but eventually resolve to survive. Anna flees the house while Georg, with a broken leg, tries to repair the malfunctioning phone. Anna strives to find help, but ominously flags down the wrong car. Peter and Paul capture her and return to the house. During another sadistic game, Anna grabs the shotgun and kills Peter; however, Paul uses a remote control to rewind the film and prevents this from happening. Paul shoots Georg and both men take Anna out on the family's boat early the next morning. Around 8:00, Paul nonchalantly pushes the bound Anna into the water to drown, thus winning their bet. The two men casually continue a conversation, started offscreen, about a science fiction plot mainly known to Peter and seemingly relevant to both; the degree to which said plot is fictional to the two men, rather than coincident with their level of reality, is left unexplained. They arrive at Gerda's house and knock on the door, asking for some eggs. Paul turns around and throws a knowing glance towards the audience.

The British Army attacks Ciudad Rodrigo, a fortress guarding the northern path into Spain. Sharpe and Harper lead an assault on the French. Unfortunately, Sharpe's commander and friend, Colonel William Lawford, is severely wounded when a mine is detonated. He loses an arm and retires from his post as commander of the South Essex regiment, losing Sharpe a friend and ally.

Sharpe's situation only gets worse when his old enemy, Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill, joins the company. Hakeswill hates Sharpe with a vengeance and plans to kill him.

Meanwhile, Sharpe's lover Teresa Moreno arrives, informing Sharpe that she has given birth to his daughter Antonia, and that she is living in Badajoz. Sharpe promises her that he will protect her when the British Army attacks the city. He is also reunited with his former Lieutenant, Robert Knowles, who is now a captain of a fusilier company. Knowles also vows to protect Teresa.

Later, Hakeswill encounters Teresa in a stable. He attempts to rape her, but she fights him off, slashing his face and wrist. Sharpe and Harper enter the stable, and Harper brutally beats Hakeswill. Hakeswill vows revenge on Harper and to have Teresa.

Then Lawford's replacement, Colonel Brian Windham arrives, as well as Captain Rymer, who has purchased his captaincy, via the commission of the late Captain Lennox, a normal practice in the British Army. Meanwhile, Sharpe's promotion to captain is finally rejected; the long delay in the verdict was due to being confused with another officer who died. Sharpe desires to join the Forlorn Hope so that, despite the high chance of death, he may be promoted again, and so that, should he die, Antonia can be proud of her father.

Sharpe reverts to the rank of lieutenant, but Windham attempts to cheer him up by telling him vacancies will soon become available, as Wellington is determined to attack the formidable fortress at Badajoz as soon as possible, and casualties are expected to be high. Sharpe is given command of the regiment's baggage, ordered to guard it while the regiment digs trenches around the city. Sharpe leaves the baggage to visit his company, and when Rymer attempts to talk to him, the French attack. Rymer does nothing, so Sharpe leads his men into battle. The French are defeated, but in Sharpe's absence the regiment's baggage is robbed by Hakeswill.

Windham is furious with Sharpe for abandoning his post, and is further angered when he discovers that a prized portrait of his wife has been stolen. Sharpe's telescope is also missing, which makes Windham accuse the Light Company. He searches the packs of all the members of the Light Company, and the frame, but not the picture, is found in Harper's bag. Windham has Harper demoted to private and flogged. Meanwhile, Hakeswill begins talking into his Shako all the time.

A few nights later, Windham sends the Light Company on a night attack to destroy a dam. He asks Sharpe to serve as his aide. Before the attack, Harper's seven-barrelled gun is taken from him by Hakeswill, as it is a non-regulation weapon. When the Light Company takes longer than expected, Windham orders Sharpe to find out the cause of the delay - stressing he is to do nothing else - and report back as soon as possible. The accompanying engineers light a fuse to detonate barrels full of gunpowder, but it becomes dislodged. Sharpe decides to blow the wall himself. He succeeds, but it turns out the engineers miscalculated, and the dam remains intact. During the fighting, Hakeswill tries to kill Sharpe using Harper's seven-barrelled gun, but only wounds him in the leg.

Windham decides to remove Sharpe temporarily to allow Rymer to establish his authority, though he knows Sharpe is a brilliant soldier. He also orders the riflemen to abandon their rifles, which Rymer, at Hakeswill's prompting, blames the mission's failure on, as well as their green jackets. As Hakeswill taunts the disarmed riflemen, Sharpe humiliates Hakeswill by firing the rifles, which are supposed to be unloaded, at Hakeswill's belly. Hakeswill is more than ever determined to get revenge, and also plans to get to Teresa in Badajoz before Sharpe does.

Sharpe is interviewed by the army commander, the Duke of Wellington, a few days later after Sharpe has scouted the enemy fortifications closely. Wellington decides to attack that night, but denies Sharpe the forlorn hope. Sharpe is ordered to simply guide the various regiments into their positions. However, he rejoins his regiment, which has been devastated by the French cannon fire. Windham is bravely trying to lead his men into the breach, and when Sharpe reaches his company, he discovers Rymer has been shot dead, so he takes command of his company.

Meanwhile, Knowles has managed to reach the top of the French wall and leads his men into the city, during the 3rd Division's (United Kingdom) diversionary assault. While his men kill the French and plunder the homes, Knowles looks for Teresa to protect her. Knowles reaches Teresa's house, and Teresa lets him in, but Hakeswill, who had hidden himself under dead bodies during the assault, climbs to the upstairs room where Antonia is sleeping. When Teresa enters the room, he threatens to kill the baby unless Teresa has sex with him. Knowles tries to intervene and is shot dead.

Meanwhile, Sharpe leads his men through one of the three breaches in the fortifications. Other British units break through at other points as well. Sharpe and Harper fight their way through the French to reach Teresa, and comes face to face with Hakeswill. Harper picks up Hakeswill's discarded shako and finds the picture of Windham's wife inside it, whom Hakeswill believes to be his mother. Harper threatens to destroy the picture unless Hakeswill releases Antonia. Hakeswill complies, but though Harper, Sharpe, and Teresa all attempt to kill him, they interfere with each other, allowing him to escape by leaping out a window. Hakeswill deserts.

At the end of the battle, Windham praises Sharpe for his bravery. Sharpe returns his wife's portrait, explaining who had it, and Windham apologizes to Harper. Sharpe and Harper have their ranks restored, and Sharpe and Teresa are married.

In the film, George Lucas (Martin Hynes) is a 1967 USC college student, suffering from writer's block as he attempts to write a movie about a young space farmer with a bad crop of "space wheat". Taking a break from his work, George goes on to encounter classmates and teachers who resemble and will influence the eventual creation of, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Jabba the Hutt, R2-D2, and C-3PO. Lucas is surrounded by inspiration, but he sees nothing. Even his wise advisor, who suspiciously looks and speaks like Yoda, is unable to help him.

Eventually, young Lucas meets his muse, a young woman (with a very unusual hairdo) named Marion (Lisa Jakub) who is "kind of leading a student rebellion". After they meet, everything falls into place for Lucas, as she urges him to "write what you know". His writer's block dissipates and he quickly finishes his masterpiece. However, his shot at romance with the girl is blown when he discovers she's his sister.

In a post-credits scene, Lucas gets a new idea when his neighbor introduces Lucas to his new pet, a duck named Howard.

A crowd is gathered to see Paris Hilton make an appearance at the local mall, where she announces the opening of a store called Stupid Spoiled Whore. Wendy is appalled by how the store blatantly objectifies women, while her friends embrace the store. Later, at a friend's house, Wendy is confronted with the Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset. Wendy exits in horror, leaving her friends to recreate Hilton's sex tape. Meanwhile, Hilton's dog, Tinkerbell, commits suicide to escape the misery of being her pet. In her throes of sorrow, she sees Butters, and chooses him as her replacement pet, putting him in a bear costume and calling him "Mr. Biggles".

Wendy brings her father to the Stupid Spoiled Whore store to investigate the matter. While he is initially appalled, the overly sexual women quickly manipulate him into accepting the store. Bebe announces a Stupid Spoiled Whore party at her house, refusing to invite Wendy. Meanwhile, Butters introduces Hilton to his parents. She offers them $200 million for Butters, who doesn't like the idea, but his parents insist on discussing it alone. They instruct Butters to match Hilton's offer himself to stay, and suggest he try coal mining, but he is unsuccessful. Upon seeing a photo album in her limousine, he horrifyingly discovers all her previous pets killed themselves.

While a disguised Cartman is rejected from the party, Wendy seeks Mr. Slave's help to try to become like all the other girls. After explaining to Wendy that being a whore can't be taught, he rushes to break up Bebe's party. Butters escapes from Hilton's captivity, and runs into the party. Hilton appears just in time to hear Mr. Slave telling all the girls that being a whore is not enjoyable and that she is a nobody. The two then argue over who is the bigger whore, culminating in Hilton challenging Mr. Slave to a Whore-Off, which he wins by stuffing her into his anus. Mr. Slave then criticizes the parents' unawareness that being a whore "is supposed to be a bad thing", telling them to be better role models toward their daughters. Though happy to have escaped Hilton, Butters now must face his parents' wrath. Inside Mr. Slave's colon, Hilton meets the Frog King, who instructs her to go to the small intestine, where she will meet the Sparrow Prince, who can guide her to Catatafish, who will help her escape.

Anglers from the fishing village of Noyo, California, catch what appears to be a monster. The young son of one of the anglers falls into the water and something unseen drags him under the surface. Another angler prepares a flare gun, but he slips and accidentally fires it into the deck, which is soaked with gasoline dropped earlier by the boy. The vessel bursts into flames and explodes; everybody aboard is killed. Jim Hill (McClure) and his wife Carol witness the explosion. Later, Jim and Carol's dog goes missing and the pair finds its dismembered corpse on the nearby beach.

The following day, teenagers Jerry Potter (Meegan King) and Peggy Larson (Lynn Schiller) go for a swim at the beach. Jerry is abruptly pulled under the water. Peggy believes it is a prank until she discovers his mutilated corpse. Peggy screams and tries to reach the beach, but a monstrous figure drags her across the sand. The humanoid creature tears off her bikini and rapes her.

That night, two more teenagers are camping on the same beach. Billy (David Strassman) is about to have sex with his girlfriend, Becky (Lisa Glaser) when another humanoid monster claws its way inside, kills him, and chases Becky onto the beach. She outruns her assailant, but then runs into the arms of yet another monster, which throws her to the sand and rapes her. More attacks follow; not all of them successful, but few witnesses survive to tell the public about the incidents; only Peggy is found alive, though severely traumatized. Jim's brother is also attacked, prompting Jim to take a personal interest in the matter.

A company called Canco has announced plans to build a huge cannery near Noyo. The murderous, sex-hungry mutations are apparently the result of Canco's experiments with a growth hormone they had earlier administered to salmon. The salmon escaped from Canco's laboratory into the ocean during a storm and were eaten by large fish that then mutated into the brutal, depraved humanoids that have begun to terrorize the village.

By the time Jim and Canco scientist Dr. Susan Drake (Turkel) have deduced what is occurring, the village's annual festival has begun. At the festival, many humanoids appear, murdering the men and raping every woman they can grab. Jim devises a plan to stop the humanoids by pumping gasoline into the bay and setting it on fire, cutting off the humanoids' way of retreat. Meanwhile, Carol is attacked at home by two of the creatures, but manages to kill them before Jim arrives.

The morning after the festival, normality seems to have returned to the village. Jim asks the sheriff about Dr. Drake. The sheriff mumbles that she went back to the lab, where she is coaching a pregnant Peggy, who has survived her sexual assault. Peggy is about to give birth when her monstrous offspring bursts from her womb, with Peggy screaming at the screeching baby.

''Saved'' tells the story of Wyatt Cole, a Portland, Oregon, paramedic with a rough past and a history of compulsive gambling. The series follows the ups and downs of Cole's life, from the adrenaline rush he receives from his busy 24-hour shift to the chaotic personal decisions he makes.

At a reception aboard the Federation starship ''Enterprise'' following a trade conference on Betazed, Counselor Deanna Troi argues with her mother, Lwaxana Troi, about her insistence that Deanna get married and raise a family. At the same party, Lwaxana is approached by the Ferengi Daimon Tog of the ship ''Krayton'', who is interested in Lwaxana in a sexual way, but also explains he would like Lwaxana to use her telepathy to help him make business. Lwaxana rejects him flatly, then becomes irate and remarks that she would rather eat Orion Wing Slugs than date Tog. Deanna tries to speak with Lwaxana in her quarters about the incident, but winds up becoming infuriated over Lwaxana's behaviour and leaves.

Afterwards, at the urging of Captain Picard, Commander Riker and Deanna Troi, decide to take a quick shore leave on Betazed while the ''Enterprise'' heads out on a routine mission studying a nebula. Lwaxana tracks down her daughter and Riker, with intent to encourage a renewed romance between the couple. She is just getting started when Daimon Tog beams down. As Riker expresses his surprise, Tog states that he has come for Lwaxana. When he is again rebuffed by Lwaxana, this time under pain of provoking an interstellar incident, Tog has himself and the others transported aboard the ''Krayton''.

The three awaken in a cell aboard the ''Krayton''. Tog then has Deanna and Lwaxana beamed into the lab of Farek, a Ferengi doctor who hopes to study Lwaxana's telepathy using mind probes. In the process of transporting them he leaves the women's clothing behind, saying that women are not worthy enough to wear clothes. Lwaxana pretends to be interested in Tog, and gains Deanna's return to the cell with Riker by agreeing to discuss with Tog a proposal to use her telepathic abilities in trade negotiations.

Riker entices a Ferengi guard into a chess game, and once outside the cell, Riker quickly overpowers the guard. Once freed, Deanna and Riker attempt to send a message to the ''Enterprise'', only to learn that the ship's communication system is secured by access code. As Lwaxana seduces Tog by rubbing his ears, she receives a telepathic message from Deanna asking her to try to get Tog's access code.

Lwaxana has almost convinced Tog to tell her the code when Farek walks in and catches her in the act. Farek threatens to humiliate Tog by revealing his incompetence to the Ferengi, but offers to forget the incident if Lwaxana is turned over to him for experimentation, despite the fact that the proposed tests may be lethal.

Meanwhile, the ''Enterprise'' leaves the nebula, which has been interfering with communications, and learn from Betazed officials that Riker and the Trois have been kidnapped. Returning to Betazed, the ''Enterprise'' crew discovers flowers indigenous to a Ferengi planet at the spot where Deanna and Riker were last seen. Picard orders a frequency scan to see if Riker has somehow sent a message, but are unable to pick up anything discernible. Riker taps into the system on the ''Krayton'' that suppresses Cochrane distortion from the ship's warp field, and modulates it to generate a signal into a pattern he hopes the ''Enterprise'' crew will recognize.

In the midst of the search, Acting Ensign Wesley Crusher is in final preparation to depart to Earth for his second attempt to pass the Starfleet Academy entrance exam. As he is about to leave, he realizes that the modulated interference itself may be the signal, and rushes back to the Bridge, missing his transport back to Earth. Decoding the signal, Wesley finds Riker has provided the heading of the ''Krayton'' and the ''Enterprise'' heads out in pursuit.

In the meantime, Deanna is experiences pain as she senses the mind probes being used on her mother. Riker, having finished setting up the modulation of the Cochrane distortion, arms himself and bursts into Farek's lab to free Lwaxana, but a standoff ensues when Tog enters with a phaser. Just then the ''Enterprise'' arrives, and Lwaxana buys the release of Troi and Riker by agreeing to stay with Tog. After Riker and Deanna are returned to the ''Enterprise'', Picard plays the role of a jealous lover, describing his love for Lwaxana and telling Tog that if he can not have her no one will, and threatens to destroy the ''Krayton'' if she is not delivered to him immediately. Picard recites parts of three William Shakespeare sonnets (147, 141, and 18) and Canto 27 of "In Memoriam A.H.H.", by Alfred, Lord Tennyson whilst giving orders to fire all weapons at the ''Krayton''. Fearing for his life Daimon Tog hurriedly beams Lwaxana directly to the ''Enterprise'' Bridge and the Ferengi ship quickly departs. So taken is Lwaxana by Picard's poetic profession of "love" for her that she takes her place on his lap in the command chair.

Wesley Crusher is summoned to the ready room by Picard where he is informed that he will have to wait for another year before he can reapply for entrance to Starfleet Academy, but in the interim he will remain on the ''Enterprise''. Picard in light of Wesley's contributions to the ship and crew, gives him a field promotion to full Ensign.

An Afghan father and his daughter, Randa (Bojana Novakovic), arrive in Australia to escape the Taliban. At school Randa is teased for her religion and wearing a hijab. The main character who finished secondary school the previous year, Hal (Abe Forsythe) begins to feel sorry for her and over a course falls in love with her. Although her father initially allows them to date, there is a lot of tension with their culture differences (Randa is a practising Muslim, Hal an atheist).

Soon after the September 11th attacks, Randa's father's house is destroyed by an intentionally lit fire. Hal's father (Morrell) offers them shelter in his house. Later that night, Randa, afraid, sneaks into Hal's room seeking comfort. The two sleep together and are later found in bed by her father. Upset by what has happened, he leaves and refuses to let Hal see Randa.

Hal and Randa continue to see each other in secret, Randa admitting she 'did not regret' what she did with Hal. Eventually their refugee status is rejected and they are ordered to return. Hal and his father try valiantly to think of a way to keep them there, but come up empty handed. Finally Hal, decides that he loves Randa and offers to run away from the law with her. He tells his plan to his father who initially disapproves, but after seeing how much they love each other, allows. He also tells Randa's father, who is initially reluctant. Hal promises to take care of her and her father agrees, realising that Randa will be deported with him unless she leaves. Randa is initially reluctant to leave her father, but ultimately agrees.

They leave on the night of Randa's deportation. Stopping off in a hotel room, they make love tenderly one last time. When Hal awakes, Randa is gone. She leaves him a note explaining she can not leave her father or get him or her father into trouble. He returns, but is too late as he sees Randa and her father on a bus for deportation.

Eventually he decides to go overseas to look for her. He uses the money his mother left to him to buy a plane ticket and the series ends with Hal unsure about what will happen in his search for his love.

Brad Collins, a San Francisco shipping executive (real name Frank Johnson) has recently married Nan Lowry Collins after a brief courtship. Brad was once involved with a communist group in New York while working as a stevedore during the Depression. Shortly after returning home following their honeymoon, the couple meet Christine Norman, an old flame of Brad's. Nan immediately dislikes her.

Brad becomes the target of a Communist cell led by Vanning, who orders an alleged FBI informer drowned after a brief interrogation. After threatening to reveal Brad's responsibility for a murder as well as his communist past, Vanning orders the executive to sabotage the shipping industry in the San Francisco Bay by resisting union demands in a labor dispute. He claims it is impossible to leave the Communist Party. Norman, bitter over being rejected by Brad, is ordered to become closer to his brother-in-law, Don Lowry, and to indoctrinate him with their Communist world view. Norman falls in love with Lowry, despite Vanning saying that she is not meant to be so emotional.

Brad's friend and former boyfriend of Nan, union leader Jim Travers, cannot understand why Brad has become unreasonable to deal with. Travers is concerned about the possibility of the small number of communists in the union being able to take it over, and suspects Norman of being a communist, or at least a fellow traveler. He discusses this with Lowry, who is a new colleague. Lowry denies Norman's politics. She confesses when confronted, but after Lowry rejects her she shows him a photograph of herself with Brad and reveals his communist past. Vanning interrupts them. Angry with Norman for breaking orders, who was supposed to be in Seattle for another two days on her day job as a photographer, Vanning tries to lean on Lowry because he is now able to expose the influence the party has regained over Collins.

Lowry travels to the Collins' residence to inform them of what he has learned, but is run over by a car driven by the communist hit man J.T. Arnold who had observed the earlier killing with Brad. Nan, previously informed by Norman that her brother is in danger, tries to convince her husband that Lowry's killing was not an accident. He pretends to be unconvinced. Confronting Norman, Nan is told of her husband's past, and Norman falsely informs her that Bailey was probably responsible for Lowry's death. Preparing a suicide note, Norman is interrupted by Vanning. He thinks this is a good solution, but wishes to keep politics out of it, so destroys her confession of communist involvement.

Intent on revenge, Nan befriends Bailey at the fairground where he has legitimate employment and goes off with him. The hit man is saved when she is identified, and Nan is kidnapped and taken to the hidden local communist headquarters in Arnold's warehouse. Brad tracks his wife down to this location, and by threatening Arnold with a gun, is able to gain admittance. In a shootout, Bailey and Vanning are killed, and Brad fatally injured. In his last moments Nan says she still loves him.

It is the Summer of 1945 and World War II has ended. The world once again returned to its state of peace. However, a mysterious organization called C.A.N.Y. emerged to conquer the world using super weapons never seen before. It is composed of high-ranking international military officials. Six best fighters, who together form a team called Strikers, have been chosen secretly by United Military Headquarters for a mission against this threat. Near the end of the game it is revealed to the player that C.A.N.Y are actually a race of aliens that set out to take over the world. The last stages have the selected plane travel to the moon to destroy C.A.N.Y's secret base and the true leader, Mecha C.A.N.Y.

On movie night at the nuclear power plant, Homer learns that the plant is being shut down and outsourced to India. After Homer is sent to train the new employees, he becomes power-hungry and is given a self-help book, ''The Cereal Is the Prize'', by Marge for the plane ride. Arriving in India, he seeks help from Apu's cousin Kavi on help with outsourcing. Homer is able to spur the "natives" into a working frenzy — the natives, at first not understanding his confusing speech, assume that if they cheer, they will be allowed to go back to work. Homer, Smithers, and Mr. Burns get a positive albeit slightly inaccurate impression from this, and Homer is put in total charge of the power plant while Burns takes time off to have fun floating down the Ganges with corpses he has befriended. Homer, left in charge of a slightly-overgrown nuclear power plant on a river in the middle of nowhere, appraises the Hindu deities and decides he might be a god himself. About a week later, Lenny and Carl come to the India plant, invited by a card claiming that Homer is to become a god.

Soon, the rest of the Simpson family, worried about Homer, travel to India and, with Burns, journey upriver on a PBR boat and find that Homer is ruling the plant like a god. Horrified, Marge and the kids tell the plant workers that Homer is not a god. They cheerfully explain that they already know, and that they worship him because of the American workplace routines he has instituted, like coffee breaks, early retirement, personal days, and "muffin baskets and mylar balloons on your birthday!". It is revealed that Homer has instituted these routines in the workers' binding contracts, treating the workers as good human beings in exchange for their help for outsourcing the power to Springfield, much to Marge’s relief. Lisa then admits that she is proud of Homer for outsourcing the American worker's sense of entitlement and privilege. However, Mr. Burns calls this “madness” and decides to close down the plant and move it to an area where workers are "more desperate and ignorant" — Springfield. He then fires all the workers; however, this makes the workers delighted due to the various firing clauses Homer has written into their contracts ("Golden parachutes for all!").

Meanwhile, back in Springfield, Patty and Selma meet their Hollywood heart-throb, Richard Dean Anderson, who played MacGyver, who stops by to ask for directions to a convention about his newest show ''Stargate SG-1'', only to find that he is totally uninterested in ''MacGyver'' and only did it for the pay. Patty and Selma kidnap Anderson from his ''Stargate SG-1'' convention and tie him to a chair. From there, he manages to escape by using one of his contact lenses to focus the sunlight and burning the ropes, only to discover that he loves escaping, and starts having Patty and Selma put him through increasingly complex ''MacGyver''-esque kidnapping trials. Patty and Selma eventually tire of Anderson's antics, and decide to drive him away. They sit him down one night and show him slides of their vacation to the horse-drawn carriage museum in Alberta, Canada. Anderson is so overwhelmed with boredom he jumps out the window for good. However, Patty and Selma later manage to track him down to India and join the Simpson’s family.

This psychological thriller tells the story of Jeff Cohalan (Young). He is a successful architect who is tormented because his fiancée, Vivian Sheppard, was killed in a mysterious car accident on the night before their wedding. Blaming himself for her death, Cohalan spends his time alone, lamenting in the state-of-the-art cliff-top home he had designed for his bride-to-be.

Cohalan notices that ever since the accident, he seems to be followed by bad luck. Without explanation, his horse turns up horribly injured and he must put it down, his dog is poisoned and dies. These events lead Cohalan to wonder if he has been cursed.

He meets a woman named Ellen (Drake), and they are immediately attracted to each other. She soon learns about Jeff's past and begins to suspect that he may be much more in danger than he himself realizes.

It turns out that his partner in architecture, Ben Sheppard, was trying to destroy him. Sheppard, who was Vivian's father, held Jeff responsible for her death. But the driver of the car had been a married man with whom Vivian was having an affair. Ben himself had a wife run away from him, and has a psychotic break when confronted with the truth behind his daughter's car crash. Thinking Ellen is Vivian, and angry about his wife running off, Ben shoots at Ellen. Jeff gets hit protecting Ellen, but both survive.

Focusing on the ''Madagascar'' penguins and taking place before the events of the first ''Madagascar'', the youngest penguin on the team, Private, slips out of the zoo on Christmas Eve to find a present for a lonely polar bear named Ted. While roaming the streets of Manhattan, he is captured by Nana (the aggressive elderly lady from the first film and second film) who mistakes him for a chew toy for her vicious dog, Mr Chew. The other three penguins, Skipper, Kowalski, and Rico, rescue Private from Nana's apartment before it is too late. They escalate into chaos against Mr. Chew, all-the-while, not noticed by Nana, who is occupied watching a football game. When they are done, they detonate the door with a stick of dynamite (which Rico had repeatedly attempted to use prior), finally attracting Nana's attention and leaving Mr. Chew to take the fall for what the penguins have done to her place.

At the end of the film they invite Ted to their home. But he has already invited several other guests, resulting in a massive sing-a-long to a parody of Jingle Bells.

An officer in the violent crimes division, Dae-ro is a hero in his daughter Hyun-ji's eyes, but in fact he's a corrupt cop, interested only in bribe money and pretty women. He is totally selfish and takes great pains to keep himself out of harm's way, avoiding the danger inherent in his job. One day, while in pursuit of a suspect, Dae-ro faints and is taken to the hospital. There he is told that he has a brain tumor and has about three months to live at most. To provide for his daughter's financial security, Dae-ro plots his own death that will appear accidental so that she will collect a sizable insurance premium.

While visiting a cave, Homer meddles with a very fragile stalactite, causing the family to fall deep into the caves. Homer is stuck hanging upside down from a narrow hole, and while Marge and Bart try to find a way out, Lisa tells him a story to pass the time.

In Lisa's story, a bighorn sheep begins to attack her. She runs to the nearest shelter, Mr. Burns' house, and they hide in the attic. There, Lisa finds a photo of Burns as an employee at Moe's Tavern, and he tells her the origins of it. Burns explains that he and Rich Texan were once involved in a scavenger hunt, with the winner getting all the possessions of the loser. Burns was able to get every item besides one: a picture of himself with a smiling child. The Texan won, and Burns had to get a job at Moe's to regain his fortune. While working, he finds a letter by Moe about his secret treasure.

The summer before Edna Krabappel was to begin teaching, she and Moe met and fell in love. Moe wanted to leave Springfield with her but had no money, only for Snake, a polite idealistic archaeologist, to bring a large amount of gold coins he intended to donate to a museum. Moe stole them from Snake, leading him to begin a life of crime. Before Moe and Edna are about to leave, Edna stops by Springfield Elementary School and finds Bart with detention over the summer, claiming he does bad in school because nobody believes in him. Edna tells Moe that she will stay in Springfield to help Bart succeed. Back in the cave, Bart explains that he was lying to distract Edna and help Nelson steal classroom equipment.

Moe became depressed and used his coins to play music he and Edna liked on the tavern's jukebox repeatedly. After reading the letter, Burns took the coins from the jukebox and bought his possessions back from the Texan; he complies, but refuses to give the nuclear power plant back until Burns completes the scavenger hunt. The sheep bursts into the attic, and Burns gets hurt defending Lisa. The sheep shows that it found Lisa's pearl necklace and was merely trying to return it. Lisa, in gratitude, takes a photo of her and Burns together, allowing him to get the plant back from the Texan.

After Lisa's story, Homer breaks free from the hole. He reveals that he saw the Texan hide the gold coins in the cave, and brought the family there to steal them. Just then, the Texan shows up, and the gold is found. Moe, Burns, and Snake appear, and enter a Mexican standoff. When Marge grabs the bag of coins and drops it into a chasm, everyone realizes how greedy they had been and thank her for getting rid of the gold.

The episode is revealed to have been a story by Bart, talking to Principal Skinner as to why he was unable to study for a test. Skinner is unconvinced until he sees Edna making out with Moe outside of the school. When Moe asks Edna why she forgives him, she says that she "just wants a man with a healthy libido." Moe is unable to fulfill this request, and the Texan cheers, "Moe can't catch a break!"

The story is divided into thirty very short chapters which permit the author to rapidly change situations and environments, bringing alternatively to the forefront the different subjects involved in the singular plan conceived by Marcantonio Ravì, the cause of odd and unpredictable events. This overweight, tenacious father of Stellina has an ''idee fixe'' which will, he believes, bring about the happiness of his daughter: establish a ''turn''. That is to say, he will give her over as wife to the aging and well-off Don Diego Alcozèr, and then, after his death, consign her, fabulously wealthy and contented, to her desperate but dirt poor admirer Pepè Alletto. Marcantonio is so convinced of the efficacy of this idea that he goes around the city talking about it to everyone in order to get their consent, obstinately insisting that he's right with the comic intercalation "ragioniamo!" (let's reason about this!). But the majority of the people he meets, as soon as they hear the name of the decrepit Alcozèr, "spit out a laugh." The proposition of the plan dominates the first chapter with the agitated figure of Marcantonio Ravì. His son-in-law ''in pectoris'' Diego Alcozèr, sprightly old man, widower of four wives and gaudy dandy with his "small watery furtive bald eyes", having already been "a conqueror of dames in crinoline from the epoch of Ferdinand II king of the Two Sicilies", emerges in the second chapter, where he excitedly chats with his future father-in-law about preparations for the surrender of Stellina. To these two "human stains" a third is added in the following chapter in which Pepè Alletto, the beneficiary of the "turn", takes the fore. What strikes the reader as curious is the fact that Marcantonio Ravì's plan takes him completely by surprise; in reality he it not a true "desperate admirer". He likes Stellina, but because of his lack of courage and his precarious economic conditions, he would never have dared to even think of marrying her. He is incapable of choosing and must always depend on the choices of others.

Pepé Alletto is the typical representative of a certain melancholic nobility of the provinces, deeply lazy and morally weak. He lives in the shadow of his aging mother who would never allow him to work (and he obviously adapts himself well to this situation) out of a misbegotten concept of the dignity of her state. Pepé passes the day taking care of his appearance, dreaming of the great city. The idea of the "turn" offers him an unexpected goal, a beautiful wife and a large heredity in view, the solution to all of his problems without too much work.

The marriage is filled with scenes of exhilarating comedy: the decrepit Don Diego wears for the occasion "the long napoleon which has survived through four weddings." Such antiquity contrasts miserably with the freshness of Stellina, whose appearance "illuminated the party." Pepé breaks through this dishonest and uncomfortable atmosphere of false compliments and badly dissimulated commiseration when, responding to the solicitations of the guests, he feels invested with the part of future husband and begins playing the piano, singing and conducting the dances. The hysterical crisis of Stellina, who faints after her ancient husband spills the rosolio onto her white dress because of the uncontrollable trembling of his hands, is the event that shatters the apparatus of hypocrisy that Marcantonio had laboriously constructed around himself. But he continues to awkwardly search for vain excuses while the guests hurry to get out of the party. From this point on events precipitate out of control as everything becomes a prey to chance: Pepé, the maldextrous cavalier, gets himself caught up in a duel in order to defend Stellina, a situation which he could have easily avoided had he not asked for help from his overweening and domineering brother-in-law, the lawyer Ciro Coppa, who insists that he must ''challenge his adversary'' or be looked on as a coward. Pepé loses and ends up seriously wounded, as he will lose Stellina herself after continually begging Cirro to intervene in his favour. After the death of his wife, Ciro, in fact, marries Stellina, who has lost her patience and can no longer wait for the death of her elderly husband, himself.

Ciro inserts himself arrogantly...in the turn, marrying Stellina and rendering her a slave to his insane jealousies. But, once again against all narrative expectations, the robust and optimistic lawyer dies before his time. His two sons and those of his sister must now stay with Pepé who, in the final scene, next to the salm of his brother-in-law, squeezes them to his breast while waiting for a look of consensus from Stellina.

The last words of Marcantonio Ravì underscore the contradictions of chance, ''deus ex machina'' of the entire novel: "This one, who looked like a lion, look at him here: dead! And that old worm, healthy and full of life! Tomorrow the other one will marry Tina Mèndola, your good friend..." These are bitter words for him, especially if one remembers that Tina is the daughter of the hated Carmela Mèndola who insistently stigmatized the union between Stellina and the old Don Diego, defining it as "a mortal sin which cries out for vengeance!"

It's understandable why Pirandello defined the story as "gay if not light-hearted". The desire to play games exhausts itself in a firework of exhilarating invention; but in the background there is always the shadow of the discontent of each character, whose desires are never, and can never be, fulfilled. They are nullified by unpredictable and uncontrollable events.

LAPD Sergeant Joe Friday's nephew and namesake, whose anachronistic views reflect those of his late uncle, is involuntarily assigned a cocky, streetwise new partner, Pep Streebek. Their contrasting styles clash at first, with Friday disapproving of Streebek's attitude, hairstyle, and wardrobe. However, they start to bond while investigating a series of bizarre thefts. One of the stolen items is the entire print run of ''Bait'', a pornographic magazine published by Jerry Caesar. Reverend Jonathan Whirley has been leading a moral crusade against Caesar's business.

The trail leads Friday and Streebek to a cult calling itself P.A.G.A.N. (People Against Goodness and Normalcy), and they focus on member Emil Muzz, who also works as Caesar's limousine driver. Under interrogation, Muzz reveals the time and place of a secret ceremony. Friday and Streebek sneak in, disguised as members, and witness a masked leader using several of the stolen items in a ritual leading up to a virgin sacrifice.

The leader throws the victim, Connie Swail (referred to as "the virgin Connie Swail"), into a pit of water with an anaconda. Friday and Streebek disrupt the ritual, saving Connie and subduing the snake, and report the incident to their boss Captain Bill Gannon. However, when Gannon and Police Commissioner Jane Kirkpatrick (who is running for mayor) visit the site with them the next day, no evidence of the ritual can be found. Kirkpatrick removes Friday and Streebek from the case.

Streebek gets a tip on the whereabouts of a load of chemicals stolen by P.A.G.A.N. that can be used to mass-produce a toxic gas. He and Friday lead a SWAT team to raid the location, which proves to be an ordinary milk factory; the chemicals and gas-making equipment are actually hidden next door. With no further leads to follow, Streebek tags along on a birthday dinner for Friday and his grandmother, and Connie soon joins them at Friday's invitation. During dinner, Connie identifies Whirley (at another table with Gannon and Kirkpatrick) as the P.A.G.A.N. leader. Friday attempts to arrest Whirley, but the corrupt Kirkpatrick, whose mayoral campaign is being secretly bankrolled by Whirley and Caesar, overrules him and relieves him of duty. Gannon takes Friday's badge and gun and orders Streebek to stay away from Whirley.

As Friday takes Connie home, Muzz captures them and takes them to the Griffith Observatory, where Whirley reveals to them his plan to kill Caesar at a reunion party for the models of ''Bait''. He has his men take Connie to his private jet and prepares to kill Friday, but Streebek arrives just in time, having forced Muzz to reveal Friday's whereabouts at gunpoint. Streebek infiltrates Caesar's mansion and disrupts the P.A.G.A.N. plans to release the gas made from the stolen chemicals, just before Whirley sets fire to the stolen magazines to cover his escape. Gannon arrives with SWAT teams and Friday crashes the estate gates with an armored vehicle. Streebek personally arrests Muzz while Friday is thanked for stopping the gas attack by a grateful Caesar. Gannon reinstates Friday and returns his badge so he can pursue Whirley.

At the airport, Whirley meets Kirkpatrick and then abandons her and takes off with Connie as his hostage. The following morning, Friday catches up to him in a police jet and forces him to land. Whirley is convicted on multiple charges and received "43 consecutive 99-year sentences" in the Men's Correctional Institue in Chino (Kirkpatrick's fate is never given, though the exposure of her criminal activity means the end of her career), while Friday continues his partnership with Streebek and begins dating Connie, who is no longer called "the virgin" by Friday.

The story revolves around the journeys and trials of twins Ryushi and Kia. Forced to flee from their home during a violent and seemingly unprovoked attack by the forces of the King they adored, they are pressed to reconsider their naive world-view caused by their sheltered upbringing as they are caught up in events beyond their control and larger than either of them imagined. What starts with an underground resistance soon develops into a full-fledged rebellion against the tyrannical King Macaan and his equally malicious daughter Aurin, with Kia, Ryushi and all those close to them at the center of it all.

Crew members Tom Paris, B'Elanna Torres, and Peter Durst have gone missing on a mission. They have been captured by the Vidiians. Vidiian Chief Surgeon Sulan has conducted a procedure on Torres, changing her from a half-human, half-Klingon hybrid into two bodies (a full-blooded Klingon and a full-blooded human). He infects Klingon Torres with the Phage, a deadly disease that afflicts his species but to which Klingons have a natural immunity, so he can study her genetics. Commander Chakotay, Security Chief Tuvok, and Ensign Harry Kim form a search party but are discovered by the Vidiians and beam back to the USS ''Voyager''. Sulan examines the Klingon Torres while she experiences pain from the Phage. Klingon Torres expresses pride in her Klingon identity, though she remembers hiding her Klingon heritage as a child. Recognizing Sulan's attraction to her, she tries to seduce the scientist and escape, but his desire to find a cure overcomes his lust. The human version of Torres is kept imprisoned with Paris and Durst. Human Torres is characterized as weaker and more timid than her Klingon counterpart, and is deemed too ill to work in the mines. She secretly works on a security console in the barracks in an attempt to contact ''Voyager'' but is caught.

Meanwhile, Sulan kills Durst and grafts his face over his own to appear more appealing to the Klingon Torres. Klingon Torres escapes from Sulan's laboratory, and rescues her human version. After arguing about their respective weaknesses, and past expulsion from Starfleet Academy, the two halves formulate a plan. Human Torres suggests shutting down the shields for the complex so that ''Voyager'' can transport them to the ship, while the Klingon Torres deals with guards. Chakotay, disguised as a Vidiian guard with the help of the Doctor, breaks into the facility at the same time Torres deactivates the shields. Klingon Torres sacrifices herself to protect the rest of the crew members from Sulan. Transported back to ''Voyager'', Klingon Torres refuses medical help to die an honorable death. The Doctor explains that Human Torres would not survive without her Klingon half and restores her to her original self by reintegrating the Klingon DNA. Human Torres admits to feeling incomplete without her Klingon half. After being restored, she realizes that she will spend the rest of her life dealing with her inner conflict.Ruditis (2003): pp. 41 42.

A pregnant servant woman named Clara commits suicide after the family of a wealthy socialite, Ralph Wilhern, disapproved of their marriage. In revenge, Clara's witch mother cursed the next Wilhern daughter to be born with the face of a pig. The curse can only be lifted when "one of her own kind" learns to love her. For generations, only sons were born into the family, until Penelope (Christina Ricci) is born as the first true-blooded pig-faced daughter. To prevent publicity of Penelope's face, her mother Jessica (Catherine O'Hara) faked her daughter's death and shut her away in their mansion. When Penelope turned 18, her parents interpret the curse's counter as the love of a man of similar social status.

For the next seven years, Penelope and her family go through several possible suitors, but all of them flee in terror, including Edward Humphrey Vanderman III (Simon Woods). He works with tabloid reporter Lemon (Peter Dinklage) to photograph Penelope's face. They pay the young blue blood Max Campion (James McAvoy) to pose as a new suitor for Penelope, hiding a camera in his jacket. After having conversations with Penelope through a one-way mirror, Max and Penelope develop genuine feelings for each other; however, when Max sees her face, he is shocked (but not frightened) and accidentally triggers the camera. Regretful about his attempts to exploit Penelope, Max calls off his agreement with Lemon and Vanderman (though Jessica and matchmaker Wanda catch him doing so) and destroys the camera. Penelope tells Max that if they marry the curse will lift but Max sadly declines.

Finally having had enough of the match-making and inspired by Max's conversations about the outside world, Penelope flees home and journeys out into the city, selling photos of herself to Lemon to prove her existence to the world while using a scarf to cover her nose to keep anonymous. She is spotted by her parents and runs back to the bar she frequents, subsequently passing out, leading her friend Annie (Reese Witherspoon) to remove Penelope's scarf and reveal her as the elusive Penelope to the other guests. Penelope becomes an overnight celebrity, gaining adoring fans who are not disgusted by her face.

Meanwhile, Vanderman's father, having seen the public's fondness for Penelope and embarrassed by his son's vocal cruelty toward her, coerces Edward into proposing to her. Lemon eventually discovers that the man he and Vanderman recruited to photograph Penelope is not the real Max Campion, but actually Johnny Martin, after the real Campion (Nick Frost) is imprisoned for armed robbery. Lemon conveys Johnny's true identity and feelings for Penelope to Jessica and Wanda, but Jessica chooses not to let Penelope know the truth. During the wedding ceremony, Penelope realizes that she does not want to marry simply to break the curse, despite her mother's desperate wishes; she reasons that she likes herself the way she is. This breaks the curse, as Penelope has been loved by "one of her own kind" – herself – and her pig snout and ears disappear.

Penelope moves on and becomes an elementary school horticulture teacher, and the public's interest in her dissipates. She eventually learns from Wanda the truth about "Max Campion" / Johnny Martin. She reunites with Johnny, who is still unaware the curse was broken, at a Halloween party while wearing a pig mask. After an awkward reunion between the two, Johnny kisses Penelope. Penelope then takes off her mask and reveals she had the power to lift the curse all along, and the two begin a romantic relationship. Jake, the Wilhern butler, mute Jessica for how she treated Penelope. He then revealed to be Clara's witch mother who cast the original curse. Lemon is also seen discreetly watching Johnny and Penelope at a park and is tempted to take a photo of them to prove that Penelope's curse has been lifted. He ultimately decides against it.

The series follows Koichi, a Japanese schoolboy, who learns that he is the reincarnation of the alien entity, Babel. As such, Koichi is entrusted with Babel's powers and joined by three protectors: Rodem, a shape-shifting black panther; Ropross, a pterodactyl-like flying creature; and Poseidon, a giant robot that always rises from the depth of the ocean when summoned. The boy hero commands his newfound powers and companions in order to defend the Earth.

There is a boy called registration number "''101''" (one-zero-one) in a secret laboratory which is administered by the CIA. The boy is Koichi Yamano, who was once called Babel II and saved the world. Koichi discovers that his blood has the ability to save lives, and he provides the laboratory with his blood after fighting with Yomi.

However, he notices that the laboratory transfused his blood into subjects and produced supermen like him artificially. He escapes from the lab and decides to exterminate the supermen produced by his blood that are scattered all over the world.

As a result, the enemy sends espers to fight him one after another. Unfortunately, the three servants of Babel II, Lodem, Ropross, and Poseidon are confined in an underground nuclear test site by the CIA, so Koichi is forced to fight alone.

On June 17, 1972, security guard Frank Wills at the Watergate complex finds a door's bolt taped over to prevent it from locking. He calls the police, who find and arrest five burglars in the Democratic National Committee headquarters within the complex. The next morning, ''The Washington Post'' assigns new reporter Bob Woodward to the local courthouse to cover the story, which is considered of minor importance.

Woodward learns that the five men—James W. McCord Jr. and four Cuban-Americans from Miami—possessed electronic bugging equipment and are represented by a high-priced "country club" attorney. At the arraignment, McCord identifies himself in court as having recently left the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the others are also revealed to have CIA ties. Woodward connects the burglars to E. Howard Hunt, an employee of President Richard Nixon's White House counsel Charles Colson, and formerly of the CIA.

Carl Bernstein, another ''Post'' reporter, is assigned to cover the Watergate story with Woodward. The two young men are reluctant partners but work well together. Executive editor Benjamin Bradlee believes that their work lacks reliable sources and is not worthy of the ''Post'''s front page, but he encourages further investigation.

Woodward contacts a senior government official, an anonymous source whom he has used before and refers to as "Deep Throat." Communicating secretly, using a flag placed in a balcony flowerpot to signal meetings, they meet at night in an underground parking garage. Deep Throat speaks in riddles and metaphors, avoiding substantial facts about the Watergate break-in, but advises Woodward to "follow the money."

Woodward and Bernstein connect the five burglars to corrupt activities involving campaign contributions to Nixon's Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP or CREEP). This includes a check for $25,000 paid by Kenneth H. Dahlberg, whom Miami authorities identified when investigating the Miami-based burglars. However, Bradlee and others at the ''Post'' still doubt the investigation and its dependence on sources such as Deep Throat, wondering why the Nixon administration should break the law when the president is almost certain to defeat his opponent, Democratic nominee George McGovern.

Through former CREEP treasurer Hugh W. Sloan, Jr., Woodward and Bernstein connect a slush fund of hundreds of thousands of dollars to White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman—"the second most important man in this country"—and to former attorney general John N. Mitchell, now head of CREEP. They learn that CREEP was financing a "ratfucking" campaign to sabotage Democratic presidential candidates a year before the Watergate burglary, when Nixon was lagging Edmund Muskie in the polls.

While Bradlee's demand for thoroughness compels the reporters to obtain other sources to confirm the Haldeman connection, the White House issues a non-denial denial of the ''Post'''s above-the-fold story. Bradlee continues to encourage investigation.

Woodward again meets secretly with Deep Throat and demands that he be less evasive. Deep Throat reveals that Haldeman masterminded the Watergate break-in and cover-up. He also states that the cover-up was not just intended to camouflage the CREEP involvement but also to hide "covert operations" involving "the entire U.S. intelligence community," including the CIA and FBI. He warns Woodward and Bernstein that their lives, and those of others, are in danger. When the two relay this information to Bradlee, he urges them to carry on despite the risk.

On January 20, 1973, Bernstein and Woodward type the full story, while a television in the newsroom shows Nixon taking the oath of office for his second term as president. A montage of Watergate-related teletype headlines from the following years is shown, ending with the report of Nixon's resignation and the inauguration of Gerald Ford on August 9, 1974.

George Beard, Harold Hutchins, Sulu, and Crackers have now ended up in an alternate universe in Melvin's time machine, where the whole world is the opposite of their normal world (instead of being perched up in a tree in the Cretaceous Period of the Mesozoic Era). For example, Melvin Sneedly is dimwitted and struggling to comprehend a simple children's book (which contains content considered offensive in the normal universe), the teachers are nice, the school is better, all the previous villains are good, normal citizens, and Mr. Krupp is nice and has a sense of humor (Like Captain Underpants does). George and Harold soon see evil versions of themselves and learn through one of their evil twins' comics that they had turned their Mr. Krupp into an evil supervillain named Captain Blunderpants (who acts like Mr. Krupp). Sulu and Crackers are kidnapped by Evil George and Evil Harold and are hypnotized to be evil, and then ordered to destroy George and Harold. Sulu immediately attacks, but Crackers does the opposite and saves them (due to secretly being female).

George, Harold, and Crackers are able to escape to their normal dimension and head to the treehouse, unaware that Nice Mr. Krupp, Sulu, Evil George and Evil Harold came with them (due to standing too close to the machine). Evil George and Evil Harold transform Nice Mr. Krupp into Captain Blunderpants by getting water on his head. Meanwhile, George and Harold decide to head back to the other dimension to rescue and de-hypnotize Sulu and take the 3D Hypno-Ring and Extra-Strength Super Power Juice just in case. However, Mr. Beard stops George and Harold from leaving the house and forces them to come inside as it is Grandparent's Day so they can eat dinner with George's Great-Grandmother and Harold's Grandfather at George's house. While George and Harold try to explain to Mr. Beard they need to leave, George and Harold's grandparents unknowingly drink the rest of the Extra-Strength Super Power Juice while reading a comic George and Harold wrote.

Soon, Evil George and Evil Harold find the treehouse, rummage through it and find the "Goosy-Grow 4000", which they use to transform Sulu into a giant monster. Sulu charges at George and Harold, but Crackers flies in and carries George and Harold away while Sulu attacks the city and Evil George, Evil Harold, and Captain Blunderpants rob a bank. When George and Harold try to drink the Extra-Strength Super Power Juice, they discover it is empty, despite there being a third of juice earlier. George explains that there is only one plan left they can resort to now. They go to Mr. Krupp's house (which George and Harold covered in toilet paper at an earlier point) and knock on his door. Right after Mr. Krupp answers, George and Harold quickly snap their fingers and Mr. Krupp turns into Captain Underpants, who then defeats Sulu. Evil George, Evil Harold, and Captain Blunderpants return from robbing the bank, and order Captain Blunderpants to fight Captain underpants, but George snaps his finger and turns Captain Blunderpants back into Nice Mr. Krupp, having learned how to do so from the double's comic.

Captain Underpants ties the alternate counterparts up, but when Harold states that nothing can go wrong, George warns him about saying things like that, and then a rain storm suddenly hits and turns Nice Mr. Krupp back into Captain Blunderpants and Captain Underpants back into Mr. Krupp. George and Harold try snapping their fingers, but the rain is pouring too hard on them. Mr. Krupp can't figure out how he got outside, so he goes back to his soggy toilet paper-covered home to get back to bed while Captain Blunderpants frees himself and Evil George and Evil Harold.

George and Harold fly away on Crackers while the doubles pursue them. After arriving at the Treehouse, George finds the Shrinky-Pig 2000, which they could use to shrink their counterparts. Unfortunately, it is too late as Captain Blunderpants grabs the two by their Shirts while the Shrinky-Pig 2000 is taken by Evil George and Evil Harold. Before Captain Blunderpants can finish off George and Harold, George and Harold's grandparents arrive and order Captain Blunderpants to put down their grandchildren, but he refuses, causing George and Harold's grandparents to transform into Boxer Boy and Great-Granny Girdle (having been inspired by George and Harold's comic). They then battle and defeat Captain Blunderpants, saving their grandchildren. George then notes that their grandparents had drunk the rest of the Extra-Strength Super Power Juice earlier.

However, Evil George and Evil Harold appear and plan to use the Shrinky-Pig 2000 on George, Harold, and their grandparents, but Harold uses reverse psychology and claims they can go right ahead as they are holding the device backwards. Evil George and Evil Harold believe this and turn the Shrinky-Pig 2000 around before activating it, resulting in themselves being shrunk. After punishing the evil twins by spanking them, George and Harold's grandparents fly off for a romantic dinner, George and Harold de-hypnotize and shrink Sulu back to normal, and then take Evil George, Evil Harold, and Captain Blunderpants back to their own universe into the Purple Potty.

Harold states everything had worked out perfectly, but then two policemen arrive to arrest them because they think they are the evil George and Harold who robbed a bank with Captain Blunderpants and stated that it looks like they are going to jail for the rest of their lives. A bummed Harold remarks that things cannot get any worse despite George's earlier warnings. Suddenly, a robotic pair of pants appears, piloted by Tippy Tinkletrousers (Professor Poopypants who changed his name at the end of Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants). When the cops laugh at Tinkletrouser's name, he freezes them with his Freeze Beam 4000 and begins chasing George, Harold, Crackers and Sulu.

Comics

Comic 1: ''The Preposterous Plight of Captain Blunderpants'' (by evil Harold and George)

The alternative boys hypnotize nice Mr. Krupp into becoming Captain Blunderpants to steal things for them. One day, he is chased by an angry cop for stealing a pizza and is involved in a truck accident, mixing chemicals with peanut butter that give him superpowers. He flies to the evil twins with their pizza. From that point, Nice Mr. Krupp turns into Captain Blunderpants by getting his head wet and de-hypnotized by the snap of a finger.

Comic 2: ''Adventures of Boxer Boy and Great Granny Girdle'' (by the real George and Harold)

One day, a UFO lands on Earth and opens a store that trades improved Robo-Geezers for real grandparents, which everyone but George and Harold does. One day, their grandparents sneak into the factory and find the other grandparents inside a "slaves room", along with superpower hard candies, which they end up eating. Meanwhile, the store owners discuss their plan. Having made the grandparents slaves, they will feed them the hard candy, giving them superpowers, and allowing the owners to take over the world. When they walk into the slave room, George and Harold's grandparents had eaten all the candy, causing them to become Boxer Boy and Great Granny Girdle, who chase the bad guys into the UFO. They then order all the Robo-Geezers to attack, who quickly outnumber Boxer Boy and Great Granny Girdle. While Great Granny Girdle has the Robo-Geezers chase her, Boxer Boy attacks the UFO and makes it look like hard candy, causing the Robo-Geezers to start eating the UFO in a feeding frenzy, until one bites the fuel line, and blows up all the bad guys. The boys' Grandparents fly back and set the kidnapped grandparents free.

Despite The Earth entirely in ruins from devastation by post-apocalyptic mass destruction, an underground economy is still around for tourism of various vacation locales around the destroyed United States. This economy is largely controlled by the bloodthirsty sadist "Big Daddy" and shaped in an image resembling him. And only wealthy people can afford these expensive resort prices, so an organization called the "A.A.A" (which stands "Amalgamated Association of Auto-mercenaries") is established to hijack tourists into these sites for discounted photo ops. The playable characters join the A.A.A. and controls one of several mercenary drivers controlling a heavily-armed ground combat vehicle fighting opponents to earn cash from tourists they pick up, bringing them to these photo ops, and on unauthorized vacations.

''Rebel'' begins in Richmond, Virginia after the fall of Fort Sumter, Charleston, South Carolina when Starbuck is trying to visit his friend Adam Faulconer. Starbuck is saved from an attack by Richmond's residents who think that he is a Yankee spy by Faulconer's rich father Washington Faulconer. Faulconer wishes to raise a regiment to fight the Yankees, and he appoints Starbuck as one of his aides, with the rank of second lieutenant. Starbuck is there by circumstance, not for politics, and he is given the task of recruiting a tough Mexican–American War veteran named Thomas Truslow, who lives in the fictional Faulconer County. He succeeds by dedicating the grave of Truslow's wife and officiating in the marriage of his wayward daughter Sally Truslow. Many other events occur between this and the start of the hostilities, when the Faulconer Legion marches off to the First Battle of Bull Run. It is here that Starbuck alienates himself from Faulconer. ''Copperhead'' follows Starbuck during the period of the Union invasion of the Confederacy by the Army of the Potomac under General McClellan. ''Battle Flag'' is set during the Second Battle of Bull Run. ''The Bloody Ground'' follows Starbuck as the Confederate army under Robert E. Lee invades the North, culminating in the Battle of Antietam.

After murdering two orderlies, Robert Griffin escapes from the secluded Cape Town mental institution where he has been committed, and now he is looking for revenge on the respectable Herrick family. A family consisting of Sir Jasper and lady Irene, and their daughter Julie, who are engaged in entertaining, and inspecting, Julie's new boyfriend, newspaper journalist Mark Foster, in the family residence. Later that night Julie and Mark leave the residence together, and Sir Jasper and lady Irene are left alone. That's when Robert decides to pay the couple a visit. Quite unexpectedly he enters the residence and accuses the couple of leaving him to die out in the African wild, injured when they were on a safari together. The Herrick couple defends themselves, claiming they were told that he was dead and not injured, but Robert doesn't buy their explanation. He demands they give him his share of the diamond fields they all discovered together on the safari. Jasper tries to tell Robert that the diamond fields were all lost in a series of bad investments. Robert refuses to give in, threatening to sue the Herricks, and to calm him down and get him off their backs, they offer him a share in an estate, the Shortlands. His counter-proposal is that they should arrange for him to be married to their daughter Julie. After saying this, he is drugged by Lady Irene and passes out in their home. The Herricks realize that their old friend and companion has gone completely mad, and while they are frightened of what he could do to them if they don't comply to his wish, they see no problem with stealing the agreement made or pushing him further along the path of insanity with their betrayal. They search Robert's clothes and find the written partnership agreement they all entered into some time ago. Taking the paper, they next callously throw Robert out of their house. Robert nearly drowns where he lies, unconscious, but is saved by a local Cockney cobbler by the name of Herbert Higgins.

Herbert decides to use this newfound possibility - the information he got from Robert - to blackmail the Herricks. He is unsuccessful, as Jasper calls on chief constable Sir Frederick Travers. The chief constable declares Robert's claims to the Herricks' estate as void and orders him to leave his jurisdiction. Robert leaves for London, but on his way he happens to come by the home of eager scientist Dr. Peter Drury. This scientist is involved in some questionable research, and is very eager to find a suitable subject to test his new experimental formula on - a formula for invisibility. Robert asks that the doctor try it on him, and he agrees, completely in the dark of the fact that Robert wants to use this to get his revenge on the Herricks. Robert forces Jasper to sign over their entire estate to him. He also finds time to help his saviour Herbert to win a game of darts at the local inn. Jasper secretly also agrees to give his daughter's hand in marriage to Robert - if he ever regains his visibility. Robert goes back to the scientists laboratory and witnesses how the doctor restores visibility to his dog Brutus, by giving him a blood transfusion. Robert breaks into the laboratory and knocks the doctor unconscious, before performing a blood transfusion on himself, using the doctor's blood. The transfusion results in the doctor's death, and to avoid capture, Robert sets the laboratory on fire and takes off just before the police arrive on the scene.

Robert changes his identity to "Martin Field" and moves in with the Herricks at the estate which he is now owner of. When Herbert finds out about Robert's return he makes a futile attempt to blackmail him too, and out of pity - and perhaps thankfulness - Robert pays the man one thousand pounds to get rid of him. Robert has one condition for paying the money: that Herbert kills the doctor's dog Brutus, who has followed Robert back to the Herrick estate after the fire. Robert starts losing his visibility one day at the breakfast table, with Julie and her fiancé Mark present. He tricks Mark to follow him down into the wine cellar, where he knocks the man out, starting another, second blood transfusion with Mark's blood. Chief Constable Travers arrives at the estate after he has found out about Robert's return. With some help from Herbert and Jasper they break into the cellar just as the transfusion is about to be completed, in time to save Mark's life. Robert is attacked by the still very much alive Brutus, and killed. Mark tells the others that Griffin went insane when he was locked up in the asylum, and meant no one any harm until he escaped.

Protagonist Choi Han-Jung, who was imprisoned for his independence activism, succeeds in breaking out of prison. Upon escaping, he stays with a comrade in the cause for independence, Park Jin-beom. He meets his other political comrades in a basement under a house built in a western-style and persuades them to continue their resistance to the Japanese Kenpeitai in the 1940s when the fall of the Japanese empire was imminent. However, a member of the movement gets caught by the Japanese while moving the dynamite, which leads to Choi striving to save him and ends up surrounded by the Japanese military police. He hides in the residence of Mi-hyang, who is a mistress of the Japanese police high official Nanbu (南部). A gunfight with the Kenpeitai ensues, which leads to Choi being injured and imprisoned in a university hospital while receiving treatment. With the help of nurse Hye-ja who loved Choi, Han-jung can keep doing his endeavors for independence. With the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Korea gains its independence due to Japan's surrender. While the streets of Jongno celebrate the event, Han-jung searches for the tomb of Mi-hyang, who lost her life.

The plot is fairly simple. In the first half, when the ship is stranded but unharmed, the mood is bucolic and philosophical, and the main challenge Hisako has is to pass the time in a tropical lake. She has an affair with one of the ship's officers and they go scuba diving together. She practises the cello.

She is worried about the future, and has violent nightmares and flashbacks to her early life in Japan.

She also spends time with the other passengers, among them a South African engineer and an erudite Egyptian.

In the much darker second half, the book becomes an almost ''Die Hard''-like thriller. Guerrillas (who turn out to be agents provocateur) take over the ship. The rebels kill everybody aboard except Hisako and rape her. She avenges herself, killing the pirates. The violence of the rebel takeover and of Hisako's revenge is described very graphically.

When a thief driving a motorcycle steals a purse of a pedestrian, the clumsy, naive and honest rookie policeman Sang-hwan runs after him, but Eui-jin, specialist in martial arts, captures the criminal swang and Sang-hwan is severely injured. She brings Sang-hwan to her home, where the six Masters of Tao heal him and believe that he has a powerful Qi, the spiritual energy of the universe, and could be a powerful warrior. Sang-hwan begins his training to ascend to a Maruchi, while the evil and ambitious Heuk-woon is accidentally released from his imprisonment. The powerful Heuk-woon attacks the masters, searching for a key that they protect, which would permit him to become an Arahan and dominate the world. When the masters are defeated, Sang-hwan and Eui-jin are the only and last hope to mankind.

The story is told in flashback, once from the perspective of the protagonist, and then a second time with a deeper understanding that is provided by the intelligence officer in London.

A Scotsman, RAF Sgt. John Dougall (John Blythe), a downed Royal Air Force air gunner who was previously a prisoner of war, explains how he travelled with great difficulty through German-occupied France. He was accompanied most of the way by a companion who was another escaped prisoner of war, and they were both aided by various courageous Resistance workers. His companion gave him a letter to deliver once he reached London, supposedly a very personal and private letter.

However, when we see the Intelligence officer's explanation of the same events, it becomes clear that the gunner's companion, who was supposedly helping him along, was in fact a Gestapo spy, who murdered several of the Resistance fighters and reported the rest to the authorities, and that the "personal letter" the gunner was going to deliver in London contains secret information that would have helped the enemy.

Abel and Morgan, an aristocratic couple, live in a small castle in an indeterminate place and time of civil war. They decide to abandon their home and join a trek of refugees seeking safety. A group of irregulars, led by a woman called "The Lieutenant" (or "Loot"), stops them and takes them back to the castle, which the irregulars fortify as a base. They loot the castle, and Morgan is seduced by the Lieutenant. A rival faction attacks the castle with artillery and Abel is taken along with the fighters on a counter-attack. When they return, Abel almost shoots the Lieutenant and there is a violent and nihilistic ending.

''A Song of Stone'' tells the frightening story of what happens when the normal rules of society break down. Themes of decadence, violence and war are intertwined with the lives of the rather pompous but lyrical disgraced aristocrat Abel, his partner Morgan, the ruthless Lieutenant and her soldiers with names like "Psycho", "Karma" and "Deathwish".

The story is told by Abel, an unreliable narrator. Abel describes Morgan's actions in the second person, mostly when she is in his direct view.

As the invaders systematically loot and destroy Abel's family's ancestral home, Abel seems ambivalent to what is happening. Later, when the Lieutenant suggests a memorial for Abel's lifelong family retainer, who has just been killed, Abel and the reader realise that he does not know the servant's surname.

The violence of war is described graphically.

As a young man, Emile went to England on a university scholarship, leaving behind his brutal older brother Carl and his creative younger brother Freddy to run the family farm in Saskatchewan. Despite promising Freddy that he would return, Emile stayed in England and became an academic, turning his back on his Canadian past and even acquiring an English accent, while his brothers died one after the other in tragic circumstances: Freddy gassing himself with exhaust fumes in his pick-up; Carl dying in a crash in the same pick-up.

On his brief return (presumably for Carl's funeral) the authorities think he is there to adopt Carl's young daughter Nadia, but he abandons her simply saying "single parent families are not allowed on campus". All he is there to do is to resolve the family land-holdings.

Invited many decades later to receive an honorary degree by a Canadian university, the retired Emile decides to take an extended visit to Victoria, British Columbia to try to get to know Carl's now adult daughter Nadia (Deborah Kara Unger, who also briefly portrays Carl's wife) who has recently separated from her husband, and her ten-year-old daughter Maria (Theo Crane, who also portrays the ten-year-old Nadia) before it is too late. The discovery of his ancient typewriter amongst Nadia's belongings triggers a series of reveries, half memory, half fantasy, in which Emile's unresolved feelings about the past come back to haunt him.

Lonny Goosen (Dov Tiefenbach) is a documentary filmmaker whose car just got towed. Together with his friend Gus (Andrew McNee) as his cameraman and Gus' cousin Olena (Diana Pavlovská) as their sound person, Lonny sets out to make a film about what people think about parking enforcers.

At a ceremony marking Deep Space Nine's commanding officer Benjamin Sisko's promotion to the rank of captain, visiting Ambassador Krajensky tells Sisko that the Tzenkethi, an alien race with a history of hostility toward the Federation, have unseated their ruler, the Autarch, in a coup d'etat. Warning that the Autarch's replacement might renew anti-Federation hostilities, he says Sisko is ordered to bring the ''Defiant'' on a "saber-rattling" mission along the Tzenkethi border.

Along the way, the crew loses control of the ship's critical systems, including navigation and weapons, and Chief O'Brien's investigation reveals sabotage. When O'Brien and Lt. Dax search the crew, Krajensky is revealed to be a Changeling impostor, who flees into the depths of the ship; the crew infer that he has taken control of the ship to cause a war between the Federation and Tzenkethi. Hours of searching cause paranoia among the crew, as the Changeling could be disguised as any of them. Sisko orders Dr. Bashir to administer blood tests to the crew to identify the Changeling, and the tests seem to reveal Lt. Cmdr. Michael Eddington as the impostor; but in fact the Changeling was disguised as Bashir in order to fake Eddington's blood test, and escapes again.

As a last resort to prevent the ship from attacking the Tzenkethi, Sisko readies the ship's self-destruct system, while O'Brien tries to override the Changeling's control of the ship's systems. Constable Odo, a Changeling who has rejected the Dominion, fights the infiltrator in the engine room and kills him, thus becoming the first Changeling to harm another. O'Brien regains control of the ship and Sisko cancels the self-destruct. When they return to Deep Space Nine, they learn that the real Ambassador Krajensky was kidnapped and replaced by the Changeling impostor before ever arriving at the station, and the report of a Tzenkethi coup was false; the entire affair was a Dominion plot to destabilize the Alpha Quadrant. Odo repeats to the others the Changeling's last words: "You are too late. We are everywhere."

Bryce (Josh Brolin) is a successful man who returns to his tiny hometown for a visit. While there, he runs into his old friend Nick (Alessandro Nivola). The two decide to go out for the night. When they enter a bar, Bryce encounters Kathy (Reese Witherspoon), a blonde temptress whom he eventually takes home for the night. When he awakens, Kathy informs him that she is underage and threatens to tell the police that Bryce has committed statutory rape. Bryce panics and decides to tie her up and hide her away in the basement. He then makes a call to Nick. Unbeknownst to Bryce, Kathy is actually Nick's girlfriend Lissa. The two had schemed to use Bryce's money to pay off a $15,000 debt they owe small-time hood Jimmy (Terrence Howard).

Though Daria and Jane are still on speaking terms, Jane is cold toward Daria, and their relationship is tense. Daria and Tom are seeing each other romantically, but due to Daria's personality and the gravity of the situation, they are taking things slowly. Jane has signed up for a summer art camp, seemingly to avoid Daria. At the camp, Jane meets Alison, an older artist, and the two bond over mutual contempt for their pretentious mentor and equally pretentious peers. However, Alison repeatedly tries to come onto Jane, dismissing Jane's protests that she is straight. The next time they meet, Jane signals uncertainty about her own sexuality. But this turns to anger when she realizes that, after previously putting down their pompous instructor to ingratiate herself with Jane, Alison is now sleeping with him to further her career. This causes Jane to become disillusioned with the art world.

Daria intends to do nothing but read, sleep, and hang out with her friends and boyfriend, but her mother Helen forces her to work as a counselor at English teacher Timothy O'Neill's summer day camp for pre-pubescent children. There, Daria meets a nihilistic camper named Link, who constantly voices his disillusionment. It is loosely implied that he is neglected and emotionally abused by his mother and his stepfather. Recognizing herself in Link, Daria attempts to reach out to him. However, he rejects her overtures, causing Daria to feel worse. Paralleling these emotions is her relationship with Tom, which she effectively ends for the discomfort it brings.

After getting a poor score on a pre-college admissions exam, Quinn desperately wants to prove her intelligence without ruining her image in the fashion club. Helen hires David, a no-nonsense tutor who gets Quinn to take learning more seriously. As the tutoring gets results, Quinn realizes that she is interested in David romantically. At their final session, she confesses her feelings to him, but David says she is not his type due to her low academic aspirations, noting that the college Quinn wants to attend is a party school. In a heart-to-heart talk with Daria, Quinn shows how much the rejection hurt her, but Daria convinces her that it is worthwhile to "give people a chance" even though things might not work out. The talk makes Daria consider whether she broke up with Tom prematurely.

Daria comes to visit Jane, and, due to some meddling from Jane's brother Trent, the two reconcile. Daria later tells Jane that she was always impressed by Jane's strong sense of identity, which resolves Jane's identity crisis. Daria receives a letter from Link that invites her to email him, assuaging her fears that she is incapable of connecting with another human being. Jane affirms that she is no longer upset that Daria dated Tom and encourages her to get back together with him.

Paul Bradford (Jeffrey Byron) is a skilled computer programmer who lives with his girlfriend, Gwen (Leslie Wing), and "X-CaliBR8", a quasi-sentient personal computer that Paul programmed and which he interacts with via a neural interface. Gwen is jealous of Paul's unusually close relationship with X-CaliBR8, to whom Paul has given a female voice, and fears that their relationship will be destroyed by Paul's reliance on X-CaliBR8 for his various day-to-day activities.

One night, Paul and Gwen are both transported to a Hellish realm presided over by Mestema (Richard Moll), an ancient, demonic sorcerer who has spent millennia seeking a worthy opponent with whom to do battle. Having long defeated his enemies with magic, Mestema has become intrigued with technology, and wishes to pit his skills against Paul's, with the winner claiming Gwen. Arming Paul with a portable version of X-CaliBR8 (which takes the form of a computerized wrist band), Mestema begins transporting Paul into a variety of scenarios in which he must defeat various opponents. Most of the challenges involve Paul using his X-CaliBR8 wristband to shoot people, monsters, and objects with laser beams.

After Paul completes Mestema's various challenges, the two engage in a final battle, which takes the form of a fist fight in which Paul kills Mestema by throwing him into a pit of lava. After Mestema dies, Paul and Gwen are transported back to their house, where Gwen expresses her acceptance of X-CaliBR8 and suggests that she and Paul get married.

The Dominion strikes back against the Cardassian rebellion. Damar, Garak, and Kira are forced into hiding in Garak's childhood home, protected by Mila (Julianna McCarthy), Garak's late father's housekeeper, where they see the Dominion's announcement that the rebellion has been crushed and Damar killed. Mila tells them that the Cardassian populace mistrust the propaganda, and Kira sees an opportunity to provoke a civilian revolution. The three bomb a Jem'Hadar barracks, where Damar reveals to the people that he is not dead, and calls upon the Cardassian populace to rise up against the Dominion.

On Deep Space Nine, Ferengi bartender Quark (Armin Shimerman) receives a message from Grand Nagus Zek, apparently informing him that he has been chosen as Zek's successor upon his imminent retirement. Upon discovering that Zek has instituted a number of reforms, including promoting workers’ rights, environmental protection and outlawing monopolies, Quark is so disgusted that he threatens to turn down the job. Upon Zek's arrival, Quark discovers that he was never the intended heir of the Grand Nagus; it was Quark's brother Rom (Max Grodénchik). Quark swears that his bar will be a refuge for the unrestrained capitalism that was symbolic of his Ferenginar, though he admits that his brother is better suited to be the leader of a new Ferenginar.

Several minor subplots set the stage for the upcoming series finale. Sisko is given command of a new starship ''USS Defiant'' to replace the ''Defiant'' recently destroyed by the Dominion. Security chief Odo is disgusted to learn that the Federation deliberately infected the Dominion's Changeling Founders with a deadly virus, using him as a carrier. Dr. Julian Bashir and Lt. Ezri Dax finally acknowledge their mutual attraction and begin a romantic relationship. The Dominion withdraws its forces to within Cardassian borders, hoping that the Federation and its allies will leave them alone long enough for them to rebuild their fleets; but Sisko persuades Admiral Ross (Barry Jenner) to launch a full-scale assault on Cardassia to end the war. Sisko's wife Kasidy Yates (Penny Johnson Jerald) tells him that she is pregnant, but she is concerned by a warning from the Prophets that Sisko, as the Emissary, must walk his path alone.

In this sequel to ''Father of the Bride'', newly married Kay Dunstan (Elizabeth Taylor) announces that she and her husband are going to have a baby, leaving her father, Stanley Banks (Spencer Tracy), having to come to grips with becoming a grandfather.

Middle-class family man Stanley Banks reminisces on events of the past year: One afternoon, returning from the office feeling happy and energetic, Stanley's routine is interrupted when his wife Ellie (Joan Bennett) tells him that they are having dinner with their daughter Kay and her husband, Buckley Dunstan (Don Taylor), to hear some important news. Although Stanley is certain that it concerns Buckley's business, the newlyweds reveal that Kay is expecting a baby. Buckley's parents, Doris (Billie Burke) and Herbert (Moroni Olsen), are delighted, as is Ellie, but Stanley broods that he is too young and vibrant to be a grandfather. Soon Ellie, flush with excitement, throws Kay a baby shower, something Stanley thinks is highway robbery not punishable by law. Later, Ellie suggests that they remodel their house to enable Kay, Buckley, and the baby to move in with them, but Stanley puts his foot down. Ellie is near tears when the wealthy Dunstans announce that they are planning to add a wing to their home for the couple, but is overjoyed when Kay and Buckley reveal that they have just bought their own little house, enabling Ellie to have free rein helping Kay decorate.

After settling into their new home, Kay, who is very close to her father, expresses her concern that the baby will make a difference in her relationship with Buckley. Stanley comforts her by telling her how much he loved her as a baby. Soon the Bankses and the Dunstans are trying to outdo one another buying gifts and making plans for the baby, up to his enrollment in college. One night, while listening to Ellie, Doris, and Herbert bicker over what the baby should be named, Kay breaks down and runs to her room. Only Stanley, who Kay feels is the sole parent who understands her, is able to comfort her. The day after pledging to Kay that he will make certain that none of the in-laws will interfere again, Stanley drags Ellie to Kay's physician, Dr. Andrew Nordell, anxious over the "modern" ideas Nordell has about a more natural method of childbirth and infant care.

For the next month or so, things remain calm, until Stanley is awakened by a late night call from Buckley, who says that Kay has left him "for good." After sneaking over to Buckley and Kay's place, Stanley learns from a cab driver that Kay took a taxi to his house. The two men then return to the Banks house, where the couple make up after Kay's jealousy is revealed to be a misunderstanding stemming from Buckley's late nights working at the office. Kay, as well as Stanley, realize Buckley's devotion to his family.

As the baby's birth approaches, nerves among the parents and grandparents become frayed. The eventual birth of a baby boy delights everyone, except Stanley, a distant and wary observer of the as-yet-unnamed baby, who starts to cry whenever Stanley comes near him.

When the baby is six months old, Kay joins Buckley on a brief business trip and leaves the baby with her parents, hoping to give Stanley time to grow closer to his grandson. One afternoon, while Kay is still away, Stanley takes the baby for a walk in the park. When the baby finally falls asleep in his carriage, Stanley joins some friendly neighborhood boys in a game of soccer and loses track of time. After the game, when Stanley cannot find the carriage, he frantically retraces his steps back to the house. Seeing through the window that Kay has returned early, he panics and takes a taxi to the local police station. There a befuddled Stanley confesses to the grim-faced police sergeant that he has lost the baby. Fearing the wrath of the police squad, who found the sweet-natured baby and have fallen in love with him, Stanley secretly prays that his grandson will not start to scream when he picks him up. To Stanley's relief, the baby is delighted to see him, and from that moment on, the two are devoted to each other. Some time later, at the baby's christening, Stanley beams with pride as his grandson is finally named "Stanley Banks Dunstan."

George breaks up with a woman named Alice after she beats him in a game of chess. When he tells Jerry about it at Monk's, they both realize that they have done nothing with their lives and decide to make some changes. However, Kramer warns Jerry against marriage, so he decides to remain with his singles lifestyle. George, meanwhile, proposes to his old girlfriend Susan Ross. George is irritated when Jerry tells him that he broke up with his girlfriend Melanie because she eats peas one at a time, arguing that they had a pact to change their lives. He begins to regret his engagement as he has to pass up opportunities to see action films and baseball games with Jerry in order to watch sentimental films and ''Mad About You'' with Susan.

A barking dog is keeping Elaine from getting sleep. Kramer refers her to Newman, who agrees to kidnap the dog and relocate it. Later that night, Elaine, Kramer and Newman rent a van and steal the dog, a Yorkshire Terrier. Kramer leaves the dog at a random doorstep in Monticello, but it rips off a piece of his shirt with a tag from Rudy's vintage shop. The dog finds its way back to its owner's apartment, carrying the piece of Kramer's shirt. With the shirt scrap as evidence, police officers arrest Kramer, Newman and Elaine for dognapping. Elaine decides she needs to make some changes with her life.

The story revolves around the lead of the story, Kirihara Aruto. It begins one night when Aruto is awake writing his own copy of ''The Endless Alice''. Suddenly he sees a girl leaping through the night sky. Believing her to be the Alice he writes about, he leaves his house and follows her to a library.

He sees her fighting with another girl, who is defeated. The former then steals the latter's story and disappears. The next day, she reveals herself as Arisugawa Arisu, the female lead of the story. She then explains that she is an Alice User, capable of transforming into a kemonomimi bunny girl that uses a key in fights against other Alice Users. The keys are used to unlock the stories in other Alice Users's hearts. She explains that if a girl loses her story that she can no longer be an Alice User; the overall goal of an Alice User is to defeat all others and finish the Endless Alice. The one who does so will be granted a wish.

Later, Kirihara Kiriha, Aruto's little sister is introduced. Kiriha reveals herself as an Alice User and proceeds to fight Arisu. Aruto breaks up the fight and the two make peace. The trio agrees to help each other finish ''Endless Alice''. The rest of the series follows their adventures together.

Kenya McQueen is a successful, single African American woman who has sacrificed romance in order to pursue a career as a certified public accountant. Her rigid desire for perfection and control has manifested itself in the bland, monochromatic decor of her new home and the rigid rules she follows in her personal life. Urged to loosen up by her friends, Kenya accepts a blind date with landscape architect Brian Kelly arranged by her co-worker Leah Cahan, who is in the process of planning the kind of wedding Kenya wants herself. The two meet at Starbucks, and she is surprised to discover Brian is white. She quickly excuses herself and leaves.

The two unexpectedly meet again at a party at Leah's parents' home, where Brian landscaped the grounds. Impressed with his work, Kenya decides to hire him to renovate her unkempt backyard garden. As time passes, their employer-employee relationship evolves into a friendship and then love.

Although Brian is helping her feel more comfortable about her living environment, Kenya finds it difficult to dismiss her reservations about their romance. The opinions of her girlfriends Cheryl, Nedra, and Suzette, her upper class parents Joyce and Edmond, and her womanizing younger brother Nelson begin to have a deleterious effect and Brian's unwillingness to discuss issues of color drives them apart.

Nelson introduces his sister to someone she views as a more acceptable suitor, tax attorney Mark Harper, who has just relocated to Los Angeles. The two begin to date, and while Joyce thoroughly approves, Edmond senses his daughter is not as happy as she was with Brian. Everything Kenya thought she wanted suddenly seems immaterial, and nothing Mark does ignites a spark between them. When the dissonance she's developed finally overwhelms her, Kenya chooses to reunite with Brian, no longer allowing her controlling nature and social norms to dictate matters of the heart.

Kenya marries Brian amongst their closest friends and loved ones.

The ''Enterprise'' discovers a crashed escape pod in an unexplored star system. Investigating, they find there is one critically injured passenger in the pod, and the crew brings him aboard the ship. Dr. Crusher determines the survivor will live due to the stranger's own amazing recuperative powers. Crusher also notes that the survivor's cells are mutating in some way.

A couple of days later the stranger finally awakens, but has no memory of his life or identity. The crew decides to call him "John Doe". Some time passes and John has recovered physically, but still has amnesia. In addition, from time to time he suffers from severe pain which is somehow tied to his ongoing mutation. He also begins emitting strange, bright energy bursts. John soon learns that he is able to use this energy to heal injuries, as witnessed by Crusher when he aids an injured O'Brien in her Sickbay.

In the meantime, Geordi La Forge has determined the pod the Enterprise discovered was a kind of storage device. Geordi is also able to interpret a star chart and find the location of John's home planet. However, John's memory has begun to return, and he senses that he must not go back to his home planet yet. A day or so later, a vessel intercepts the Enterprise, and John declares he has to leave. He tries to steal a shuttle and an energy burst accidentally knocks Lieutenant Worf from a walkway, resulting in a fatal fall to the floor below due to a broken neck. John then uses his healing powers to revive Worf and heal his injuries. Prevented from escaping, John explains that he wanted to leave as he is becoming a danger to himself and the crew.

Captain Sunad of the intercepting ship communicates with the Enterprise, announcing he is from the planet Zalkon and that he wants John returned to him. He explains that John is a criminal who has been given a death sentence. Captain Picard considers the situation, but refuses to release John to the Zalkonians without more information as to the charges. He contacts the other ship and mentions John's strange powers, which alarms Captain Sunad. Sunad immediately triggers a device which causes the entire Enterprise crew to become unable to breathe. John resists the device and heals everyone aboard the Enterprise with one bright flash of his energy.

His memory now restored, John transports Sunad to the Enterprise using his powers. John explains that his race has reached a new stage in evolution, in which they are evolving into beings of energy. His homeworld's government fears what is happening and, telling the population it is a deadly sickness, kills any who show the signs of change; John and others aboard the ship were escaping from their homeworld when attacked. John then becomes the first to complete the transformation, becoming invulnerable.

John offers to help Sunad make this transformation as well, but Sunad still refuses. John sends Sunad back to his own ship, warning him that their government can no longer keep their people in ignorance. The Zalkonian ship then leaves the area. John bids the crew good-bye, transforms into energy and departs the ship. While it's not known where John went, the implication is that John left for his homeworld so that other Zalkonians would have the chance to evolve and join him.

The series follows the growth of a teenage Huang Feihong (played by Ashton Chen) from being naughty to behaving like a man. During the first 5 episodes Huang Feihong is living in his hometown in Guangzhou, China. There he and his friend Lin Shilong, who was also his best friend and student in real life, goes along with him doing naughty things such as throwing a banana on the floor to deliberately trip a martial artist carrying a heavy statue, which almost smashed a little child. Huang also picks fights with other students in his school, especially the martial artist's son, who is a weak wimp. Later, Huang develops a friendship with the wimp. There are final bosses in each few episodes which can also be considered an arc. During the last arc, there is a final boss for the series.

Lizzie Borden High's class of 1972 is getting ready to go through the motions at their 10-year reunion when a deranged alumnus named Walter Baylor, who was driven insane by a horrible, sadistic, senior-year prank, escapes from the mental institution and decides to crash the party at his high school reunion. Guests start to disappear and are found dead; the other alumni, including the high class snooty yacht salesman Bob Spinnaker, class tease Bunny Packard, and the class zero Gary Nash, spring into action as they try to uncover the culprit and put an end to the nightmare that has become their class reunion.

Brother and sister Dick and Dorothea Callum meet the Swallows and Amazons during the winter beside the lake. Whilst observing the stars from an isolated barn, Dick and Dorothea encounter the other children and shortly become firm friends. They become part of the group, and join in their play of Arctic expeditions. The holiday is extended when leader Nancy Blackett catches mumps and the group is quarantined and cannot return to their boarding schools. Initially, while waiting for snow to fall, the children embark on a series of adventures ranging from rebuilding an igloo to building an ice sled. Dick displays heroism by rescuing a sheep belonging to Farmer Dixon stranded on an ice-covered ledge, thus gaining his gratitude and earning them a sledge of their own.

There is a heavy snowfall followed by a prolonged period of freezing weather and, unusually, the lake freezes over, providing an excellent opportunity for an expedition to the point at the head of the lake that they have named the "North Pole". However, plans go awry when the Ds set out earlier than expected due to a misunderstanding over a signal flag. When a blizzard blows up and the Ds are missing, a rescue party is organised consisting of the Swallows and Peggy, one of the Amazons.

The novel is set in Britain in 1987, and involves the Seventh Doctor and his companions Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester living on a working-class council estate while attempting to track down an infinitely powerful Gallifreyan weapon before it falls into the wrong hands. A young boy living on the estate, Gabriel Tyler, appears to be the focus of strange powers, and also for the attentions of Eva Jericho, whose own grievously ill young son seems to be linked to Gabriel in some way, through a secret Gabriel's mother Winnie has long tried to hide.

Three years after the events of the previous film, Stuart, Snowbell, and the Littles leave New York City to go on a camping trip near Lake Garland. Once they arrive, Stuart and his brother George decide to join a group called the "Lake Scouts" led by their leader Troopmaster Bickle, with their father Frederick watching over them.

Although George is shown to be skilled at scouting while also developing a crush on a female Scout named Brooke, Stuart has trouble keeping up with the Lake Scouts due to his small stature. He soon encounters Reeko, a smooth-talking and comedic skunk who is generally disliked by the local forest animals of Lake Garland because of his attitude, and is secretly on a mission to give food to his master "The Beast", a ruthless female cougar who is feared by the animals because she forces them to steal and bring food to her every night. Meanwhile, Snowbell discovers that his alley cat friend Monty is living under the Littles' cabin, revealing he had stowed away by sneaking into the trunk of their car unnoticed.

Down on his luck with the Scouts and with Troopmaster Bickle looking down upon him, Stuart makes a deal with Reeko that he will help Stuart learn the ways of the forest. That evening, after being invited to dinner with Stuart's family, Reeko ultimately befriends Stuart. However, upon leaving the Littles' cabin, Reeko, deciding that the food given to the Beast isn't enough, finds Snowbell and tricks him into thinking that there is a "party" in the forest, prompting Snowbell to enter the woods that night, only for him to end up getting captured by the Beast. Soon after witnessing Snowbell's kidnapping, Stuart attempts to tell his family and the Scouts the truth about his friend getting captured the next day, but they all refuse to believe him as they think Stuart was just dreaming the whole time.

With no choice, Stuart goes off to rescue his friend alone, but learns along the way that Reeko was in cahoots with the Beast the whole time and the one responsible for Snowbell's disappearance. Meanwhile, Snowbell is taken to the Beast's cave. The Beast only refuses to eat him when Snowbell suggests that she fatten him up first in order to have a rug made out of Snowbell's fur for the winter. Shortly afterward, Stuart's mother Eleanor realizes that Stuart is missing upon finding a note left by him and rallies a search party with Frederick and the Scouts.

Meanwhile, Stuart reaches the Beast's cave, where he is able to sneak past the Beast and manages to rescue Snowbell, who was trapped in a pit. On their way out of the cave, Stuart and Snowbell find themselves cornered by the Beast, whom Stuart overwhelms with salt and pepper before he and Snowbell escape and build a trap covered with leaves and sticks, trying to force the Beast to fall through it just as she catches up to them.

However, after discovering the trap and then attempting to devour Stuart, the Beast is confronted by Reeko, who shows up along with the forest animals, who have decided to support him. Reeko incapacitates the Beast by spraying at her, allowing the forest animals to distract her long enough for Stuart and Snowbell to lure her into their trap, whereupon she falls through it and is finally captured. Later that night, Stuart and Snowbell are found by the Littles and the Scouts, where Stuart shows them the Beast, proving that she was actually real all along.

The next day, while the Beast is taken away to a zoo, Stuart earns a gold kerchief from Troopmaster Bickle. As Stuart's family is preparing to leave Lake Garland, George gives his game console to Brooke as well as a list of his personal particulars (in case she needs help while playing on his game console, she can call, text or email him). Grateful, Brooke in return kisses him on the cheek. Reeko apologizes to Stuart for his behavior, telling Stuart that he was wrong to betray him. Stuart then bids farewell to Reeko before he, Snowbell, Monty and the Littles return home to New York City.

Frustrated with his parents' Catholic religion, agnostic-going-on-atheist Jason Bock invents a new god—the water tower. He recruits an unlikely group of worshippers, including: his snail farming best friend, Shin; incredibly ordinary Dan Grant; cute-as-a-button Magda Price; and violent, unpredictable Henry Stagg. As the Chutengodian religion grows, it takes on a life of its own. While Jason struggles to keep the faith pure, Shin obsesses over writing their bible as Henry schemes to make the faith even more exciting—and dangerous. As a result, when the Chutengodians hold their first mass atop the dome of the water tower, things go from dangerous to deadly.

The game begins with the in orbit around a red giant star near the edge of the Neutral Zone (the star adversely affects Romulan sensors, rendering the ''Enterprise'' undetectable). They are monitoring the border in response to increased Romulan activity; the Romulans recently lost contact with a vessel patrolling the Neutral Zone. Starfleet had agreed to assist in any investigation attempt as a sign of goodwill. The Romulans refuse the aid, and prefer to handle things on their own, which naturally prompts Starfleet to increase border patrols.

Immediately upon beginning play, the ''Enterprise'' receives a distress signal, broadcasting on all frequencies. It was sent out by one Dr. T'Laris, a Vulcan geologist stationed on a planet in the Codis Mu system (Codis Mu VI), and in the message she notes that her dig site was recently attacked by Romulans, and that the assailants are still present. The ''Enterprise'' responds to her plea for help and sets a course to her dig site.

As the game progresses, the player learns more about the missing Romulan vessel's mission, and of the IFD. The ''Enterprise'' also makes contact with an alien race known as the Chodak, hostile mollusk-like creatures who constantly accost the ''Enterprise'' as it traverses known space gathering clues about the IFD. There are also mentions of a now-extinct race called the Senatorious who were the last race to possess the IFD; the reason it resurfaced is because the Senatorious understood that they'd been using the IFD for their own benefit at the cost of all other races, and judiciously decided to send it ten thousand years into the future, in the hopes that civilizations then could put the IFD to use for the mutual benefit of all races. There is one more race, the gaunt Eunacians, which are encountered only once and, after the ''Enterprise'' repairs their ship, tell Jean-Luc Picard of the IFD Trials and the Eunacians' intention to participate. However, with their ship crippled, and the rest of their race residing in the Gamma Quadrant, they entrust the Federation with recovery of the IFD, and its judicious use.

The book deals with the life of Bailey Newling and his three lost summers. It tells the story of a divorced Bailey and his young son Caz, where on one fateful canoe trip, they share a remarkable night of truth and love.

Macfarlane set this novel among the cottage country in northern Ontario, the Waubano Reaches. Bailey, nicknamed Bay, tells of the three summers in his life: the summer he was 12 and attended the camp where he met his camp instructor Peter Larkin, the summer where he, his wife Sarah and 6-year-old son rented a cottage near his old campsite and, the summer where he and his 12-year-old son shared their extraordinary night.

Macfarlane uses a notable technique in the writing of ''Summer Gone'', where he would start the story of one summer and drift into another. It may start with Bay telling of his tale at camp and then shift onto another thought which may have occurred decades later involving his wife or his son. This technique ties all of Bay's summer stories together into one when he tells it to his son. The narration of this story is told by Caz's half brother, from a one-night stand of Bailey's, as an adult, retelling what Caz had told him.

Category:1999 Canadian novels Category:Novels set in Northern Ontario Category:1999 debut novels

An expedition to an irradiated island brings civilization in contact with a primitive native culture. When one sensationalist entrepreneur tries to exploit the islanders, their ancient deity arises in retaliation. In waters off Infant Island, a presumed uninhabited site for Rolisican atomic tests, the ''Daini-Gen'you-Maru'' is caught and run aground in the turbulence of a typhoon. A rescue party following the storm finds four sailors alive and strangely unafflicted with radiation sickness, which they attribute to the juice provided them by island natives. The story is broken by tenacious reporter Zenichiro Fukuda and photographer Michi Hanamura, who infiltrate the hospital examining the survivors.

The Rolisican Embassy responds by co-sponsoring a joint Japanese–Rolisican scientific expedition to Infant Island, led by capitalist Clark Nelson. Also on the expedition are radiation specialist Dr. Harada, linguist/anthropologist Shin'ichi Chūjō, and stowaway reporter Fukuda. Chūjō has studied the cultures of islands in the area and ascertained that one of the key hieroglyphs in their written language, a radiant cross-shaped star, translates as ''Mothra''. There the team discover a vast jungle of mutated flora, a fleeting native tribe, and two young women only twelve inches tall, who save Chujo from being eaten by a vampire plant. The "Shobijin" (small beauties), as Fukuda dubs them, wish their island to be spared further atomic testing. Acknowledging this message, the team returns and conceals these events from the public.

Nelson, however, returns to the island with a crew of henchmen and abducts the girls, gunning down several natives who try to save them. While Nelson profits off a "Secret Fairies Show" in Tokyo featuring the girls singing, both them and the island natives beseech their god Mothra, a giant egg, for help. Fukuda, Hanamura, and Chūjō communicate with the young women via telepathy; they express conviction that Mothra will come to their aid and warn that "good people are sure to be hurt". Meanwhile, Fukuda's newspaper has accused Nelson of holding the girls against their will; Nelson denies the charge and files a libel suit against the paper. Meanwhile, the island egg hatches to reveal a gigantic caterpillar, which begins swimming the Pacific Ocean toward Japan. The caterpillar destroys a cruise ship and survives a napalm attack on a beeline path for Tokyo. The Rolisican Embassy, however, defends Nelson's property rights over the girls, ignoring any connection to the monster.

Mothra finally arrives on the Japanese mainland, impervious to the barrage of weaponry directed at it, ultimately building a cocoon in the ruins of Tokyo Tower. Public feeling turns against Nelson, and he is ordered to release the girls. He flees incognito to Rolisica, where Mothra, newly hatched in an imago form, immediately resumes her search. Police scour New Kirk City for Nelson as Mothra lays waste to the metropolis. Ultimately, Nelson is killed in a shootout with police, and the girls are assigned to Chūjō's care. Church bells begin to ring, and sunlight illuminates the cross atop the steeple with radiant beams, reminding Chūjō and Hanamura of Mothra's unique symbol and of the girls' voices. Chūjō hits upon a novel way to attract Mothra to an airport runway. The girls are returned amid salutations of "sayōnara", and Mothra flies back to Infant Island.

The story unfolds in flashback, told by Dr. Jeremy Stone as he testifies before the United States Senate Committee on Space Sciences in 1971:

After a U.S. government satellite crashes near the small rural town of Piedmont, New Mexico on February 5, nearly all the residents are dead. A military recovery team from Vandenberg Air Force Base tries to recover the satellite but is unsuccessful. Suspecting that the satellite has brought back an alien organism, the military activates an elite team of scientists.

Wearing protective suits, Dr. Stone, the team leader, and Dr. Mark Hall, a surgeon, are dropped into Piedmont by helicopter. They discover the town's doctor opened the satellite in his office and that all of his blood has crystallized into a powder. They soon discover that almost all of the town's victims' blood has crystallized, causing rapid death. Two other townspeople have committed suicide after going insane. Stone and Hall retrieve the satellite and find two survivors, a 69-year-old alcoholic man named Peter Jackson and a six-month-old crying infant, Manuel Rios.

In addition to Stone and Hall, the elite team also includes Dr. Charles Dutton and Dr. Ruth Leavitt, who are summoned to a top-secret Nevada underground facility, code named Wildfire. Upon arrival, they undergo extreme decontamination procedures, descending through four disinfection levels to a fifth level where laboratories are located. This underground lab complex has sophisticated technology, including CRT computer displays and lasers. If the organism threatens to escape, the Wildfire facility includes an automatic nuclear self-destruct mechanism to incinerate all infectious agents. Under the "odd man hypothesis", Dr. Hall is entrusted with the only key that can deactivate the device, the theory being that an unmarried male is the most dispassionate person within a group to make critical decisions in a crisis.

By examining the satellite with powerful cameras, the team discovers the microscopic alien organism causing the deaths in New Mexico. The greenish, throbbing life form is assigned the code name "Andromeda." Inhaled through the lungs, Andromeda kills biological life almost instantly via a blood clot in the brain and blood clotting causing asphyxiation. It appears to be highly virulent. The team studies the organism using animal subjects, an electron microscope, and culturing in various growth media in an attempt to learn how it behaves. The microbe contains chemical elements required for terrestrial life (hydrogen and carbon) and appears to have a crystalline structure, but lacks the DNA, RNA, proteins, and amino acids present in all forms of terrestrial life, and directly transforms energy to matter with no discernible byproducts. Hall tries to determine why the two Piedmont residents survived.

A military jet crashes near Piedmont after the pilot radios that his plastic oxygen mask is dissolving. Meanwhile, Dr. Stone, who created the Wildfire laboratory, is accused by Dutton and Leavitt of designing the lab for biological warfare research. Unknown to other team members, Leavitt's research on the germ is impaired by her undisclosed epilepsy.

Hall realizes that the alcoholic Jackson survived because his blood was acidic from drinking Sterno, and that the baby lived due to his blood being too alkaline from constant crying, suggesting that the organism, Andromeda, can survive only within a narrow range of blood pH. Just as he has this insight, the organism mutates into a non-lethal form that degrades synthetic rubber and plastics. Andromeda escapes the containment room into the lab where Dutton is working. Once all the laboratory's seals start decaying due to Andromeda's escape, a five-minute countdown to nuclear destruction is initiated.

Hall rescues Leavitt from an epileptic seizure, triggered by the flashing red lights of Wildfire's alarm system. Meanwhile, the team realizes that the microbe would thrive on the energy of a nuclear explosion and would consequently be transformed into a super-colony that could destroy all life on Earth. Hall races against the laboratory's automated defenses to reach a station where he can disable the nuclear bomb with his key. He endures multiple attacks by automated lasers as he climbs through the laboratory's central core. He finds a working station, disables the bomb with seconds to spare, and collapses.

Hall awakens in a hospital. His colleagues reveal that clouds are being seeded over the Pacific Ocean, which will cause rain to sweep Andromeda from the atmosphere and into alkaline seawater, rendering it harmless. Stone finishes testifying to a U.S. senator by saying that while they were able to defeat the alien pathogen, they may be unable to do so in the future. The film ends with a computer feed suddenly stopping and the computer flashing the number "601", the Wildfire code for information coming in too fast to analyze.

An old friend of Albert Campion, "Uncle" William Faraday, has written a successful book that has been turned into a hit musical comedy. Jimmy Sutane, an established actor and dancer, is the star of the musical. But recently someone has it in for Sutane and has started playing harmless practical jokes that have caused the highly emotional Jimmy much trauma. Jimmy asks Campion to look into who the prankster may be. So Campion takes a trip to the Sutane household, where he unexpectedly finds more than he bargained for.

Jimmy Sutane's house is a strange mix of the theatrical and the snobbish. And into this mix comes Chloe Pye, an overdone and melodramatic has-been actress that no one seems to like. When she is accidentally run over by Jimmy Sutane in his car, no one seems upset and everyone is eager to call it an accident. But Campion is not so certain, and the more he investigates the less he desires to find out about the world of the Sutanes.

Campion must deal with high strung entertainers and his own emotions as he tries to find out if a murder even happened, and who is still playing tricks on the star and his family.

It turns out that Squire Mercer, a genius musician who lives with the Sutanes, was once married to Chloe Pye. She wanted to leave him for Jimmy Sutane, and he threatened never to divorce her. She told him that divorce wasn't necessary since she was still married to someone else, thereby committing bigamy with Squire Mercer. Her return to the Sutane household was to get back into the good graces of Squire Mercer so that he would fall back in love with her and support her financially. Instead he gets annoyed and angry at her advances and kills her. Then he throws her body off a bridge in front of Jimmy Sutane's car so that the whole thing will look like an accident. Unfortunately Sutane's understudy, who has been playing the pranks on Sutane because he wants to play the lead role in the hit show, witnessed the whole of Chloe's "accident". When he and several innocent bystanders are killed by one of Mercer's old-time criminal associates, everything is gradually uncovered by the police. Unfortunately, Campion's love for Sutane's wife clouds his judgement so that he thinks Jimmy has actually murdered both Chloe and his understudy. It is only at the end that he discovers the truth for himself.

The Barnabas family is no stranger to mystery, one of the founder's nephews, Tom Barnabas, having disappeared from the street in broad daylight never to be seen again. When it is remarked, at a Sunday evening gathering held by Gina Brande in her flat next door to the offices, that Paul Brande, her inattentive husband, has not been home for three days, no-one finds it too remarkable. Shortly after the arrival of his old friend Albert Campion to look into the vanishing, Paul's younger cousin Mike, in love with Gina, goes to the vault to fetch some papers for the eldest cousin, the Barnabas Managing Director John Widdowson, and returns looking shaken, but saying nothing.

Next morning, Paul's body is found sprawled in plain view in front of the vault. The doctor who is called immediately recognizes that Paul has been dead for several days, and a decision is made to move the body from where it was found, destroying clues. Mike is sent to inform Mrs Brande and seen comforting her tenderly. Campion investigates the scene of the crime and finds a recently broken ventilator to the rear of the vault, which leads to a next-door garage. Questioning staff, he discovers that the position of the body made it impossible for Mike to have missed him the night before. The police find a length of rubber pipe stained with soot.

At the inquest, the doctors and police reveal that Paul was killed by carbon monoxide inhalation, the pipe having been used to connect the exhaust of Mike's car to the vault ventilator. A neighbour testifies she heard the car running in the garage from six to nine on the night Paul disappeared. Mike says he was out walking the streets until eight, and that around nine had started the car to warm it up by running the engine for a few minutes before going for a drive. Gina's housekeeper speculates too freely about her mistress's relationship with Mike, and at the end of the inquest Mike is arrested for the murder.

Campion befriends Ritchie, an odd and rather awkward cousin - the brother of the vanished Tom, and with his help questions Miss Netley, Paul's suspicious secretary. He tracks down Paul's mistress, but finds she knows nothing, except that he missed an appointment with her on the night he died. He learns of a valuable unpublished manuscript of a play by William Congreve owned by the firm and regarded as a financial asset, which Paul had hoped to display, and of a visit Paul paid to a London district on business concerning a key. From his manservant Lugg, he learns that a renowned underground key copier lives in the area mentioned, and together they investigate, Lugg's criminal past helping to persuade the man to help by providing a copy of the key he made for Paul.

Campion visits the Barnabas offices with Ritchie's help and finds someone in the vault. They fight, and Campion subdues the man, who turns out to be the accountant, Rigget. Rigget confesses to having made a copy of the vault key and sneaking in at night to look for any valuable information. On the night after Paul's death, he had also entered the room and found Paul curled up and dead in a corner, and the vault unlocked; he locked it using Paul's key. He also took the vault key from inside the door, locked it on the outside when he left, returning the key to its normal place.

The trial begins the next day, and Campion, exhausted from his long night, attends. Things look bleak for Mike, but Campion has found out from an uncle working at the British Museum that the document in the vault is not the original manuscript. He visits John Widdowson's flat with Ritchie, looks around, questions the maid, and leaves a note for Widdowson enclosing a page from the facsimile manuscript. Widdowson calls him later, agrees that the manuscript he found was a facsimile, but that the original is safe in one of the firm's other offices, telling him to confirm the fact by opening a certain locked cupboard. Campion goes there, still weary from a lack of sleep, and almost hurls himself at the jammed door to force it open. Becoming suspicious, he kicks it instead, and discovers it leads outside to a terrible drop. He realizes that he too was to be killed by Widdowson for the same reason he killed Brande, to prevent exposure that the play, which is the company's financial asset, is not an original.

During the court proceedings against Mike on the next day, the case is suddenly called off. Widdowson has been found in his bath, an apparent suicide caused by carbon monoxide fumes from a gas water-heater. Campion learns that the windows had been were wedged shut from the outside, that the heater had been manipulated, and that Ritchie has vanished. Later, holidaying in France with Mike, Campion finds the long lost Tom Barnabas, alias Pierre Robert, who tells him that instead of his legacy he had taken the original manuscript to buy a circus, in which Campion sees Ritchie performing, now finally in his element as a clown. Campion realizes that Ritchie's quietly avenging the murder of Paul by killing Widdowson gave him the role of "the king's executioner."

The game takes place about five years after the events of ''Splatterhouse 2''. Rick and Jennifer have since married and have a son named David. Rick has also become successful on Wall Street and has bought a mansion in Connecticut, putting the memories of the Terror Mask behind him. Meanwhile, the Mask feels the ancient energy that it recalls from ages past and begins to speak to Rick. Rick must don the mask for the third time and fight the monsters that have invaded his mansion. Rick first fights to save Jennifer, who has been kidnapped by an entity known as the Evil One, but it is revealed this was only a distraction while the Evil One took David.

Rick eventually defeats the Evil One, who had planned to use David's latent psychic abilities to unlock the power of an object known as the Dark Stone. Upon defeating the Evil One, the Mask reveals its true, evil intentions. Rick must then destroy the Terror Mask permanently.

An assistant bank manager, Peter Hunter, lives in a flat above his bank with his new bride Frances. When Frances innocently sends off a mail order for some Scandinavian glassware, what comes back is Scandinavian pornography. The two, along with the bank's frantic chief cashier Brian Runnicles, must decide what to do with the veritable floods of pornography, photographs, books, films and eventually girls that threaten to engulf this happy couple. The matter is considerably complicated by the presence of Eleanor (Peter's mother), Mr. Bromhead (his boss), Mr. Needham (a visiting bank inspector) and Vernon Paul (a police superintendent).

The narrator meets fellow American Clement Searle at an old-fashioned London inn. Searle has long wanted to settle in England to escape what he considers his arid life in America. But he is physically ailing, and he's also depressed because his lawyer cannot uphold his claim to a share in a country estate currently owned by Richard Searle, a distant relation. Clement and the narrator visit the estate, where they meet the ethereal Miss Searle, who supports Clement's cause.

They also meet Miss Searle's brother Richard, who is at first suspicious and then outright hostile and combative toward Clement. Upset by the conflict Clement and the narrator travel to Oxford, where they help a gentleman, Mr Rawson, down on his luck to travel to America. Clement is now very sick and sends for Miss Searle. She responds to his call and tells him that her brother has been thrown from a horse and killed. Clement might now have a real chance for a share of the estate, but the opportunity comes too late for him. He dies and is buried in the England which proved so inhospitable to him.

American foreign news correspondent Larry Stanford (Dyneley) has been working in Japan for the last few years, to the detriment of his marriage. His last assignment before returning to his wife in the United States is an interview with the renowned but reclusive scientist Dr. Robert Suzuki (Tetsu Nakamura), who lives atop a volcanic mountain. During the brief interview, Dr. Suzuki amiably discusses his work on evolution caused by sporadic cosmic rays in the atmosphere, and professes that he has discovered a method for producing evolutionary change by chemical means. Suzuki serves Larry a secretly drugged libation, causing him to fall into a deep sleep. Announcing to Tara (Terri Zimmern), his voluptuous assistant, that Larry is the perfect candidate for his latest evolutionary experiments, he injects an unknown substance into Larry's shoulder. Upon waking, Larry is oblivious to the true situation and accepts Suzuki's invitation to spend the next week vacationing with him around Japan. Over the next few days, Suzuki uses Tara as a beguiling distraction while conditioning Larry with mineral baths and copious amounts of alcohol, exacerbating the pain in Larry's shoulder.

Meanwhile, Larry's estranged wife (Jane Hylton) has traveled to Japan to bring him back home with her. When confronted, Larry refuses to leave his new life of women and carousing. After a few drinks that night, Larry examines his painful shoulder to discover that a large eyeball has grown at the spot of Dr. Suzuki's injection. Becoming aloof and solitary, Larry wanders Tokyo late at night. He murders a woman on the street, a Buddhist monk and a psychiatrist, while slowly changing form, culminating in his growing a second head. Seeking a cure, Larry returns to Dr. Suzuki's laboratory, where Suzuki has just informed Tara that Larry has become "an entirely new species" and is beyond remedy. Entering the lab, Larry kills Suzuki and sets the building on fire as Tara flees. Following her to the rim of the volcano, Larry splits into two completely separate beings, one looking like his normal self, the other animalistically grotesque.

The monstrous second being grabs Tara, and throws her into the volcano. As Larry's wife and the police arrive, Larry pushes his other self into the volcano. Larry, in a state of collapse but returned to normal, is taken away by the police, although it remains unclear how much moral or legal responsibility he has for his violent actions. The movie ends as Larry's wife and the police superintendent discuss the good that remains in Larry.

Lack is an emptiness created in a particle collider. Professor Soft theorized that the experiment would replicate the Big Bang and opened a wormhole to a microscopic universe and that this wormhole would close shortly after it was created, leaving the new universe attached to reality. The wormhole however is not accompanied by any events to indicate it is a physical object and so it is named Lack. Lack is characterized by its inexplicable preferences, as some particles and objects enter the space where Lack should be and fail to appear on the other side. Professor Alice Coombs is the first to discover that Lack only absorbs certain items. It takes her keys, but not a paperclip. Its only consistent property seems to be that, when Lack refuses an object once, it would forever refuse to consume that object.

The physicists in Coombs's lab become obsessed with Lack, which appears to have its own personality and preferences. Alice develops a personal relationship with the artificial intelligence that they have created, while Philip becomes jealous of their relationship.

Philip begins to get involved after B-84, a laboratory animal (cat) enters Lack. This consumption of B-84 causes a campus wide protest. In an attempt to impress Alice, Philip breaks up the protest by giving a speech about how a single cat being destroyed is minimal and their efforts would better spent on larger problems in the world. Instead of impressing Alice, she becomes defensive of Lack and locks herself in its chamber.

After a night of drinking, Philip comes back to his apartment to see that Dr. Soft has brought Alice there. She is asleep but Dr. Soft suspects that she may have tried to enter Lack and that she is no longer capable of running experiments on Lack. This causes Dr. Soft to divide Lack's time up among capable people. He does not want to interrupt Alice's research so he gives her time but asks Philip to monitor her. He also claims a portion of Lack's time for himself, his graduate students, and an Italian physics team headed by Carmo Braxia.

Despite all of the new people studying Lack, still very little progress is being made both on the grounds of explaining Lack and in restoring Philip and Alice's relationship. Undergraduate students build a device out of only things Lack consumes and try to feed it to Lack but Lack refuses it. Alice tries to give Lack pictures of herself but even those are refused. Even the Italian Physicist seems to be lost, that is until Braxia tells Philip his theory. He claims Lack is a new universe that doesn't have intelligent life. He says that because of the strong anthropic principle, a universe cannot exist if there isn't conscious life to observe it. Since Lack does not contain any conscious life it clings to our reality that does. The personality it developed was that of the first conscious person it encountered, Alice. What it absorbs is what she likes.

With his new knowledge, and in a state of drunkenness, Philip sets out to be the first lover in history to ever have a definitive answer as to whether or not he is loved back. He enters Lacks chamber and slides himself into Lack. He wakes up the next morning realizing he is no longer in the universe he was the night before. After retrieving B-84 as proof of the universe, Philip heads back to Lack and climbs in. However, instead of going back to reality as he expects, he enters a new universe that has no light. The universe is inhabited by Evan and Garth, two blind men who had also climbed into Lack. The two men help Philip climb into Lack once again. This time, instead of entering a new universe, he merges and becomes one with Lack. Alice, feeling that Philip and Lack are now one thing, attempts one last time to enter Lack.

Toby Flower is a shy, reticent youth who has grown his hair long and who has started wearing a burnous. His father, an editor, and his mother, a novelist, are thrown into despair when Toby is expelled from school because he has been taking drugs. At a loss as to what to do in order to help their son, Charlie and Maggie Flower keep projecting their own goals and aspirations onto their son. They still talk about his going to university despite Toby's assertion that he is not interested in further education. Toby eventually breaks out of that stifling atmosphere, leaves home and moves to London, where he lives in a basement flat without keeping in touch with his parents.

Charlie and Maggie Flower finally turn to a psychiatrist friend of theirs who agrees to have Toby hospitalised and treated for mental illness. As it happens, in London Toby associates with Hermia, the psychiatrist's young but rather unattractive daughter, and makes her pregnant. When their parents conspire and talk Hermia into having an abortion, they unwittingly cut the last remaining bond with their son. Toby fetches Hermia from her parents' home, and the young couple move in with Toby's maternal grandmother, a frail old woman who all along has been sympathetic to the young people's needs.

The first story, "The Vietnam Project", relates the gradual descent into insanity of its protagonist Eugene Dawn. Eugene works for a U.S. government agency responsible for the psychological warfare in the Vietnam War. However, his work on mythography and psychological operations is taking a heavy toll on him; his fall culminates in him stabbing his own son, Martin.

The second story, "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee", which takes place in the 18th century, is an account of a hunting expedition into the then "unexplored" interior of South Africa. After crossing the Orange River, Jacobus meets with a Namaqua tribe to trade, but suddenly falls ill. He is attended to by the tribe and gradually recovers, only to get into a fight for which he is expelled from the village. His last slave dying on the way home, he returns alone and later organizes a punitive expedition against the Namaqua. The narrative concludes with his execution of the slaves that deserted him on the previous journey and the massacre of the tribe.

Gunslinger Clayton Drumm is in jail, about to be hanged, when railroad company men offer him a chance to live if he will agree to murder Matthew Sebanek, a miner who has steadfastly refused to sell his land to the railroad. Instead, Drumm befriends Sebanek and has an affair with Sebanek's wife. Sebanek discovers the affair and joins with the railroad men to hunt down the couple.

The story is set in Australia, and involves an orphaned city boy named Simon Brent who comes to live on a 5000-acre sheep station called Wongadilla, in the Hunter Region, with his mother's second cousins, Edie and Charlie. In a remote valley on the property he discovers a variety of ancient Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime creatures. The arrival of heavy machinery intent on clearing the land brings to life the ominous stone Nargun. The Nargun is a creature drawn from tribal legends of the Gunai or Kurnai people of the area now known as the Mitchell River National Park in Victoria. Other creatures featured in the story include the mischievous green-scaled water-spirit Potkoorok, the Turongs (tree people) and the Nyols (cave people).

The series focuses on Kaguya Haruyama, a teenager who has lived with a Japanese foster family since she was found as an abandoned, amnesiac four-year-old. One night, two men—Idou, a monk, and Seeu, an emotionless prince—appear in her home and fight over her. Gold, Seeu's robot modeled after Kaguya's deceased brother Kagami, brings her to a world parallel to Earth on Seeu's orders. After exploring the world with Gold, she encounters Shiina Mol Bamvivrie who believes Kaguya is the "Girl of Ananai", destined to save only one of the nine parallel worlds from collision. Shiina explains that nine worlds exist: Ancient, the first civilized world that was mysteriously destroyed; Asu, Seeu's disintegrated world; Eden, present-day Earth; Telene, a small world allied with Geo; Fifth World, a politically neutral world; Geus, a peaceful world under the control of Geo; Geo, the most powerful of the worlds; Asuraitsu, Geo's rival; and the Ninth World, destroyed before the start of the series.

Shiina and Waseda, a Tokyo University student trapped in the body of a giant rooster, join her and Gold in traveling across Telene. After learning that Seeu watched his people die from an incurable virus spread around Asu, Kaguya decides to change the fate of the worlds by confronting Kura, Geo's indulgent emperor who ordered her kidnapping. Instead, while en route to Geo, Gold brings her to Seeu's floating castle in Asu and Kura captures and recruits Shiina into his army.

Kaguya later makes an interplanetary broadcast, announcing her refusal to save only one world. Instead, she plans to find a person to help her save most of the worlds and people. Kura begins to destroy other worlds to increase Geo's survival chances. Deciding to use Kaguya as a political figurehead, Kura sends Shiina to abduct her; once there, Kaguya refuses to help him. Angered, Kura divulges that the "Girl of Ananai" legend is a myth elaborated on and spread around by him and Kagami. After a brief battle with Shiina, Seeu arrives to rescue Kaguya and she realizes her love for him. Transforming into a dragon, Gold teleports everyone to Ancient; there Idou, Seeu, Kura, and Shiina are persuaded to combine their magical weapons with Gold to fix the rift in the universe, the cause of the eventual collision between the worlds. The series ends with an epilogue seven years later; Kaguya explains the fate of everyone and meets Seeu and their young son with a picnic basket.

Phig commences the movie by showing the audience the "CyberWorld", a futuristic museum of infinite possibilities. Meanwhile, three computer bugs (Buzzed, Wired, and Frazzled) come and try to eat the CyberWorld through its number coding. When Phig knows about them and hunts for the destructive computer bugs, she presents various short stock clips of computer animated productions, such as scenes from ''Antz'' and episodes of ''The Simpsons'' post-converted to 3D.

In the end, Buzzed, Wired and Frazzled create a black hole (akin to "Homer³"), which inexplicitly leads to their deaths for all the trouble they have caused. Phig is nearly swallowed up as well, but not before her "knight in cyber armor" technician Hank reboots the entire system just as she is sucked into the vortex. Phig concludes the movie by explaining to the audience that none of the events caused by the bugs ever occurred. To prove her point, she attempts to summon her battle gear, only to receive a pink bunny outfit in return (a similar trick the bugs played on her in the film's midsection).

Selected segments

• The dance sequence from the animated feature ''Antz''
• The CGI parts of the "Homer³" segment from ''The Simpsons'' episode "Treehouse of Horror VI"
• The music video of the Pet Shop Boys song "Liberation"
• "Monkey Brain Sushi", a short film created by Sony Pictures Imageworks
• ''KraKKen: Adventure of Future Ocean'', a short film created by ExMachina
• "Joe Fly", a short film created By Spans & Partner
• "Flipbook And Waterfall city", a short film created by Satoshi Kitahara
• "Tonight's Performance", a short film created by REZN8

The movie is based on the true story of David MacEnulty who taught schoolchildren of the Bronx Community Elementary School 70 to play at competition level, eventually winning New York City and the New York State Chess Championships. The screenplay portrays whistle-blowing and a mid-life crisis that combine to remove Richard Mason (played by Ted Danson) from his old life. He becomes a substitute teacher and is assigned to a fourth-grade class in a South Bronx school. In the class are students with parents who are drug addicts or in jail or just scrambling to pay the bills. Few of them see a purpose in school other than meeting society's requirements, and he struggles, mostly in vain, to reach them.

Then a student whose father is in jail sees Mason in the park playing a simultaneous exhibition, and beating fourteen opponents at once. He asks to learn the game. One thing leads to another, and soon the entire class is interested in the game. Mason convinces them that on the chessboard it doesn't matter how much money you have or what clothes you're wearing or where you come from, and that it's only the moves you make, then and there. The class forms a team to compete in ever-larger tournaments.

Hartford tells the exciting true story of the incident in the life of an Ohio River steamboat around 1910. The boat, the ''Virginia'', was subject to the rather fickle nature of the river at that time and ended up stuck in a cornfield. This steamboat navigated the river before locks and dams were constructed to help regulate the waterway. Hartford recounts the hard times faced by this particular steamboat company which pressured the captain to make an ill-advised venture. The book uses old photos and maps to show the steamboat and trace its route. The accomplishment of what was seemingly an impossible task to refloat the steamboat is documented. The book ends with a coda, describing the fate of the characters.

In May 1991, the Gasoline Alley comic strip featured Hartford in a storyline that paralleled that of the children's book.

The cartoon opens with various shots of 1940s celebrities dining and drinking at the Mocrumbo club—including such personalities as Gregory Peck using a straight razor to cut his steak (in reference to his character in Hitchcock's ''Spellbound''), Ray Milland (in a spoof of ''The Lost Weekend'') pays for his drink with a typewriter and receives miniature typewriters as change; and Frank Sinatra, depicted exaggeratedly thin, so much so that he slips into his straw when trying to take a sip from his drink. Elmer Fudd is a waiter at the Mocrumbo and comes out to find that his next customer is Humphrey Bogart.

Bogart tells Elmer that he wants fried rabbit. Elmer explains that the restaurant has run out of rabbits, but Bogart brandishes a tommy gun and warns Elmer he wants fried rabbit "within 20 minutes – or else!". During Elmer's frantic search for a rabbit, he hears the sound of somebody munching on carrots in a corner of the kitchen and discovers Bugs Bunny in a crate of carrots. Elmer informs Bugs that Bogart wants to "have" him for dinner. Bugs immediately appears in a top hat, tailcoat and gloves and asks to see what is cooking. Elmer quickly puts a hand mirror into a pot and Bugs, seeing his reflection, realizes that he himself is to be the main course.

Bugs escapes the kitchen into the dining room, where he is seated at a table dressed like Groucho Marx in an attempt to fool Elmer. Elmer then appears next to Bugs, dressed as Harpo Marx. Bugs tries to run away, but he bounces off the large stomach of Sydney Greenstreet. He runs into Carmen Miranda's dressing room and hides in her tutti-frutti hat. Carmen walks to the stage and performs ''Sambaiana''. As she exits, Elmer chases Bugs back onto the stage. Elmer, seeing the audience, quickly runs offstage, leaving Bugs to dance to the orchestra's samba rhythms. Elmer is seen next to the band sharpening his meat cleaver to the rhythm during the performance.

Bugs then makes his way back to the kitchen, where he revels in the audience's appreciation of his performance by saying "Ah, my public! How they love me! A-huh-huh!" (the little laugh being a Jack Benny shtick). Elmer, holding a meat cleaver, rushes towards Bugs, and Bugs immediately dresses as a mustachioed waiter, orders pies and twice splatters Elmer in the face. The third time (a comic triple), when Bugs orders a coconut custard pie with whipped cream, Elmer finally realizes that the waiter just might be Bugs. After producing the pie, Elmer throws it at Bugs, but Bugs ducks and the pie sails out into the dining room, hitting Bogart in the face. Bogart walks into the kitchen, grabs Elmer by his shirt, and asks him why he hit him in the face with a pie. Bogart then warns Elmer that he has just five minutes to prepare his fried rabbit.

Elmer searches frantically, but cannot find a rabbit in time. Bogart returns, and sticks his hand in his jacket menacingly. Elmer cowers, thinking Bogart is about to shoot him, but Bogart only pulls out a handkerchief to dab his forehead as he says resignedly "Baby will just have to have a ham sandwich instead." Upon hearing "Baby", Bugs jumps out of his hiding place and takes his place on a platter as the main course (Lauren Bacall being "Baby") noting "Remember, garçon, the customer is always right! If it's rabbit Baby wants, rabbit Baby gets!" before howling and wolf whistling at Bacall.

Little Red Riding Hood is depicted as a typical 1940s teen-aged girl, a "bobby soxer" with an extremely loud and grating voice (inspired by screen and radio comedian Cass Daley, provided by Bea Benaderet). After she sings the first verse of "[http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/f/fiveoclockwhistle.shtml Five O'Clock Whistle]" in the opening to establish this fact, Bugs pops out of her basket to ask where she is going. She replies that she is going to "bring a little bunny rabbit to [her] grandma ta HAVE."

With this part of the story set up, the wolf is now introduced. The wolf switches a "Shortcut to Grandma's" sign, so that Red has to take an unnecessarily long mountain path, while the wolf uses the genuine shortcut – literally a few short steps to the house. Seeing a note pinned on the door that Grandma is not home (apparently, Grandma is a "Rosie the Riveter" type who is working the "swing shift" at Lockheed), the wolf sneaks inside and dresses like Grandma, only to find that three other wolves are similarly dressed and all waiting in the bed for Red. The wolf (voiced by Billy Bletcher) growls for the others to "COME ON! COME ON! Take a powder – this is ''MY'' racket!" The other wolves leave, grumbling to themselves, and a small wolf who was hiding under the pillow, sheepishly follows suit, too. Once in bed, the wolf waits for Red to arrive. But in a twist, the wolf is not interested in eating Red, but rather the rabbit she is bringing to Grandma.

Red arrives and begins the "Grandma, what big eyes you have" routine, but is impatiently interrupted by the wolf who quickly shuffles her out the door and tries looking for Bugs in the basket. Bugs, of course, quickly gets the better of the wolf and runs around the house, with the wolf in hot pursuit. Along the way, Bugs subjects the wolf to the famous lots-of-doors in-and-out routine (which will be repeated in ''Buccaneer Bunny''). The wolf, however, is constantly interrupted by Red, who continues her lines from the actual story. The wolf begins to flirt with her in a faux French accent, then suddenly yells at her to get out.

When cornered by the wolf, Bugs mimics the wolf's speech and gestures, irritating him and eventually tricking him into singing ''Put on Your Old Grey Bonnet'' (to which Bugs holds up a sign saying "Silly, isn't he?"). The wolf gets distracted by Red again, and after disposing of her resumes singing until he notices that Bugs ran off. While the wolf is sneaking, Bugs manages to get into the gown the wolf is wearing and get a glowing coal from the fireplace and sends the wolf screaming in pain to the ceiling by scorching his backside. When the wolf comes down, Bugs has a large shovelful of hot coals waiting for him. However, the wolf manages to catch his feet on the ends of two benches just in time, doing the "splits". Instead of simply kicking one of the benches away, Bugs proceeds to dump various objects into the wolf's arms. After clearing out just about everything in the house, Bugs is about to apply the coup de grace on the wolf – by placing ''the last straw'' on top of the mass of junk and furniture the wolf is holding – when Red reappears, bellowing "Hey, GRANDMA!" (By now, Red has managed to comment on the wolf's big eyes, big nose, big ears and sharp teeth, and one wonders what she was planning to say next.)

By this time, even Bugs has had enough of Red's interruptions, prompting him to say, "I'll do it, but I'll probably hate myself in the morning." He descends the ladder, and out of frame, there is a shuffling noise, and now ''Red'' is the one trying to avoid getting her bottom scorched, holding the weights and assorted junk, while Bugs and the wolf, arms around each other's shoulders, share a carrot and self-satisfied looks, and await the inevitable.

Leaving Paris for his summer vacation, the naïve Antoine Maréchal has his 2CV totally wrecked in a collision with the Bentley of company director Léopold Saroyan. As compensation, Saroyan offers Maréchal the chance to drive a friend's 1964 white Cadillac DeVille convertible from Naples to Bordeaux, all expenses paid. Unknown to Maréchal, Saroyan is the leader of a criminal gang and the Cadillac is filled with heroin, gold and precious stones, including the largest diamond in the world, the Youkounkoun. Maréchal collects the car in Naples from where, unknown to him, Saroyan and his associates shadow him. Unknown to Saroyan, an Italian gang are aware of the Cadillac's contents and are shadowing it as well.

After an accident, in which the repairman finds and removes the gold, Maréchal reaches Rome, where a pretty manicurist called Gina joins him. She only does it to make her fiancé jealous and then finds a pretty German hitchhiker called Ursula to accompany him. At night the Italian gang steal the Cadillac but are chased by Saroyan's gang, who capture it after a gun battle in which all the heroin is destroyed and return it to Maréchal. Mickey, one of the Italian crooks, seduces Ursula, who invites him to join them. In an isolated spot, Mickey then tries to kill Maréchal, but Ursula sabotages the battery so that he cannot make off with the car and saves Maréchal's life. Left on his own, Maréchal gets a new battery and throws the ruined one, full of diamonds, into the sea.

Crossing the border into France at Menton, Maréchal sees Saroyan's car being stripped by the police. He realises that the car they want must be the one he is driving and that Saroyan must be crooked. Heading for Carcassonne, he rings an old friend who is now chief of police there. Still tracked by Saroyan and the Italians, he lures them all into the unmarked side door of the police station, where they are arrested. Taking the Cadillac on the last leg to Bordeaux, he has another accident, in which he finds the Youkounkoun. There is a reward of 100 million francs for its return.

Young Max Skinner, whose parents have died in an accident, spends his childhood summer holidays learning to appreciate the finer things in life at his Uncle Henry's vineyard estate in Provence in southeastern France. 25 years later, Max is a successful but arrogant workaholic trader in London with a cheeky-chappy persona.

Following his uncle's death, Max is the sole beneficiary of the French property. He travels to Provence to prepare a quick sale. Shortly after arriving, by driving while fumbling with a cell phone, he unknowingly causes a local café owner, Fanny Chenal, to crash her bicycle. Subsequently, he discovers that his latest City financial stunt has caused real trouble for the owners of the trading company he works for, and the CEO orders him to return to London as soon as possible.

To assist in his planned sale of the property, Max hurriedly snaps some photos and in the process falls into an empty swimming pool. He is unable to escape until Fanny, driving by and spotting his rental car, turns on the water supply in retaliation. This delay causes Max to miss his flight and, having failed to report to the directors in person, he is suspended from work and trading activities for one week.

On Henry's estate, Max must deal with a gruff, dedicated winemaker, Francis Duflot, who fears being separated from his precious vines. Duflot pays a vineyard inspector to tell Max that the soil is bad and the vines worthless.

They are surprised by the arrival of young Napa Valley oenophile Christie Roberts, who is backpacking through Europe and claims to be Henry's previously unknown illegitimate daughter. Max realizes, but does not tell her, that French law decrees that even though Christie is not his uncle's legitimate daughter, she still becomes the rightful heir to the Chateau and vineyards. As Max did earlier, Christie finds the house wine unpalatable but is impressed by Max's casual offering of the boutique Le Coin Perdu ("the lost corner") vintage, noting some intriguing characteristics. During dinner at the Duflot house, while slightly inebriated, Max exposes his concern that she might lay claim to the estate and brusquely interrogates her.

Max's assistant Gemma warns him of the ambitious antics of other employees. To ensure he is not usurped by Kenny, his second-in-command in London, through whom Max continues to direct trades, Max intentionally gives the ambitious young trader bad advice, getting him fired.

Max becomes enamoured with Fanny, who is rumoured to have sworn off men. He successfully woos Fanny into his bed. She leaves him the next morning, expecting him to return to his life in London. A disillusioned Christie also decides to move on. Max finds his uncle's memoirs, which contain proof of Christie's heritage. He bids her farewell while handing her an unexplained note inside a book she was reading. While informing Duflot of the pending estate sale, Max learns that the mysterious expensive Le Coin Perdu was made by Henry and Duflot with "illegal vines" from the estate, bypassing wine classification and appellation laws.

The estate is sold and Max returns to London where Sir Nigel, the company chairman, offers him a choice: either a large discharge settlement, or the partnership in the trading firm. Max asks about Nigel's art in the conference room, van Gogh's "Road with Cypress and Star", which Fanny has a copy of in her restaurant. Upon Nigel's dismissive comment that the real one is kept in a vault and the $200,000 copy in the office is for show, Max reconsiders if he wants to still be like Nigel.

Max invalidates the estate's sale with the farewell letter he gave to Christie, which he forged, along with real photos confirming Christie as Henry's daughter with a valid claim to the entire estate. (As a child Max signed checks for his uncle, and is able to replicate his handwriting.)

He puts his London residence up for sale and returns to Provence, entering into a relationship with Fanny. Christie also returns and she and Francis jointly run the vineyard while trying to reconcile their vastly different philosophies of wine production. This enables Max to focus his entire attention on Fanny.

"Sweet Dreams, Sweetheart" plays briefly under the title card, and the cartoon opens with a trail of carrot tops floating on the seas. Bugs is stranded in a barrel in the middle of the ocean, but he does not seem to mind; he is reading ''Esquire'' magazine (considered an "adults only" magazine at that time) and singing the song "Down Where the Trade Winds Play" (a song made popular by Bing Crosby).

On the island of 'Bingzi-Bangzi – Land of the Ferocious Apes', the population is made up of gorillas that act like humans - they read the newspaper and books such as "The Apes of Wrath", have families, live in huts and speak American English (in the underscore, one of Stalling's orchestrations of Raymond Scott's jungle themes is heard, its official title being "Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals"). One of the apes, Mrs. Gruesome Gorilla, is sad that she does not have any children, whereas her husband (voiced by Mel Blanc) could not care less. Mrs. Gruesome (also voiced by Blanc, using a falsetto), crying, walks toward the water and says, "I'm going to ..." (the implication is she is going to jump in), but then spots Bugs floating by. Her mood instantly changes and, using vines as a mode of travel, she takes the barrel and Bugs to a tree-top (at one point, yielding the right-of-way to a man wearing just a leopard skin loincloth that looks strikingly like Tarzan). Just as Mrs. Gruesome picked up the barrel, Bugs had finished "Trade Winds" and had seguéd into a full verse of "Someone's Rocking My Dreamboat". He wraps that tune up just after they arrive and he becomes aware of the situation he is in. Clutching him, Mrs. Gruesome swings down to the ground where she makes it evident she sees Bugs as a baby gorilla. He explains he is a rabbit but she begins to cry, saying, "My baby doesn't love me." Bugs shares with the audience: "That's my soft spot—dames crying". - and figures he can "go along with a gag" to be her baby.

Mrs. Gruesome then presents Bugs to Mr. Gruesome—who is none too happy about having a baby in the house. Bugs tries to fit in, playing like a 'monkey'. Mr. Gruesome takes Bugs out for 'a walk', while Mrs. Gruesome makes dinner (she is not seen again for the rest of the cartoon).

"Daddy" is careless and rough with his "child" and Bugs, in typical fashion, gets back at Mr. Gruesome by hitting him over the head with a shovel. This enrages the gorilla. At first, Bugs goes toe-to-toe with him, posturing and roaring; but when he brings a coconut down on Mr. Gruesome's head, a long chase ensues (accompanied by a frenetic version of Stalling's jungle theme).

In due course, Bugs finds himself trapped on the edge of a cliff. He gives up and allows Mr. Gruesome to catch him. However, after tossing and slamming Bugs around, the gorilla is exhausted. A mere puff of breath from Bugs causes him to collapse. Emerging as the 'victor', Bugs jumps up and catches a hanging branch, again playing 'monkey' (another short clip of the jungle theme is heard in the underscore, along with the time-honored "jungle" sound of a kookaburra) at iris-out.

Act 1

A rich, elderly, bachelor (Diego) from Madrid and his servant, Simón, have traveled to the city of Guadalajara to escort a poor 16-year-old girl (Francisca) and her mother back to the capital. They stop in the town of Alcalá de Henares to stay for the night. While there, Diego tells Simón that he is engaged to Francisca. He has never met the girl before, but her mother, Irene, has assured him, mostly through letters, that the girl is delighted to be marrying him. Diego has been looking for a wife with whom he can share friendship and mutual respect; he says that impassioned love is too emotional to be well thought out. But, he is attracted to Francisca's youth and innocence, and plans to marry her as soon as they arrive in Madrid the next morning. This certainly heats up the affair situation. He doesn't want anyone to know about it until the marriage is finalized, because he isn't sure how his friends and relatives will view his marrying such a young girl. Simón is dubious, but Diego pays him no mind. However, he expresses concern over the fact that Francisca never says she loves him and has never explicitly consented to the marriage. Irene assures him that it would be improper for a girl to express such feelings in front of a man, and that Francisca tells Irene all the time about how wonderful Diego is.

A servant named Calamocha arrives at the house (which also rents rooms to travelers) to tell Rita, Francisca's servant, that he and his master have ridden all the way from Zaragoza to stop the wedding. He exits as Rita goes to tell Francisca the good news.

Later, Francisca, almost in sobs, expresses to Rita her displeasure at the prospect of marrying Don Diego. It is revealed that Francisca has fallen in love over the summer with a young man named Félix, in spite of living in a convent with her aunt. However, Francisca fears that, in her absence, Félix is already involved with other lovers and will ignore the letter that she sent him. Finally, Rita tells her that Félix has already come to Alcalá to help her, and Francisca immediately feels better.

Act 2

While they wait for Félix, Irene has a talk with Francisca about why she should be happy to get married: Diego is very rich, and Irene doesn't have anyone to take care of her except for Francisca. Also, Irene herself has married older men three different times and it has always worked out, so Francisca shouldn't have anything to worry about. She even goes so far as to threaten Francisca, who starts to feel that she cannot disobey her mother.

Félix then arrives and tells Paquita (a diminutive of Francisca) that she has nothing to worry about, because he has a rich uncle in Madrid that will use his money and influence to stop the marriage and allow Paquita to marry Félix. She starts to cry because she feels so torn between her filial duties and her great love for Félix.

Francisca and Rita must go to Irene's room, and Simón and Calamocha enter separately. They recognize each other and ask why each has come to Alcalá. However, Calamocha cannot reveal that Félix has come for personal reasons, and Simón has been charged to keep the wedding a secret, so each man pretends not to understand the other's questions. They stall until Diego shows up.

It is then revealed that "Félix" is actually don Carlos, the nephew of don Diego who has been stationed with his regiment in Zaragoza. Carlos says that he was on his way to Madrid so that he could visit his uncle. Diego is suspicious of this reason and orders Carlos to go back to Zaragoza immediately. Carlos protests that the horses are too tired, so Diego, still trying to hide the fact that he is engaged, sends Carlos somewhere else to spend the night. As Diego is like a father to him, Carlos cannot disobey, so he and Calamocha leave without an opportunity to explain to Francisca what is going on.

Act 3

In the middle of the night, Carlos plays music in the street so that Francisca will hear him, and he throws a letter for her through the window. However, Diego finds it, having already witnessed the entire episode. He sends Simón to get Carlos while he finally talks to Francisca about the marriage. Francisca, heartbroken, says that she'll do as her mother orders, even though she will be unhappy.

When Carlos arrives, Diego deliberately provokes him to see how much he cares for Francisca. Carlos proves that theirs is not an illicit love, but rather they have spent 90 days just talking to one another and have thus fallen in love. However, Carlos offers to abandon Francisca if that is what his uncle would command. Diego realizes that he has been as commandeering to Carlos as Irene has been to Francisca, for which Diego has already criticized her. Finally, Diego decides that it would be better for Francisca to have free choice of what she wants to do, and she decides to marry Carlos.

Struggling photographer Rebecca Sommers finds her model boyfriend Richard in bed with another woman. Her life falls apart, and she alternates between desire for revenge upon him, sexual promiscuity, and abandonment of all hope of love. Her best friends, Michelle and Carrie, try to set her up on dates. These include one with a freakish magician and another with a man who gives her ecstasy and has a fetish for fish. She attempts to make Richard jealous by taking a director, who is reminiscent of Woody Allen, to a runway show, but he ends up vomiting on her breasts in front of everyone.

Ultimately, Rebecca realizes she should focus her energy on being with someone who truly loves her, and that turns out to be John, her nerdy but caring best male friend who has been supportive of her through the entire ordeal.

The story is set in Vetusta (Spanish stands for "antiquated", "extremely old", a provincial capital city, very identifiable with Oviedo, capital of Asturias – especially since it is said that two monks, Nolan and John, founded the city, this being Oviedo's mythical genesis), where the main character of the work, Ana Ozores "La Regenta", marries the former prime magistrate of the city, Víctor Quintanar, a kind but fussy man much older than she. Feeling sentimentally abandoned, Ana lets herself be courted by the province casanova, Álvaro Mesía. To complete the circle, Don Fermín de Pas (Ana's confessor and canon in the cathedral of Vetusta) also falls in love with her and becomes Mesía's unmentionable rival. A great panorama of secondary characters, portrayed by Clarín with merciless irony, completes the human landscape of the novel.

Struggling writer Alton Bennet explains to psychiatrist Dr. Redman how he has nightmares about murdering his wealthy wife, Ruth, who owns very valuable jewels.

Redman's private secretary, Merl Kramer, casually mentions Bennet's problems to her boyfriend, a private eye, Karl Benson. Merl also mentions that Ruth Bennet is scheduled to drop into Dr. Redman's office that evening for a special session concerning her husband. Benson gets ideas about the jewels, steals Merl's keys and gets duplicates made. Later, he waits outside Redman's office until Ruth arrives, then writes down the Bennets' address from information posted in the car.

Benson is next seen showing his pawnbroker acquaintance, Charlie, jewels and asking him to value them. Charlie mentions there is a "murder rap hanging over this junk" and pays out only for a couple of small pieces, advising Benson to get rid of the rest. Benson runs into Merl and asks her to deposit the money into her bank account, suggesting he has earned it from a recent job and does not want to be tempted to spend it all. He hides the jewels in the water cooler in his office/apartment.

Ruth Bennet is found murdered, precisely in the manner her husband has been dreaming. Along with Detective Dawson, Insurance Investigator Joe Cooper is on the case. While interviewing Redman, it is revealed that the transcripts concerning Bennet's conversations about his nightmare are missing. Redman is seen to have a bandaged bump on his head, which he claims happened when he slipped the previous evening while walking in the park.

It comes to light that Merl's references for her job with Redman were forged, which raises Dawson's suspicions about whether the woman is an upstanding person. He and Cooper question her and she tells them that she got the references and the job with Redman through a friend, Karl Benson.

Benson plays down his relationship with Merl and suggests he can help Dawson and Cooper with the Bennet case, for a share of the eventual insurance payout. He then goes to talk with Merl, and secretly plants one of the dead woman's rings under her sofa cushion. When Merl finds it, she pawns it for the few dollars she needs to finish paying for a new coat. She tells Cooper, when he asks her about it – the pawnbroker had immediately recognized the ring and had phoned police – that she had no idea that it could be Ruth Bennet's property.

Benson works to frame Merl for the murder and the theft; he shows Dawson and Cooper her bankbook and insinuates the recent large deposit has to do with the stolen loot. In his office/apartment, Benson is then confronted by Redman who has realized it is Benson who has the jewels. Benson had stolen the transcript describing the murder scenario nightmare, and had gone to take the gems; when he arrived, he saw Redman leaving the Bennet apartment after killing Ruth. Benson knocked the man out, thereby giving him the bump on his head, and took the pieces from him.

Benson and Redman make an uneasy deal wherein Benson will ensure he "finds" the jewels in Merl's apartment, turn them in to Dawson and Cooper, and he and Redman can share the insurance payout. Benson then goes to the station where Merl is being interrogated. He denies any knowledge of the money in her bank account, then tells Dawson he would be glad to go check her apartment for him again, to see where she may have hidden things. While there, attempting to hide the stash to make it look like Merl did it, Redman shows up, demanding the items. Benson hands them over but, after the man leaves by the fire escape, Benson runs down to the street and, using Redman's own car, kills him.

After stowing the jewels inside Merl's chair, he phones Dawson to tell him he has found them. When Merl returns to her apartment, he tells her she is going down for the crime. They struggle and he knocks her out; he takes her to the roof, intending to throw her off and make it appear like suicide. The police, having arrived as per Benson's call, hear her screams; Cooper and Dawson rescue her. Back in her apartment, Benson learns that Charlie has been taken in for possession of the stolen property; the private eye is further caught in his web of lies and is arrested.

First edition cover with an illustration of Faustine. The fugitive starts a diary after tourists arrive on the desert island where he is hiding. Although he considers their presence a miracle, he is afraid they will turn him in to the authorities. He retreats to the swamps while they take over the museum on top of the hill where he used to live. The diary described the fugitive as a writer from Venezuela sentenced to life in prison. He believes he is on the (fictional) island of Villings, a part of the Ellice Islands (now Tuvalu), but is not sure. All he knows is that the island is the focus of a strange disease whose symptoms are similar to radiation poisoning.

Among the tourists is a woman who watches the sunset every day from the cliff on the west side of the island. He spies on her and while doing so falls in love. She and another man, a bearded tennis player called Morel who visits her frequently, speak French among themselves. Morel calls her Faustine. The fugitive decides to approach her, but she does not react to him. He assumes she is ignoring him; however, his encounters with the other tourists have the same result. Nobody on the island notices him. He points out that the conversations between Faustine and Morel repeat every week and fears he is going crazy.

As suddenly as they appeared, the tourists vanish. The fugitive returns to the museum to investigate and finds no evidence of people being there during his absence. He attributes the experience to a hallucination caused by food poisoning, but the tourists reappear that night. They have come out of nowhere and yet they talk as if they have been there for a while. He watches them closely while still avoiding direct contact and notices more strange things. In the aquarium he encounters identical copies of the dead fish he found on his day of arrival. During a day at the pool, he sees the tourists jump to shake off the cold when the heat is unbearable. The strangest thing he notices is the presence of two suns and two moons in the sky.

He comes up with all sorts of theories about what is happening on the island, but finds out the truth when Morel tells the tourists he has been recording their actions of the past week with a machine of his invention, which is capable of reproducing reality. He claims the recording will capture their souls, and through looping they will relive that week forever and he will spend eternity with the woman he loves. Although Morel does not mention her by name, the fugitive is sure he is talking about Faustine.

After hearing that the people recorded on previous experiments are dead, one of the tourists guesses correctly they will die, too. The meeting ends abruptly as Morel leaves in anger. The fugitive picks up Morel's cue cards and learns the machine keeps running because the wind and tide feed it with an endless supply of kinetic energy. He understands that the phenomena of the two suns and two moons are a consequence of what happens when the recording overlaps reality — one is the real sun and the other one represents the sun's position at recording time. The other strange things that happen on the island have a similar explanation.

He imagines all the possible uses for Morel's invention, including the creation of a second model to resurrect people. Despite this he feels repulsion for the "new kind of photographs" that inhabit the island, but as time goes by he accepts their existence as something better than his own. He learns how to operate the machine and inserts himself into the recording so it looks like he and Faustine are in love, even though she might have slept with Alec and Haynes. This bothers him, but he is confident it will not matter in the eternity they will spend together. At least he is sure she is not Morel's lover.

On the diary's final entry the fugitive describes how he is waiting for his soul to pass onto the recording while dying. He asks a favor of the man who will invent a machine capable of merging souls based on Morel's invention. He wants the inventor to search for them and let him enter Faustine's consciousness as an act of mercy.

KEMO city was known for the manufacture of hovercars, meeting the country's demands for transportation until 2022. Over time, however, the crime rate had risen so far that the economy collapsed and the city descended into disorder. Criminals roamed the streets in armored hovercars, terrorizing the citizens without fear of retribution. In 2029, OmniCorp promised city officials that it could clean up KEMO and return it to normal. The offer was accepted, and the corporation began the construction of a massive wall around the city under the guise of a "defensive measure". The wall was completed three years later, and the only exit sealed shut, turning KEMO into a massive prison city for all inside, criminal or otherwise. The outraged population reacted violently, and the city degenerated.

Ten years later OmniCorp decided to test the behavior altering chemical ''Hydergine 344'' on the population of KEMO. This chemical was supposed to pacify the citizens and distributed through the city's water supply. Unfortunately, OmniCorp failed to predict the chemical's reaction to stagnant water, resulting in massive brain damage and insanity in the many citizens. More than half the population became crazed killers overnight.

Drake Edgewater, a 21st-century cab driver and one of the lucky few unaffected by the spreading virus, is desperate to escape the city alive. Driving his '52 Checker hovercab armed with an assortment of vehicle-mounted weaponry, he delivers passengers and packages for what money he can make to upgrade his vehicle and escape.

Upon hearing the legend of the treasure known as the Valkiry, treasure hunters Axel Sonics (voiced by Kazuki Yao) and Ruka Hetfield (voiced by Noriko Hidaka) embark on an adventurous quest to find the legendary stone. However, unknown to Axel and Ruka at the start, there is also a terrorist organization known as the Pumpkin Heads searching for the Valkiry, determined to use the stone for world domination.

In a race to reach the stone first, Axel and Ruka fight their way through the Pumpkin Heads' army of elite soldiers along several locations, destroying each of the three top captains and eventually reaching their hideout, where they confront the Master, who already has the Valkiry in her possession. Using the Valkiry to power herself, the Master engages Axel and Ruka in a decisive, final battle, but is eventually destroyed and the Valkiry is freed.

The ending differs for each character: if Axel defeats the Master, he is joined by Ruka, who in her excitement takes the Valkiry and runs off, with the weary Axel only barely managing to keep up with her; if Ruka defeats the Master, she accidentally drops the Valkiry and it shatters, and in her frustration, she vows never to hunt for treasure again, although a caption mentions that she eventually stayed in the business with Axel.

After the player character completes the four campaigns and destroys the Ovon home-world for the Reptons, the Reptons send their best pilots to kill the player character. The player character escapes and jumps to Earth, where centuries have passed since the player character left. The ship is greeted by the Earth Defense Fleet, which destroys all Repton ships in hot pursuit.

A group of friends are to celebrate the summer on a small island in the Stockholm Archipelago. The plan is to eat crayfish and drink snaps, a quintessentially Swedish tradition. Some are already in the house on the island (with the food) and the rest of the group arrives by boat (bringing the snaps), but they experience great difficulties while trying to come ashore. Their only neighbor on the island, an eccentric, Hollywood-obsessed, hot-tempered hermit doesn't make the situation better.

Sasha (Igor Fomchenko) is a boy who lives with his mother (Marina Adzhubei) and his sister in an old house in Moscow. He is learning to play the violin. Every morning he has to cross the yard to go to the music school, trying to avoid some other children who are bullying and harassing him. This day he is lucky as Sergey (Vladimir Zamansky), the operator of a steamroller, tells them to leave Sasha alone.

At the music school he plays beautifully, but his teacher, who is more interested in form and order, is stifling his creativity with a metronome. On his way back home Sasha meets Sergey again, who allows him to help him on the steamroller. The two have lunch together and face a number of adventures as they walk around Moscow. They watch a wrecking ball demolishing a decrepit building, revealing one of the Seven Sisters in the background. Sergey tells stories about the war, and Sasha plays the violin for his new friend.

They part with the plan to see a film together, but the plans are foiled by Sasha's mother. Sasha attempts to sneak out of the apartment, and in the final scene we see Sasha running after the steamroller in a dreamlike sequence.

Having attended General Eisenhower's final briefing on the Normandy landings, U.S. Army Major Jeff Pike is sent to Lisbon, Portugal on June 1, 1944, to meet an informant to confirm that the Nazis still expect the invasion at the Pas de Calais. He is abducted and transported to Germany.

Pike wakes up in what looks like a U.S. Army hospital. His hair is graying, and he needs glasses to read. He is told it is May 1950 and he is in post-war occupied Germany. Psychiatrist Major Walter Gerber explains that Pike has been having episodes of amnesia since he was tortured in Lisbon. He advises Pike that his blocked memories have always resurfaced, helped along by a therapy of remembering events prior to Lisbon and then pushing forward into the blank period. Various props including U.S. Army jeeps and uniforms, baseball, and fake letters, newspaper and radio broadcasts, are used to carefully convince Pike that the year is 1950 and that he is among fellow Americans. He is assisted by a German nurse, the dispassionate Anna Hedler. Pike is taken in by the deception. As part of his "therapy", he recounts the critical details of the invasion plans, including the location and the date, June 5, to his eager listeners.

When Pike notices a nearly invisible paper cut he got the day he left for Lisbon, he realizes that he has been deceived. He confirms it by tricking an "American" soldier into reflexively snapping to attention in the German manner. He confronts Anna, who admits that the date is June 2, 1944. She was recruited from a concentration camp because she was a nurse and spoke English.

Pike instructs Anna to tell Gerber that he was onto the plot, while he makes a feeble attempt to escape. Quickly recaptured, he states that he realized what was going soon after waking up due to his paper cut. Gerber does not believe him. After two days of interrogation, however, Pike and Anna convince SS agent Schack, who never believed the deception would work. Schack is sure the invasion will be at the Pas de Calais. Gerber, however, sets the clock forward in Pike and Anna's room so they think it is the morning of June 5, then states that the Germans have been surprised at Normandy. Pike lets his guard down and confirms it. Gerber sends an emergency dispatch, but the weather on June 5 is so bad that Eisenhower postpones the invasion a day (which actually occurred). By midday June 5, Gerber has been discredited and Schack orders his arrest.

Gerber knows that Schack will kill them to cover his own blunder when the Allies do finally land at Normandy. Gerber helps Anna and Pike escape, asking Pike to take his groundbreaking research on amnesiacs with him. When the invasion begins the next morning, he laughs at Schack when he arrives, revealing that he has taken poison and pointing out that Schack will likely be liquidated. Schack pursues the escapees on his own, too hurried to wait for troops.

The couple flee to a local minister who (Pike knows) had helped downed RAF pilots escape to nearby Switzerland. The minister is away, but his housekeeper Elsa introduces them to a jovially corrupt German border guard, Sgt. Ernst. Pike and Anna bribe him with his watch and her rings to get them across the border. Ernst gives Elsa one of the rings. Schack shows up at the minister's after Ernst and the couple have left for the border – he recognizes Anna's ring on Elsa’s finger and forces her to reveal where they have gone. Schack catches up at the border, but Ernst shoots him and arranges Schack’s body to make it look as if he had been killed while trying to escape himself.

Safely in Switzerland, Pike and Hedler are put in separate cars. Anna cries as they part, her first display of emotion in years.

The main subject of the book is the relationship between the valet Jacques and his master, who is never named. The two are traveling to a destination the narrator leaves vague, and to dispel the boredom of the journey Jacques is compelled by his master to recount the story of his loves. However, Jacques's story is continually interrupted by other characters and various comic mishaps. Other characters in the book tell their own stories and they, too, are continually interrupted. There is even a "reader" who periodically interrupts the narrator with questions, objections, and demands for more information or detail. The tales told are usually humorous, with romance or sex as their subject matter, and feature complex characters indulging in deception.

Jacques's key philosophy is that everything that happens to us down here, whether for good or for evil, has been written up above ("tout ce qui nous arrive de bien et de mal ici-bas était écrit là-haut"), on a "great scroll" that is unrolled a little bit at a time. Yet Jacques still places value on his actions and is not a passive character. Critics such as J. Robert Loy have characterized Jacques's philosophy as not fatalism but determinism.

The book is full of contradictory characters and other dualities. One story tells of two men in the army who are so much alike that, though they are the best of friends, they cannot stop dueling and wounding each other. Another concerns Father Hudson, an intelligent and effective reformer of the church who is privately the most debauched character in the book. Even Jacques and his master transcend their apparent roles, as Jacques proves, in his insolence, that his master cannot live without him, and therefore it is Jacques who is the master and the master who is the servant.

The story of Jacques's loves is lifted directly from ''Tristram Shandy'', which Diderot makes no secret of, as the narrator at the end announces the insertion of an entire passage from ''Tristram Shandy'' into the story. Throughout the work, the narrator refers derisively to sentimental novels and calls attention to the ways in which events develop more realistically in his book. At other times, the narrator tires of the tedium of narration altogether and obliges the reader to supply certain trivial details.

On the first day of the new elementary school year in Korea, Ms. Yeo Mi-ok (Yum Jung-ah) lays down the law to her students. She is strict and demanding. When her new student Go Mi-nam (Lee Se-young) arrives late and calmly takes her seat, Yeo ignores Mi-nam. Assigned bathroom cleaning duty as punishment, Mi-nam beats up the girls who taunt her and forces them to clean instead. At home we see that Mi-nam lives with her mother, who rarely has time for her because of the hours she must work at the food and alcohol tent she owns.

Back at school, the newest male teacher Mr. Kwon Sang-min (Lee Ji-hoon) is causing a stir with his handsome good looks, and every female teacher and student is falling for him. Mi-nam tries to apologize and unburden herself to Ms. Yeo, who ignores her while trying to impress Mr. Kwon. Mi-nam decides to compete for him as well, even getting his cellphone number. Mr. Kwon goes to Ms. Yeo for advice on how to deal with the students' affection, not realizing she likes him too. The teacher and the student start a heated rivalry that climaxes when Ms. Yeo slaps Mi-nam in class—and is recorded doing so on a student's cellphone camera.

She resigns from the school but eventually makes amends with Mi-nam and returns to teach.

A wealthy American man named Longmore is introduced to his countrywoman Euphemia de Mauves, wife of the Comte Richard de Mauves. Longmore and Madame de Mauves become friends, and he visits her frequently in Paris. Superficially, Madam de Mauves leads a happy life with a wealthy and "irreproachably polite" husband, but Longmore soon becomes convinced that she harbours a deep sadness. It gradually becomes clear that the Comte is an unscrupulous and dissipated man who married his wife for her money alone. As a youth, Madame de Mauves had been naive and idealistic, believing that the Comte de Mauves' title guaranteed a fine character. The Comte, however, proved to have little regard for his wife, and had embarked on a series of extramarital affairs. Even his politeness "was hardly more than a form of luxurious egotism, like his fondness for cambric handkerchiefs.... In after years he was terribly polite to his wife." Madame de Mauves' faith in her ideals is destroyed, but she responds with stoic resignation.

Longmore falls in love with Madame de Mauves, but, understanding that he cannot be her lover, and believing that she desperately needs a friend, he tries to sublimate his love into friendship. This attitude is reinforced by Madame de Mauves, who welcomes his friendship, but is hostile to any sentiment on his part. However both the Comte de Mauves and his sister, the crass widow Madame de Clairin, hint that Longmore should woo Madame de Mauves. The Comte wishes her to take a lover so that he may be free to pursue his own affair.

As tensions mount, the Comte openly breaks with his wife, Madame de Clairin urges Longmore to woo Madame de Mauves, and then she tells Madame de Mauves what she has told Longmore. Longmore agonises over how to proceed; he finds it difficult even to decide to continue his daily visits: "His presence now might be simply a gratuitous cause of suffering; and yet his absence might seem to imply that it was in the power of circumstances to make them ashamed to meet each other's eyes." Eventually he visits Madame de Mauves, who rather cryptically asks him to confirm her very high opinion of him by doing the proper thing: "Don't disappoint me. If you don't understand me now, you will to-morrow, or very soon. When I said just now that I had a very high opinion of you, I meant it very seriously. It was not a vain compliment. I believe that there is no appeal one may make to your generosity which can remain long unanswered. If this were to happen,—if I were to find you selfish where I thought you generous, narrow where I thought you large, ... vulgar where I thought you rare,—I should think worse of human nature. I should suffer,—I should suffer keenly. I should say to myself in the dull days of the future, 'There was one man who might have done so and so; and he, too, failed.' But this shall not be. You have made too good an impression on me not to make the very best. If you wish to please me forever, there's a way."

After much reflection, Longmore concludes that she wishes him to voluntarily break off contact — to do so not because she has dismissed him, not because there has been a 'scene', and not with any promise of meeting again in future, but simply because it is the honourable thing to do. The next day Longmore leaves for America. At his last meeting with the Comte he receives the impression that the Comte may be starting to repent of his behaviour; Longmore feels threatened by this: "he felt that it would be far more tolerable in the future to think of his continued turpitude than of his repentance."

Longmore remains in love with Madame de Mauves, despite having had no contact with her. Two years later, he hears that the Comte has committed suicide. The Comte had indeed repented, and had begged his wife to forgive him, but Madame de Mauves had remained as stoically unforgiving as she had been stoic in her resignation: "[H]e fell madly in love with her now. He was the proudest man in France, but he had begged her on his knees to be readmitted to favor. All in vain! She was stone, she was ice, she was outraged virtue. People noticed a great change in him: he gave up society, ceased to care for anything, looked shockingly. One fine day they learned that he had blown out his brains."

Euphemia is now free, and Longmore's first instinct is to go to her. However he puts off leaving for Europe from day to day for several years, because "The truth is, that in the midst of all the ardent tenderness of his memory of Madame de Mauves, he has become conscious of a singular feeling,—a feeling for which awe would be hardly too strong a name."

Nói Kristmundsson is a 17-year-old living in a small unnamed remote fishing village in western Iceland with his grandmother Lína (Anna Friðriksdóttir). His father Kiddi (Þröstur Leó Gunnarsson), an alcoholic taxi driver, also lives in town, but Nói appears to have a distant relationship with him. As an alopecia totalis his appearance is strikingly different from others in the village. Much of his time is spent either wandering the desolate town, at the town bookstore, or in a hidden cellar at his grandmother's house, which serves as his private sanctuary. The town is a sort of purgatory for Nói, surrounded by mountains and attainable only by boat during the winter, when the roads through the mountain passes are snowed over. There are signs that Nói is highly intelligent, but he is totally uninterested in school and seems to have an adversarial relationship with the faculty, particularly his math teacher. More often than not he cuts class to go to the local gas station, where he frequently breaks into the slot machine and rigs it for an assured jackpot. The bleak town seem to offer few prospects for the future, and Nói doesn't seem to fit in there.

Things begin to change for Nói when he encounters the new gas station attendant, an attractive young woman who is new to the village. He asks about the new girl to Óskar (Hjalti Rögnvaldsson) the bookstore owner, who informs him that she is his daughter Íris (Elín Hansdóttir), up from the south to escape the city, and to stay away from her. Nói instead begins a tentative romance with Íris. One night they break into the local natural history museum, and are almost caught by a nightwatchman. They hide in a storage closet, where they discover a light-up map of the world. Nói comments that Iceland looks like a spitwad on the map, and Íris suggests that they run away together. Nói asks where, and Íris suggests he press a button on the map and the Hawaiian Islands light up. This is when Nói begins to dream of leaving the village and Iceland altogether. He receives a View-Master as an 18th birthday present from his grandmother, which comes with slide disc of tropical island images. He is particularly transfixed with an image of a tropical beach, the total opposite of his immediate surroundings.

One day at school, he is asked by the principal to meet with a specialist. The specialist asks him a series of questions, including "How many times a day do you masturbate?" Nόi responds by asking the specialist the same question, simultaneously solving a Rubik's Cube. The specialist becomes embarrassed, states that he is the one asking the questions, and gives him an IQ test to complete. Later, Nói uses a tape recorder to take his place in math class, which enrages the teacher. The teacher goes to the principal, insisting that Nόi is a disruptive influence and must be expelled immediately. The principal is hesitant, but he is forced to expel Nόi after the teacher gives the ultimatum that either Nόi goes or he will resign. Nόi angrily leaves the school, knowing that his father will be upset with him. He tells him, and a small altercation between them results. Afterwards his father takes him out to a local bar, where he is kicked out for smuggling liquor and underage drinking. He goes to Óskar's house in search of ĺris, climbing up onto the roof, where he is discovered by Óskar. Óskar tells him he's sent her back, at which point Íris comes down the stairs. Íris insists that Nói stay the night, over Óskar's objections.

His grandmother goes to a local fortune teller, Gylfi (Kjartan Bjargmundsson), and requests that he give Nói a fortune reading, to maybe give him some direction. Nói is working as a grave digger at this time, and goes to see Gylfi on a lunch break. After reading the tea leaves, Gylfi becomes visibly upset, informing Nói that his future is filled with death. Nói, thinking that Gylfi is teasing him, calls him a moron and leaves. Soon after, Nói leaves his job, getting his grandmother's shotgun. He attempts to rob a bank, but is thwarted when the bank teller doesn't take him seriously and has the gun taken out of his hands by the bank manager, who angrily pushes him out onto the street. He comes back inside the bank thoroughly humiliated and withdraws all of the money in his account, using it to buy a nice suit. He then steals a car, intending to run away with Íris. She is confused by his arrival and instead looks blankly at him. He realizes that she is not coming with him, and leaves. His car becomes stuck in the snow, and he is quickly apprehended by the police. His father bails him out of jail and takes him home. On the way back they stop at the gas station, where Íris is pumping gas. The father comments that she seems to have gained weight, a ploy he has taught to Nói as a sure way to get women to sleep with you. Nói shrinks down in his seat, embarrassed.

Nói arrives home and descends into his cellar sanctuary. Suddenly, the earth shudders violently, and the light goes out. Nói finds his lighter and tries to escape out of the cellar, but is unable to open the overhead door, and lies down on the floor, watching his lighter until the fuel runs out. He is eventually awoken by the door above him being ripped open. He discovers that there was an avalanche, which has destroyed the house and killed his grandmother and father. At a rescue shelter, he watches the news report and discovers that nearly everyone he knows has been killed in the avalanche, including Íris. Gylfi, his prophecy fulfilled, has also perished. He later returns to the rubble of his grandmother's house to retrieve the View-Master. The movie ends with Nói looking at the tropical beach scene slide as it slowly becomes a vision of a real tropical beach.

The film begins on the ship bearing elderly widow Alice Hargreaves, who as Alice Liddell was Lewis Carroll's muse and the inspiration for his book ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'', and her caretaker Lucy. As they disembark, they are set upon by several journalists, all trying to get a story or quote from Alice about her relationship with Carroll, whom she knew as "Mr. Dodgson". Clearly bewildered by all the excitement, she is befriended by an ex-reporter, Jack Dolan, who helps her and Lucy through the legions of the press. Dolan quickly becomes her agent and finds endorsement opportunities for her. Throughout it all, a romance develops between Jack and Lucy.

When left alone in their hotel room, Alice hallucinates that Mr. Dodgson (Ian Holm) is in their room, as well as the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, The Caterpillar, the Dormouse, the Mock Turtle, and the Gryphon. When she joins them for their tea party, they make fun of her for being so old and forgetful. She remembers also the lazy boating party of 4 July 1862, when Dodgson, then a mathematics professor at her father's school, had attempted to entertain her and her sisters by spinning the nonsense tale that grew to be ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland''.

Via flashbacks, it is insinuated that Dodgson was infatuated with Alice, and that their relationship may have had sexual overtones. She recalls the boating party through this new perspective; she realizes that Dodgson was jealous when she met the boy whom she would one day marry, and that she enjoyed toying with his affections, deliberately baiting him to provoke his nervous stutter. Alice tries to understand her feelings and past relationship with Dodgson in her mind.

By the time she delivers her acceptance speech at Columbia University, she comes to terms with Dodgson and the way they treated each other. In another fantasy sequence with the Mock Turtle, she and Dodgson forgive each other and make peace.

The show concerns the Reverend Timothy Carswell, a timid and somewhat naive vicar who is assigned to an apparently respectable suburban parish. However, the area is actually a hotbed of (among other things) gossip, passion, geriatric prostitution and murder, all of which is going on under Reverend Carswell's unsuspecting nose.

In 2012, Pakistani terrorist and arms dealer Asad Rahil began to sell old Soviet weaponry to fundamentalists in the Middle East through corrupt contacts in the Kazakhstan military. When the Kazakh president found out about this, he and his security council attempted to shut them down. As a response, Rahil assassinated the president and his security council in a bombing attack on Almaty, Kazakhstan. A couple weeks before the bombing, Rahil moved his troops to Kyrgyzstan, where he attempted to steal chemical weapons at a disposal facility in Oshkek. When local militia tried to stop him, Rahil detonated gas shells at the facility, killing the militia and over 500 civilians. After this, Rahil moved his troops into Almaty where he set off the bomb. After the bombing, the Kazakh military broke apart into multiple factions fighting for control of the government. UN peacekeeping troops are deployed into Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to prevent an outbreak of a civil war.

The UN deploys the Ghosts, led by Captain Mitchell, to capture or kill Rahil and eliminate his forces in the region. The ghosts are tasked to work with Gregoriy Koslov, a Kazakh military specialist working with the UN to take down the corrupt military elements. Their first mission is to destroy an old Soviet military instillation Rahil is using as a base of operations. They clear a village near the base of enemy soldiers and destroy artillery pieces guarding it. They then successfully clear the base of Rahil's troops after destroying nearby SAM sites. Afterwards, Mitchell and his team kill one of Rahil's top lieutenants and destroy his training camps, but several of Koslovs troops are captured by enemy forces. The Ghosts travel to another one of Rahil's bases where Koslovs men are being kept. They successfully secure the prisoners and the base, as well as eliminating an enemy armor convoy.

Eventually, Rahil's army attacks Astana in an attempt to capture the capital and establish power. The Ghosts are sent to destroy enemy armored reinforcements traveling to the capital and destroy another armor battalion before they can ambush UN troops. Despite these setbacks, Rahal's forces take Astana, and the UN troops and Kazakh loyalists prepare a full-scale assault of the city. Mitchell and his team destroy enemy bunkers East of the capital to prevent reinforcements from reaching the city. UN troops assault Astana in an attempt to capture Rahil. The Ghosts are sent into the city to secure the crash sites of a Predator UAV and a downed Kazakh loyalist helicopter. After completing this, Mitchell and his forward team work with UN troops to take back the city.

After taking back the city, Mitchell gets word that one of his teams has been ambushed by Rahil's troops. Mitchell goes in alone while the rest of his team stays with Koslov to search for Rahil. Mitchell eventually eliminates the enemy attackers and rescues his team. Rahil's army retreats from the capital and is spread throughout the Badlands. The Ghosts work with UN troops to take back a satellite launch facility from a large enemy force. They find no sign of Rahil but find out that Koslov may be engaging him. Koslov disobeys Mitchell's orders and attacks Rahils forces without the Ghosts. The ghosts are sent to help Koslov but are then sent to secure an old Soviet nuclear storage facility to prevent Rahil from getting his hands on weapons-grade Uranium. The Ghosts prevent Rahil's forces from escaping with the Uranium, but fail to capture Rahil himself. They also discover that Koslov and his men were killed by Rahil's men.

UN forces learn of Rahils hiding place, and they find him and his remaining forces trapped in a fortress, where he faces off against the UN troops in a final battle. One of Mitchell's teams guards the canyon to prevent Rahil's forces from escaping. The Ghosts then help UN troops pinned down by enemy forces leaving the fortress. The Ghosts and UN forces assault the fortress in an attempt to capture Rahil. Rahil tries to escape with a platoon of his troops guarding him, but Mitchell and his team defeat his soldiers and kill Rahil in a final standoff. 3 months after the bombing attack, the Kazakh military is finally put back together and the country celebrates the first elections since the attack. Mitchell and the Ghosts finally leave Kazakhstan after visiting Koslovs grave.

Jerry and Elaine travel to Florida to visit Jerry's parents Morty and Helen at the Pines of Mar Gables Phase II for the weekend and plan on going scuba diving (which Helen doesn't see the point in doing). Morty is also being honored at a ceremony the next night. Jack Klompus and his wife Doris come over to write Morty a check for a previous night's dinner and Jerry notices Jack's pen. When Jerry asks Jack about it, Jack tells him that it can write upside down and that astronauts use it in space. Jack offers an interested Jerry the pen. Jerry refuses his offer several times, but Jack persists and Jerry finally gives in. Helen asks why he took the pen and says he should give it back because Doris will tell everyone in the condo that Jerry made Jack give it to him.

That night, Elaine sleeps on a sofa bed with a bar that sticks up through the mattress and injures her back, making her experience extreme pain, while not being helped by the fact that the air conditioning is turned off, since Jerry's parents are "nuts about temperature". Jerry tries to console her by saying they only have two more days left before they go back to New York. The next morning, Elaine's back is so sore that she cannot go scuba diving with Jerry, so he goes without her. Morty suggests she take muscle relaxants to ease the pain. Just as Helen predicted, their neighbor Evelyn tells the Seinfelds about the rumors that are beginning to spread around the Pines of Mar Gables Phase II that Jerry wanted Jack to give him the pen. When Jerry returns, he has black eyes because the capillaries around his eyes burst when he went underwater and the pressure was too tight on his mask.

Jack comes over again and Jerry returns the pen. Morty argues with Jack for "taking Jerry's pen". Elaine decides she wants to take the muscle relaxants, but takes the wrong dose and acts goofily at the ceremony. Jerry has to wear sunglasses because of his black eyes. At the dinner, Uncle Leo and Aunt Stella arrive to watch the event. Jack is the MC and turns the dinner into a "roast", making insults about Morty at the podium. Morty starts arguing with Jack again about taking back the pen and they start fighting, breaking Jack's dental plate in the process, prompting a bitter Jack to sue Morty.

The next day, a chiropractor looks at Elaine's back and tells her she should not go anywhere for at least five days, extending both her and Jerry's stay even longer much to their disappointment. Evelyn appears and tells Morty and Helen that it would take six votes to get them thrown out. She also says her nephew Larry is a good lawyer and offers to have him represent Morty should Jack press charges against Morty.

Rand is a computer animator, who has created an artificial intelligence creature designed to interact with children and teach them responsibility. When his prototype is forced into practice at a school, Rand encounters Sarah, a teacher he was inexplicably drawn to, at his favorite bar one fateful evening. Sparks fly between them, but fundamental differences in their approaches to love and relationships slow them down to a halt.

The plot is built around three separate but interconnected stories woven through the novel. The first is set in 1929, where archaeologists in Louisiana excavating a mound of the Coles Creek culture encounter the skeleton of a horse, a seeming impossibility as the mound predates the re-introduction of the horse to North America. The mystery deepens when one of the archaeologists discovers something in the mound even more anachronistic: a corroded brass rifle cartridge.

The second is the first-person narrative of Madison Yazoo Leake, a soldier in the United States Army and a member of the "Special Group" being sent back in time to 1930s Louisiana in an attempt to stop the destruction of the human race in a nuclear war. However, while Leake arrives at the target site, it is in a world where Arabs explored America, the Roman Empire never existed, and the Aztec empire extended to the Mississippi. The only member of his team to arrive at this destination, he soon establishes contact with a group of mound-builders who gradually befriend him.

The final narrative is based on the diary entries of Warrant Officer Smith, another member of the Special Group. She arrives with the rest of the team of military and CIA personnel in what apparently is their timeline, only hundreds of years earlier than intended. Through her diary entries and the count of those members present for duty the story of their interactions with the local natives in their pre-Columbian world.

Sophie, a young milliner and eldest of three sisters, encounters a wizard named Howl on her way to visit her sister Lettie. Upon returning home, she meets the Witch of the Waste, who transforms her into a ninety-year-old woman. Seeking to break the curse, Sophie leaves home and sets off through the countryside. She meets a living scarecrow, whom she calls "Turnip Head". He leads her to Howl's moving castle where she enters without invitation. She subsequently meets Howl's young apprentice Markl and a fire demon named Calcifer, the source of the castle's magic and movement. Calcifer makes a deal with Sophie, agreeing to break her curse if she breaks his link with Howl. When Howl appears, Sophie announces that she has "hired herself" as a cleaning lady.

Meanwhile, Sophie's nation is caught up in a war with a neighboring kingdom, which is searching for its missing prince. The King summons Howl to fight in the war. However, Howl decides to send Sophie to the King, under the pretense of being his mother, to tell him that Howl is too much of a coward to fight. Before leaving, he gives Sophie a charmed ring that leads her to Calcifer and guarantees her safety. Sophie meets Suliman, the king's head sorceress, and also the Witch of the Waste, whom Suliman punishes by draining all of her power and reverting her to her true age, that of a harmless old woman. Suliman warns Sophie that Howl will meet the same fate if he does not fight for the king. Howl then arrives to rescue Sophie. Suliman tries to trap him by turning him into a monster, but with Sophie's help he remembers himself and just barely avoids death. The duo escapes along with the former Witch of the Waste and Suliman's dog Heen. In the meantime, soldiers from each kingdom break into the homes of both Jenkins and Pendragon (Howl's aliases in those kingdoms). However, the men only find an empty courtyard and warehouse, as the castle's magic nature allows travel between 4 separate residences.

Sophie learns that Howl's life is somehow bound to Calcifer's and that Howl has been transforming into a bird-like creature to interfere with both sides in the war, but each transformation makes it more difficult for him to return to human form. Howl then has the castle magically linked to Sophie's home, parking the castle itself on the town's outskirts. A few days later, the town is bombed by enemy aircraft and Suliman's henchmen attack the house and Sophie's hat shop. Howl heads out to protect the group. Sophie then moves everyone out of the house and removes Calcifer from the fireplace, which collapses the castle. The Witch of the Waste realizes that Calcifer has Howl's heart and grabs the fire demon, setting herself on fire. Sophie panics and pours water onto the Witch, which douses Calcifer. The remainder of the castle then splits in two; Sophie falls down a chasm and is separated from the group.

Following the charmed ring, Sophie wanders into a scene from the past, where she sees a young Howl catch a falling star – Calcifer – and give him his heart. Sophie calls for them to find her in the future as she is teleported away. She returns to the present, finds Howl, and they reunite with the others. The Witch returns Howl's heart, and Sophie places it back inside Howl, reviving him and freeing Calcifer, though he decides to stay. Sophie's curse is broken, though her hair remains white. After she kisses Turnip Head on the cheek, he returns to human form revealing himself to be Justin, the missing prince from the enemy kingdom. He reveals that only his true love's kiss can break his curse. After seeing Sophie's affection lies with Howl, he promptly heads for home to cease the war, but promises he will see them again. Suliman, watching through a crystal globe, also decides to end the war. Sometime later, bombers fly under dark skies over a recovered and green countryside headed to another war, while Sophie, Howl, and the others travel in the opposite direction in a new flying castle.

Michèle's writes her first journal entry, "I am 20 years old, and I have ruined my life!" This is just one of the many journal entry titles that are flashed before every particular scene in the film. Michèle had just recently broken up with her boyfriend so she meets up with some of her friends at a café. It is there that she meets the charming veterinarian François. Though Michèle has a promising modeling career, she feels that something, or someone, is missing in her life. François quickly fills this void, and Michèle feels partially whole. She first claims that she is Catholic but is dissatisfied with the results of praying and worshipping. By recommendation, she begins to follow Buddhism through meditation and use of elaborate costume jewelry. Eventually, she discovers that François is Jewish; however, he does not practice his faith. Throughout the film, she immerses herself in Judaism, following traditions such as the Sabbath. François breaks up with her by telling her "your touch sickens me", after accusing her of lying. He then engages in several other affairs but fails to ever marry. She attempts to date a few men but does not create any true connections. Finally, at a wedding of their friend Valérie, Francois has broken up with yet another woman and claims to desire her. The movie ends with the famous line, "...to be continued" leaving viewers curious about their future.

Syanthe is about 18 years old. She is a shapeshifter and has lived with other shapeshifters in the Carlbine forest all her life. Because of an incident that happened years ago, the King had confined all shapeshifters to the Carlbine forest. He marked all of the shapeshifters with a magical tattoo on their faces that would kill them if they crossed the boundaries of the forest. All of the shapeshifters were marked, except Syanthe, who had been hidden at birth from the King's men. When the Carlbine forest and the shapeshifters (who are closely bonded to the forest) slowly grew sick with an illness, Syanthe's mother included, she set out into the King's capital to obtain the cure for the illness. A few days or so later after Syanthe left the forest, she was caught by a caravan of traders. She decided to join these travelers on their way to the capital. She soon found out that the leader of the caravan, Jerel, had powerful magical powers, and realized that there was something amiss with the whole caravan.

Several supervillains start having recurring nightmares where Earth is destroyed by a nuclear Armageddon that the Justice League of America fails to prevent. Believing that the League's overconfidence in their own abilities and the exaggerated faith humanity has in them will be their ruin, the villains decide to band together to destroy the Justice League and save the world as they see fit. Toyman, Scarecrow, Poison Ivy and Captain Cold help solve the world's greatest problems, like hunger and physical disabilities, which turns public opinion against the Justice League.

Meanwhile, Lex Luthor and Black Manta capture Aquaman and take him to an alien city located within a black sphere at the bottom of the sea, where he is left under the care of Brainiac. The Martian Manhunter locates him, as Aquaman has telepathically instructed the oceanic wildlife to form lines visible from space that point to his location. Before he can free Aquaman, the Manhunter is ambushed by Gorilla Grodd, who incapacitates him with a psychic attack.

Batman captures The Riddler, who had stolen secret files about the Justice League's members' weaknesses from the Bat-Computer, and imprisons him in Arkham Asylum, but he is rescued by Luthor. In the process, the Joker finds out that he hasn't been invited to Luthor's secret society of supervillains and becomes furious.

Red Tornado eventually finds clues that might lead to Aquaman's location, but is surprised by a traitor among the Justice League's ranks, who destroys him and gives Grodd access to the Watchtower's computers and its members' secret identities.

Superman is attacked by Metallo, Parasite, Bizarro and Solomon Grundy. He emits a call for help that the Flash tries to answer, only to find out he has been poisoned by Captain Cold and is being forced to run non-stop until he dies from exhaustion.

Wonder Woman is poisoned by Cheetah with the blood of a Centaur, and starts to revert to the clay from which she was born. The Green Lantern is ambushed by Sinestro and teleported to the end of the Universe; without enough energy to return, Hal transforms himself into pure energy and stores himself inside his power ring in order to survive.

Green Arrow and Black Canary are attacked by Scarecrow and Clayface, while Hawkman and Hawkwoman are surprised by Toyman and the Atom is shot by Giganta.

Luthor, the Riddler, Poison Ivy and Black Manta invite everyone who wishes to join them to live in alien cities contained within black spheres, secretly provided by Brainiac, who lobotomizes Aquaman.

Superman's call for help is answered by Captain Marvel, who singlehandedly dispatches Superman's aggressors. Marvel takes Superman to the Batcave, and discovers that both Superman and Batman have been infected with mechanical worms. These worms had mind controlled Batman into destroying Red Tornado. Captain Marvel throws Superman into the Sun, destroying the worms. They head to the Watchtower to get some answers, but it explodes before they can board it. Captain Marvel and Superman work out a plan to save the Flash. Marvel uses the speed of Mercury to catch up to the Flash and knocks him off balance with his magic lightning bolt. The plan nearly kills both Captain Marvel and the Flash, but Superman is able to save them.

The Martian Manhunter regains control of his body and calls Zatanna to help save Aquaman and Red Tornado. They retrieve Aquaman's body from Brainiac's city and take it to Dr. Niles Caulder, leader of the Doom Patrol, who saves him and returns him to life. They recover Red Tornado's remains from the destroyed Watchtower and have them fixed by Doc Magnus, leader of the Metal Men.

From there, they warn Hawkman and Hawkwoman, who had defeated Toyman, that his hideout is located in Midway City, where they find out that he is building robotic bodies for Brainiac, and have the Phantom Stranger rescue Green Lantern. Green Arrow, Black Canary, the Atom, Plastic Man, Elongated Man, Metamorpho, the Metal Men and the Doom Patrol are all called to Superman's Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic.

Batman is found by Wonder Woman, who is able to return him to sanity with her magic lasso. They capture Captain Cold, who reveals the truth: The dream was fabricated by Luthor, Brainiac and Grodd to create a Legion of Doom and use them to destroy the Justice League. The mechanical worms were stolen designs from Dr. Sivana, based on Mr. Mind's powers, and Brainiac lobotomized Aquaman to find out if his brain could be used to control Grodd. It couldn't, but his baby son's can, and Black Manta kidnaps him. Black Adam also joins Luthor's cabal.

The heroes' sidekicks are mind-controlled by the worms and their loved ones are abducted. They discover that the worms are actually turning humans into robots as part of Brainiac's plan to mechanize the Universe, and attack Luthor's city to stop their plans, using armor that protects them from the worms.

After a big battle, most of the villains are defeated, but Brainiac, Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, Cheetah and Black Manta escape. John Stewart is given Jordan's ring and uses it to erase the heroes' secret identities from everyone's minds and to destroy the worms. He returns the ring to Hal and they capture the remaining villains and stop Brainiac, who takes control of Earth's nuclear arsenals in order to bring about the nuclear Armaggedon from the nightmare.

Meanwhile, the Joker sabotages Luthor's cities and takes down the Scarecrow. Aquaman, Wonder Woman and the Atom quickly take down Black Manta, Cheetah and Poison Ivy, leaving only Brainiac at large.

After a drawn-out battle, Superman, Red Tornado and Zatanna defeat the villain while the Green Lantern Corps prevents the nuclear Armaggedon. Luthor, Brainiac and the others are imprisoned and Wonder Woman is taken to Themyscira, the Paradise-Island, where her mother, Queen Hippolyta, restores her with the help of the Gods.

All returns to normal, but Batman wonders if the Justice League will, one day, really accomplish world peace. Meanwhile, in Metropolis, Superman is observed by the Legion of Super-Heroes from the 31st century, a Utopian future, proving that they will succeed one day.

''Wing Commander''

The player takes the role of a nameless pilot (later referred to as Christopher Blair in sequels) aboard the TCS ''Tiger's Claw'', a ''Bengal''-class Strike Carrier. The player names the pilot and choose his call sign. The pilot, known in-production to Origin personnel as "Bluehair" after his most notable feature, quickly rises through the ranks of the flight wing. The campaign will split to various different planets and scenarios depending on the player's performance. If the player performs overall well, they eventually lead a strike on the Kilrathi High Command starbase in the Venice system and force the Kilrathi to retreat. If the player fails too many objectives, missions become increasingly defensive in nature. Human refugees abandon the sector, and eventually the ''Claw'' is forced to retreat as well. Of the two endings, the "winning" path is considered canon by the game's two expansion packs as well as the sequel ''Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi''.

''Wing Commander: The Secret Missions''

In the add-on's plot, the ''Tiger's Claw'', on maneuvers in the Goddard System, receives an abortive distress call from Goddard colony. When the ''Claw'' arrives, though, nothing is left but wreckage and corpses; a quarter of a million colonists have been killed. Confed realizes that this is the work of a new Kilrathi weapon, the "Graviton weapon", which is able to increase the power of gravity by over a hundred times. Clever work by the ''Claw'''s crew and pilots allows them to capture a Kilrathi courier ship, which reveals that this weapon is mounted on an entirely new class of ship; CNC codenames it the ''Sivar''-class dreadnought, after the Kilrathi god of war. Bluehair leads the strike against the ''Sivar'' and destroys it in the Vigrid system; for unexplained reasons, ships of that class and armament are never seen again.

''Wing Commander: The Secret Missions 2: Crusade''

In the add-on's plot, the ''Tiger's Claw'' is in the Firekka System, whose native intelligent lifeforms — the bird-like Firekkans — are negotiating to join the Terran Confederation. Tensions are high, and will only get higher. There is an unusual Kilrathi presence in the area, including their upgraded ''Dralthi II'' and ships that have never been seen before: the ''Hhriss''-class heavy fighter and the ''Snakeir''-class heavy carrier. This presence develops into a massive battle group, and though the Firekkans sign the Articles of the Confederation, the outnumbered Terrans have no choice but to retreat. Adding to the mess, a Kilrathi lord, Ralgha ''nar'' Hhallas, defects, bringing his ''Fralthi''-class cruiser, the ''Ras Nik'hra'', and word of a rebellion against the Empire on the Kilrathi colony of Ghorah Khar.

Finally, almost overlooked in all the chaos, Major Kien "Bossman" Chen is lost while flying on Jeannette Devereaux's wing; the nearby TCS ''Austin'' transfers over two pilots, Lieutenants Zachary "Jazz" Colson and Etienne "Doomsday" Montclair. All this happens in the first six missions of the game. The Kilrathi presence in the Firekka sector is eventually explained by an all-channels transmission from the Crown Prince of the Kilrathi Empire, Thrakhath ''nar'' Kiranka: Firekka has been chosen as the site of this year's Rite of Sivar, a religious festival that involves live sacrifices. Seeing the chance to strike a heady blow to Kilrathi morale, the Confederation assigns its Firekka-sector resources the task of disrupting the ceremony.

The ''Dralthi'' medium fighters from the ''Ras Nik'hra'' are put to work on reconnaissance missions (conveniently, the Confederation ''Scimitar'' medium fighter is retired at the beginning of the expansion pack, opening a space in the database of Confederation fighters for the ''Dralthi''), and Terran troops begin landing in secret. Between these, the Firekkans' warrior spirit and some of the Confederation's best pilots and tacticians, the Sivar ceremony is utterly wrecked and the Kilrathi forced to retreat, though they take a number of important Firekkans with them as hostages. Ralgha and the rebellion at Ghorah Khar, though promising, are taken over by Confed Intelligence and do not see mention until the first expansion pack for ''Wing Commander II.'' At the end of ''Crusade'', Jeannette Devereaux is detailed off to the TCS ''Austin'', where she will serve as Wing Commander.

Interested in the other half of the crusade, Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon penned the first ''Wing Commander'' novel, ''Wing Commander: Freedom Flight''. It tells the Firekkan side of the story, from several points of view: Ralgha ''nar'' Hhallas, Ian "Hunter" St. John, James "Paladin" Taggart, and K'kai, a Firekkan flock leader.

''Super Wing Commander''

''Super Wing Commander'' was a drastic new look at the events of the original ''Wing Commander''. That mission led the Tiger's Claw to track down and destroy the shipyards responsible for creating the Sivar Dreadnought. Additional background elements about stealth fighters and Admiral Tolwyn were added to improve the continuity with ''Wing Commander II''.

''Next Generation'' reviewed the 3DO version of the game, rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "''Super Wing Commander'' succeeds at being what it was intended to be - a straightforward space simulator with an arcade spin".

Ted Scott (John Payne) is a band pianist whose publicity manager decides that, for good press, the band should adopt a foreign refugee. The band goes to Ellis Island to meet the girl and soon discovers that the refugee isn't a 10-year-old child, but a young woman, Karen Benson (Sonja Henie). The surprise comes right before the band is to travel to Sun Valley, Idaho, for a Christmas event. While on the ski slopes Ted soon falls for Karen's inventive schemes to win the heart of her new sponsor, much to the chagrin of his girlfriend, Vivian Dawn (Lynn Bari), a soloist with the band. Vivian promptly quits the band out of jealousy, and Karen stages an elaborate ice show as a substitute.

Twelve-year-old Arthur Penhaligon is experiencing a severe asthma attack at school when two mysterious men, Mister Monday and his butler Sneezer, appear in front of him. Sneezer convinces Monday to give Arthur his Minute Key in order to fulfill Monday's directive from the Architect. Although Monday is skeptical, Sneezer argues that Arthur will die shortly and the Key will then be returned to Monday. However, Arthur is saved when school officials arrive with help. Sneezer and Monday disappear, leaving a small book in their place, which Arthur takes.

Arthur spends a week in the hospital and is visited by his new friends Leaf and her brother Ed. Leaf confirms that she also saw Monday and Sneezer, and Ed adds that he saw dog-faced men digging up the school field looking for something. Arthur realizes that they are looking for his Key. Once back at home, Arthur uses the Key to open the book, ''The Compleat Atlas of the House and Immediate Environs,'' which describes the House and its environs. That night he is attacked by the dog-faced men that Ed saw, described as "Fetchers" by the Atlas. The Key protects Arthur by bringing his ceramic Komodo dragon to life to fend off the Fetchers.

The next day at school, Arthur learns that Leaf and Ed have contracted a mysterious disease. More Fetchers attempt to pursue Arthur and he is also attacked by Monday's Noon, a more powerful creature. Arthur manages to evade them all, but his day is further interrupted when a medical team announces a city-wide quarantine as the mysterious disease spreads. Arthur realizes the Fetchers are spreading the disease and he decides to enter the House in hopes of finding a cure.

With help of the Atlas, Arthur navigates his way through the House, which he discovers is a world unto itself, around which the Universe is organized, created by a divine being called "the Architect." The Architect went away and entrusted the seven Trustees known as "the Morrow Days" to fulfil her Will. Prior to the Architect's departure, she imprisoned her consort, the Old One, for meddling with the Secondary Realms (the human world). Without guidance from the Architect or the Old One, the Morrow Days each fell victim to one of the seven deadly sins and the House descended into chaos. As the Rightful Heir, Arthur must find the seven parts of the Will hidden by the Morrow Days and reclaim all parts of the House in order to fulfil the Architect's Will and restore the House to its original purpose.

To secure the Lower House from Mister Monday, Arthur must steal the Hour Key from him. On his journey, Arthur briefly meets the Old One and also meets a Cockney girl-child named Suzy Turquoise Blue, who is possessed by the first part of the Will, a bossy, jade-colored frog.

The Will advises Arthur and Suzy on how to break into Monday's quarters. Arthur successfully reclaims the Lower House and gains the Hour Key, which combines with the Minute Key to be the First Key of the House. Now freed, first part of the Will takes the form of Dame Primus. Arthur decides to turn governance of the Lower House to Dame Primus and uses the First Key to heal Mister Monday from his affliction of Sloth. Arthur receives a cure for the Fetchers' disease and returns home, relieved that his adventures in the House are over.

However, Dame Primus contacts Arthur at midnight, when the day has become Tuesday, to tell Arthur that he is urgently needed back at the House.

Carmen, a young Spanish woman who is engaged to be married, has her hen night at a French restaurant in London. She is invited to participate in the observance of an old custom which allows her to kiss the stranger of her choice before the marriage, symbolically "kissing her single life goodbye" and bringing luck for the future. The man she chooses is Kit and both enjoy the kiss far more than they have intended. They fall in love, which creates a "love triangle" among Carmen, her fiancé Barnaby, and Kit.

What initially appears to be a typical urban love story begins to take some surprising and dark twists. In the third act, it is revealed that the circumstances have been arranged in order to create an "emotional snuff film". Unbeknownst to Carmen, she has been cast as the female lead in this endeavor. Barnaby has hired Kit to play a part in the deception, but has misled him by neglecting to mention that he himself, the director, will take on the role of Carmen's fiancé (Kit believing that the couple know nothing of the film). Barnaby is apparently unscrupulous, as he actually marries Carmen for the sake of the film and later fakes a violent suicide (his motive being that Carmen will never love him as she does Kit). In a state of shock, she returns to Kit, who is also horrified, guilty, and never having met the husband, still in the dark as to the true identity of a man he knows only as "Ford". He admits to Carmen that he has been paid by a man to seduce her for a film, and that he regrets it immensely.

Barnaby, whom Kit recognizes as his employer, suddenly appears, offering Kit his final pay and removing camera equipment he previously has concealed in the actor's bedsit without his knowledge. With contemptible satisfaction, he unravels his entire plan to the shocked, broken pair and bitterly ridicules them before leaving.

Several months later, as the film is about to open, Barnaby appears to have won Carmen back. For a ceremony during which he is to accept a filmmakers' award, he engineers a publicity stunt by which it appears that Kit will have the ultimate revenge. However, Carmen takes advantage of the opportunity to do in her manipulative husband for real while framing his business partners for murder. Tragedy generates sensation and, while its clueless producers await trial, the film enjoys a big opening at which Carmen and Kit arrive in style, together.

The game begins in Britain, 1940, where several American pilots volunteer with the Royal Air Force to take part in the ongoing war against Germany. One of them, the player, known as the Captain, is training alongside squad mate Joe, when they suddenly find a fellow pilot named Tom being attacked by German fighters. The Captain rescues Tom, who turns out to be Joe's brother-in-law.

The Captain, along with his squadron consisting of Tom, Frank and Joe, end up fighting in battles against the Germans, first by helping defend Allied forces at Dunkirk and then repelling German attacks on Britain, including a battle over London, where they encounter a German air ace. The squad is then sent to North Africa, where, after the Captain provides a reconnaissance mission on German positions, he and his squadron fight fiercely to help cover British forces assaulting German lines in a vicious battle in the Libyan desert. After this, the squadron is sent back to the United States to help train American pilots.

As they are stationed in Hawaii, the Japanese Imperial Navy launches a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and the infuriated squadron assists in angrily repelling the attack. With the United States now fully committed in the war against Japan, the squadron is sent on several missions against Japanese forces in the Pacific. First, they embark on a mission to destroy a Japanese convoy, including a carrier, in the Coral Sea and then they fight in the Battle of Midway, defending an airfield from Japanese air attacks and then covering bombers from swarms of A6M Zeroes as they destroy a large Japanese fleet. After fending off Japanese amphibious attacks and destroying a Japanese battleship in the fighting for Guadalcanal, the squadron is sent to assist US landings at New Georgia, defending them from enemy planes and destroying Japanese tanks and bunkers. Finally, the squadron is sent to assault the main Japanese South Pacific base of Rabaul, covering US bombers in destroying an airfield before the squadron then decimates the rest of the Japanese base.

With their squadron's campaign over in the Pacific, they are sent back to Europe to take part in an attack on German ships in Norway. However, Joe notices a mysterious passage in the fjords and they navigate through them to discover a secret German heavy water base, which they destroy. Afterwards, they proceed to cover the Allied landings at Normandy, and though they are successful in their endeavor, sadly, Joe is shot down and killed by a German fighter. As the squadron is mourning the loss of Joe, they continue on with the campaign in France, helping to liberate Paris by destroying German ground units in the city, allowing French forces to move through. The squadron then leads numerous US planes in a furious air battle with Luftwaffe swarms in the skies above the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge before commandeering bombers to destroy German factories in a bombing run while manning machine guns to take out German fighters sent to intercept them.

With the war nearing its end, the squadron is sent on one last mission into Berlin just before the Soviets strike the city. They are tasked with taking out enemy radio towers and covering an Allied bombing run. After completing this task, however, they are attacked by a squadron led by the same ace they encountered over London in new experimental jet fighters. After one last cataclysmic dogfight (including remembering Joe's advice on fixing his plane), the Captain shoots down the enemy ace and he and his squad finishes off the enemy squadron, finally ending their mission. The three are then sent home, rewarded for their service.

Zarak Khan is the son of a chief who is caught embracing one of his father's wives, Salma. Zarak's father sentences both to torture and death but they are saved by an imam. The exiled Zarak becomes a bandit chief and an enemy of the British Empire.

1971 manga

is a high school student who lives with his sister and his parents. He has been repeatedly having nightmares about demons. Because of this, he cannot sleep well the day before he goes on a trip into the mountains. There, Ryo follows a voice who proclaims himself to be "Dante, the King of Devils" and ends up falling from a cliff. As he falls, he unconsciously teleports to the Himalayas with his psychic powers. After Dante explains he was Judas Iscariot when he was a human, he controls Ryo's mind to break free from the ice prison and kills Ryo.

Unaware of Dante's resurrection, a group of Satanists kidnaps a female student to sacrifice her to revive Dante in a Black Mass. , a religious group secretly led by Ryo's father, , attack the ritual, but Dante arrives and kills them. Dante flies to Nagoya, where he is confronted by the Army after he crushes buildings and kills people. Ryo notices his consciousness is in Dante's body, but he still kills the Army's soldiers. Then the demon appears and fights Dante. Zenon is defeated but before dying he says he wanted to fight God but he was afraid to do it. Zenon trusts Dante this task, saying Dante should assemble a demon army with the power of Satan and be careful about Adam and Eve.

The other day Ryo returns home in his human form and goes to school. When a student is murdered, Ryo suspects it was a demon's deed and wonders if the culprit is himself. But at night he sees a demon attacking a human and kills it by transforming himself into a half-demon, half-human figure. During the same night, a Medusa-like demon appears in the city. At school, another student, , says he fights demons and that he wants Ryo to be his partner. As Sosuke shows a demon to Ryo and tortures it, Ryo feels compassion for the demon. Unsettled, Ryo leaves the place and meets , who takes him to time travel.

Medusa reveals Ryo that God is an energy-based monster who once destroyed the high-tech Sodom where they lived as lovers. God wanted Earth inhabitants' bodies but as Dante denied to comply with it God attacked the city. Dante, Medusa, and some others turned into demons by absorbing God's power. When Dante pilots a powerful jet fighter in an attempt to buy time for his friends to escape, he is grabbed by a Pteranodon. Careening into a nearby Tyrannosaurus rex, Dante was left open to be consumed in God's fires, causing him to be fused with his jet and the two prehistoric reptiles to create his current form. Later in a confrontation with God at the Himalayas, Dante was sealed in ice.

God also attacked Gomorrah and its survivors, the last actual humans in existence, became the Satanists. After this, God divided himself into pieces and took residence in apes that evolved into the current "human" race. Defeated by God and sealed in the Himalayas, Dante transferred his human body and soul to Judas Iscariot and Ryo Utsugi respectively to be reborn two thousand years later. The story ends as Dante reassembles his demon army and is prepared to destroy humankind.

2002–2004 reboot

19-year old scientist prodigy works a physicist and weapons engineer under the supervision of Medusa and lives with his sister and his parents in Sodom. One day, the nation is attacked by energy-based, psychic creatures from outer space that call themselves "gods". To fight back, Dante, Medusa, , , , and use super-weapons called "demons" that magnify its user mental energy. The demons' users are weaker than the gods, but when they are closer to death they become actual demons as they merge themselves with their weapons as a side effect of gods' attacks. Other humans become demons and the Earthlings start to win over the gods. However, the gods divide themselves and possess human bodies to fight. In the ensuing war, the demons are defeated because Dante hesitates to kill Eve, a giant made out of human bodies, when he sees Olga is part of her. But Dante's soul is not destroyed and he promises to return to defeat the gods.

Twenty thousand years later, , high school student Ryo Utsugi is having nightmares about a woman, a city being destroyed by flames and a demon trapped in ice, while Medusa is reborn and is trying to communicate with Dante through Satanist rituals. Meanwhile, a religious group called , secretly commanded by Ryo's father, Kosuke, is trying to revive the gods and is hunting demons through a division named . One day, Ryo intervenes in an assault of Guardian Justice; in response its leader, Sosuke Oshiba, who is also Ryo's schoolmate and kendo club's captain, does a demonstration to Ryo of the existence of demons by killing one. Although Ryo feels a pain in his chest when the creature is killed, he joins the group.

Medusa infiltrates onto Ryo's school as a teacher named to make him remember he is Dante. She also helps the Satanists to kidnap Ryo's sister, , whom they want to sacrifice in a Black Mass. When Medusa is captured by God's Soul, Ryo helps her when she convinces him she is the only one who can save Aya and tells him he is Dante's reincarnation. Medusa and Ryo arrive in the Black Mass just as the Guardian Justice attacks the ritual and prevent Aya's sacrifice. Amidst the conflict, the Satanists summon a mindless demon Dante, who cannot distinguish between friends or foes and eventually eats Ryo. Ryo reappears on Demon Lord Dante's forehead and realizes he controls its body. Shocked, Ryo denies being a demon and releases himself from Dante's body, which makes Dante disappear and transform Ryo into a human-like demon. He returns home after being defeated by traitor demon Zenon but when footage of him in Dante's body is shown on television he flees from his home.

Five years later, a worldwide war between demons and gods started. Ryo is hidden in a refugee camp as he does not want to get involved, but Zenon attacks him and Dante recovers his gigantic body during the fight. Medusa re-encounters Satan and Lucifer and they find Ryo, who recovers Dante's memories with the help of Satan. When Dante's return is known by God's Soul members, they reunite their thirteen apostles to revive Adam and Eve. Aya, now a commander in the fight against the demons, is chosen to have the body of Eve. In the final fight, Aya discovers she is Olga's reincarnation and helps Dante to defeat the gods. The gods leave the humans' bodies and return to space as the demons become the sole inhabitants of Earth.

2002 anime

A Satan cult, whose leaders are demons in human form, begin to hold a series of Black Masses in hopes of reviving an ancient demon known as Dante. Ryo Utsugi, a high school student, begins experiencing strange nightmares and premonitions. Soon after, Ryo's sister, Saori, is kidnapped by these cultists for use in one of their sacrificial ceremonies. Ryo's premonitions guide him to the ritual and he saves her right before it is disrupted by a group of militant Christians. Believing that Ryo's new-found powers could awaken Dante, the cultists orchestrate a chain of events to lead Ryo to the mountains, where he discovers a portal that takes him into the deepest parts of the Himalayas, the heart of Dante's prison.

Using telekinetic powers, Dante uses Ryo to free himself from his ice prison before eating him alive as the cultists use a princess to again perform the Black Mass used to summon Dante, this time with success. However, Dante's consciousness has been taken over by Ryo who, upon seeing his new form, is blinded by rage and rampages through Nagoya. His frenzy ends upon encountering Zenon, an old friend of Dante, who, becoming enslaved by God, was forced to fight and thereby be killed by Dante. Eventually, Ryo encounters the leader of the cultists, who tells him that his birth family was killed in a car accident and his adopted father, who is both a doctor and the leader of a rival cult dedicated to God, was the one who saved him, revealing Saori to be unrelated by blood. In retaliation to Dante's release, the followers of God unleash the , who wreak havoc on the city by draining the life force of its inhabitants in order to gain Dante's attention. Ryo also meets the demon Medusa, who assumes the form of a supermodel named .

As the story progresses, it is revealed that Ryo is a reincarnation of Dante when he was human. It turned out that Sodom and Gomorrah were a futuristic utopia under the rule of Satan. However, God, an energy-based being, came to Earth and demanded to use the people of Sodom as hosts for its power. When Satan and the people refuse to comply, God proceeds to use animals as vessels to destroy Sodom, an action that resulted in many of its occupants turned into their current demonic forms from being exposed to the residual energies. The survivors of Gomorrah, the last actual humans in existence, became the Satanists who allied themselves with the demons to fight God who took residence in apes and jump-started their evolution into the current human race. Near the end of the conflict that followed, as Satan both sealed himself within another dimension, Dante transferred his human body and soul to Judas Iscariot and Ryo Utsugi respectively to keep fighting after he was sealed. With Ryo finally regaining his memories as Dante while in Sodom and Gomorrah, he teams up with the cultists and plans to finally take vengeance upon God for his sins while releasing Satan.

However, God decides to jumpstart the Apocalypse, gathering the pieces of itself within humans to reform, as the humans ultimately destroy themselves, while taking Saori to make her the ultimate weapon under his control to smite all the demons. After Dante/Ryo succeeds in destroying the first form which was a large serpent featuring Adam and Eve, she transforms into an angelic knight with Saori's body placed in its forehead. She battles Ryo fiercely before managing to break God's hold over her. They then reunite as Adam and Eve, their embrace destroying the world and scattering God back into space to find another world to repeat the cycle of conflict among its native lifeforms. The final scene of the show shows them holding hands and walking in a prehistoric version of the Garden of Eden.

Manga

Set in Japan after the events of ''Devilman'', the story follows Jun Fudo, a teacher and former athlete who lives alone with her younger brother, Hikaru, while their father is away in the United States. For reasons unknown to her, Jun begins to experience unusual nightmares which cause her to have animalistic sexual urges. One day, she and some students are attacked by a group of demons during a school trip. The demons kill the male students and rape Jun and the female students. In the conflict, she transforms into a Devilman, killing the demons with her newfound strength. After that, a woman named Lan Asuka appears and says she was the one who awakened the beast within Jun.

Confused by her transformation, Lan Asuka, and her father's sudden appearance and experience, things became too complicated for Jun to understand. Through Professor Fudo's knowledge, he tells a tale of a strange phenomenon that occurred in shantytowns years ago. It was known as the "Devil Beast Syndrome" in which its inhabitants would transform into demons and rape women before eating them with no memories or intelligence of their previous lives and additionally giving them enhanced strength with other abilities.

Professor Fudo does not believe that their "Devil Beast Syndrome" transformation was supernatural, but was actually the next stage of human evolution, calling it "Nature's way of dealing with mankind's overpopulation". He also says that few people were genetically engineered to retain their conscience should the "Devil Beast Syndrome" occur in them, Jun being one of them. With Jun now becoming the Devil Lady, she fights for the sake of humanity to protect them from the devil beasts and their creations.

Jun, along with Asuka, fight several demons and become close friends. One day Jun investigates the Grumech Embassy she is put through a demonic ritual that opens the Gates of Hell and Jun falls to Hell. Here she meets a mysterious man who introduces himself as Akira Fudo. Jun recognizes Akira to be the man who she saw before in her visions. As Akira explains he is from a past that no longer exist, as God wiped the Earth out after Akira and Satan's battle at the end of ''Devilman''. He offers to acts as guide on Jun's journey through Hell during which the two fall in love and have sex. Through their descent through Hell they also face other characters from Akira's past, including Silene/Sirene and Kaim. Once they reach the lowest point of Hell, they realize that the demon king is there frozen in ice, but Satan is nowhere to be found. On their way back Akira tells Jun about his past with Satan. However, when they reach the surface, Akira cannot follow Jun back to Earth. She promises to never forget him and leaves.

After Jun returns to world several things change, parts of the past are altered. Events that led her falling to Hell are missing. Jun keeps communicating with Akira through the Devilman Ghost custome she made, but slowly forgets his name. The only person she really feels close to is Asuka, who is revealed to be her half-sibling. She starts really opening up to her without knowing that she actually killed their mother with her supernatural powers.

In later chapters after the leader of the mysterious Cult of Dante, Ryo Utsugi, awakens the great demon lord Zennon by fusing with him and releases Hell's inhabitants into the world including demons, Devilman, and humans held in Hell, chaos and carnage break loose on Earth once again and the great battle between God's army and Satan's demonic forces is drawing closer and closer.

Asuka seduces and impregnates Jun while possessing a male form. Asuka reveals that she was born a male, but chose to hide himself in a female form from the eyes of God. After Jun is forced to give birth in her giant Devilman form to a full grown Akira Fudo, Asuka reveals the truth to Jun with the help of Psycho Jenny restoring her sealed memories: the half-siblings are actually the two halves of Satan who split himself in order to escape the time loop God threw him into and to be able to bring back Akira from Hell. After learning this, Jun fuses together with Asuka becoming Satan once again. Akira arrives greets his old friend/enemy. This time however, Akira joins Satan in his fight against God's army approaching Earth. As Satan puts it, the Akira who was reborn in Hell is different than the Akira who was born on Earth, as he now understands Satan's quest against God.

Leading God's army is Archangel Michael, Satan's twin. When Akira notices this, Satan describes himself and his twin as the right and the left hands of God. Same powers, but different functions.

The battle's victor is not revealed. The manga ends with Satan telling Akira that true hope lies on the other side of the battle as they are launching their attack. The mana ends with s final shot of Earth with humanity once again exterminated and the age of "myth" drawing upon Earth once again.

Anime

Jun Fudo is a supermodel who is idolized by many. She also has a secret that not even she knows about at first, for within her lie the genes that hold the next step in the evolution of mankind, the same blood as the beast-like superhumans that terrorize the city. Unlike the rest of them, however, Jun has managed to hold a tenuous grip onto her humanity, and she is recruited by the mysterious Lan Asuka, member of a secret organization within the government, aimed at controlling, if not eliminating, these berserk destroyers of mankind. Jun, as Devil Lady, must now exterminate her own kind, but it is unclear how much longer can she keep her sanity in a situation she never chose to begin with. The story of the anime differs significantly from the manga, despite having similar beginnings - devils are not mystical beings but the next step of humanity's evolution. Unlike the manga, Devilman does not appear.

Part 1 – The trinity

Tomoru Shindo is a college student from City 5. He sleeps with a device that helps him explore frequencies similar to those emitted by the brain during sleep. Thereby he can record his own and other peoples thoughts and dreams by its amplifying capabilities during sleep. He picks up bits and pieces of information from an unspecified source that is slowly building into a dream of different nuances. Each night it evolves around a woman suppressed by hostile actors in various dimensions and for every scenario the two of them always stumble upon each other and barely slip out of harms way. Puzzled and stricken each morning by the magnitude of the dreams, Tomoru tries to sync his hardware with the beacon. What he doesn´t know when diving deeper and deeper is that the emitter is the fallen champion fighter Orgun that was intercepted and subsequently assassinated on earth´s moon on the way to earth. Pushed out of options and deadly injured after the confrontation the actor as a last resort sent the signals of which some of them Tomoru for time has been exploring. Another thing Tomoru doesn´t know is that he isn´t alone in linking with the resilient back noise of signals. Earth Defense Force (EDF) employee Professor Michi Kanzaki receives signals from the moon. With the help of the super computer ISAC she tries to compile the information in the data. She is aware she doesn´t manage to lock on all the feed in the signal but its enough for her to understand its content - its a blueprint of an alien body! What she sees frightens her and hesitant to continue the work she reluctantly gives way for the military's wishes.

Tomoru is steadily accessing deeper nuances of the compelling dream that comes together as Orgun - an alien madman that reveal to Tomoru parts of his life experiences. Frightened by what the feelings and memories from the fallen warrior show him, Tomoru is dragged into a psychosis. Slowly he is losing grip of his own reality overburdened by the pain and torment from those that once belonged to Orgun. Still the latter is urging Tomoru as an entity in his mind that has taken hold to dive deeper which sends Tomoru on the run. Tomoru is sinking deeper in the recesses of organ´s memories and his urgent message to his spokesperson on earth. Slowly a trinity is taking hold between Tomoru, Professor Kanzaki and memories of Orgun held by Tomoru. What every party ask themselves is why Orgun from such a superior race sat his course to earth... Professor Kanzaki believes she doesn´t want to know the answer to that question. Although if her employer wants to get their way the key to all their questions lies with a plain civilian - a young man that seem to have roamed in and just stole her tall project.

Part 2 – ''Pursuit''

The EDF create robotic suits based on Orgun in order to defend Earth. Orgun and Tomoru meet two of the Evoluder: Leave, who dies protecting Orgun, and Rang, who battles Orgun in anger for his treason. It is revealed that the Evoluder are the descendants of a manned space mission Earth sent to the Cygnus constellation 200 years earlier, whose crew evolved into mechanical lifeforms due to experiencing millions of years of time dilation during the journey. Some of the Evoluder are telepathically linked to certain humans, such as Tomoru with Orgun and Kumi with the Evoluder's leader, Mhiku.

Part 3 – ''Showdown''

Using their robotic suits, the EDF repels the Evoluder's invasion force. Kumi uses her telekinetic powers to move the Sun so Orgun can save the Earth. Zoa, the Evoluder's military commander, fires the antimatter cannon. Orgun uses his Grand Cross attack to kill Zoa and destroy the cannon. Orgun crashes onto a beach and dies while Tomoru survives. Mhiku resumes ruling the Evoluder, who peacefully leave Earth. Tomoru and Kanzaki walk off into the sunset while Orgun's remains are displayed in a museum.

In the far future, the human race has abandoned Earth for the reaches of outer space, having ruined the planet in the relentless quest for resources and in endless conflict. In a desperate search to find a new home, they found Evath, a life-sustaining planet with two moons, Mitral and Tricuspid. They sent a ship, named "Exodus" to colonize this new planet with explorers, embryos and supplies. Generations passed, and the colony on Evath was formed. Without the rule of law, the oldest members of the Exodus' crew, the Elders, were forced to take control, form an army and bring the rule of law to Evath.

Lesleigh Skerrit aspired to work for the Driller Federation. His grandfather had been a member of the Federation, but he was falsely accused of murder and banished as a Ketar. Only later did the evidence contesting his guilt surface, but it was too late - the law did not allow someone banished as a Ketar to return to Evath. Lesleigh was not bitter and did not seek retribution. He wanted to study law to prevent this kind of mistake happening again.

Called in by his superior, Montigue Yarbro, he is offered a lifetime opportunity - to complete his training and gain a promotion to Elite within the Driller Federation in one fell swoop. His experience on Mitral bore him well - he was to go to Mitral and attempt to avert the coming catastrophe. Mitral, having been abandoned in its unstable state by the Ketars, was going to explode within four hours, and the explosion would take Evath with it. Skerrit's mission was to use the excavation probe "Last Hope" to place eighteen drilling rigs around Mitral to allow the gas to dissipate harmlessly into space and prevent this disaster. Things are not so simple though, with the security systems activated prior to the Ketars' departure.

When it is announced that the commissioner of pro football Bud Armstrong wants to expand the league, Homer leads the charge to get the new franchise in Springfield. At first his family does not think he can do it, but Homer manages to put forth a surprisingly strong package for the Springfield Meltdowns and the new park, named the ''Duff Beer Krusty Burger Buzz Cola Costington's Department Store Kwik-E-Mart Stupid Flanders Park''.

The commissioner narrows down the choice of the two cities to either Springfield or Los Angeles. L.A. puts forth an anti-Springfield video hosted by Rob Reiner and features a song sung by celebrity impersonators that ends with them singing "Springfield Blows". All the owners decide that Springfield is the lesser of two evils (it does not hurt that the Rich Texan owns slums in Springfield and another owner snaps that she did not kill her husband and seize his team just to put a team in Los Angeles) and the Commissioner awards the new team to Springfield. The town gets "Meltmania" and "Downs syndrome", quickly builds Homer's new park, paints the town in the team colours (orange and purple) and changes all of the street names to football-related names (e.g. Two-Point Conversion Avenue, Off-Season Knee Surgery Blvd).

On the day when Springfield is officially announced as the new team, Commissioner Armstrong gets confused by all of the new street names and gets lost. He stops for directions at the Simpsons' house and is greeted by Grampa Simpson, who welcomes him in as he is busy watching Maggie. However, Grampa is watching a TV program about undercover burglars who act just as the Commissioner did (asking for a telephone and a bathroom and, sometimes, taking pictures of the children of the house - he was looking at one with Bart and Lisa when attacked), and sneaks up behind Armstrong and knocks him unconscious with a golf club. The rest of the family arrives home, disappointed that the commissioner did not show and is shocked to find him tied up in their living room. The commissioner furiously declares that neither he nor the League will ever return to Springfield, ending the Meltdowns' history before it began. Homer then gets angry at Grampa, not only for costing the town the entire team, but also for losing track of Maggie.

The entire town hates Grampa for his actions, and the expensive stadium has to be used for farmers' markets, with even his dentures refusing to smile at him. Grampa is depressed and decides to seek out a doctor called Dr. Egoyan who will help him commit suicide with a suicide booth called a "diePod". The doctor tells Grampa to reconsider, and Grampa decides that if anyone calls him in the next 24 hours, he will not go through with his plan. The call never comes and Grampa goes back to the clinic the next day. To make it a more peaceful experience they project in front of him, at his request, hippies being beaten up by police while music from the Glenn Miller Orchestra plays. Grampa comes very close to dying, but Chief Wiggum ends the procedure just in time, telling the doctor that voters have overturned Springfield's assisted-suicide law.

Grampa thinks he is dead and runs through the town, seeing "Hamburger Heaven" and a Charlie Chaplin impersonator. He soon learns that he is not dead, gets a new lease on life and decides to live without fear. Meanwhile, the city decides to turn the unused football stadium into an arena for bull fighting. Despite Lisa's protests, as they go against her vegetarianism, Grampa decides to become a matador. Grampa wins his first fight with a bull, but at home, Lisa tells Grampa that she wants him to stop hurting and killing animals. Grampa tells her that people are cheering him for his success, but Lisa tells him that she has always cheered for him until now. Grampa is not sure about that, but in the next fight he sees the bull that he is about to kill and decides to spare its life.

He releases all the bulls, which immediately start running through the streets of Springfield, causing a great deal of destruction and injuring everyone. One bull takes the elevator up to the press box, and attacks the announcer, who is a parody of Spanish-language soccer announcer Andres Cantor. Lisa is proud of Grampa and the two reconcile in two Lawnchair Larry flight type patio chairs, but they both become in danger by two bulls flying with balloons.

In the post-credits scene, a flashback shows that Abe was present at the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings. While he was only there to test out the microphone during preparation time, he names several individuals as members of the Communist Party before being escorted out of the room.

;Foreword "All Heathville loved Dr. Paul Carruthers...the doctor found time to conduct certain private experiments — weird, terrifying experiments."

Dr. Paul Carruthers (Bela Lugosi), a chemist and physician in the small town of Heathville, is offered a $5,000 bonus from his employers for his contributions to the company, a pittance compared to the million dollars in income the company earned from his work. (His employers argue that he took a buyout early in the company's history instead of retaining his partnership stake.) Embittered and insulted, he seeks revenge and develops a system in which ordinary bats are enlarged to massive size, training them to be drawn to a new, pungent aftershave he is testing. He cleverly distributes the lotion to his enemies as a "test" product.

Once they have applied the lotion, the chemist then releases his Devil Bats in the night, targeting the families of his employer's owners. The bats succeed in attacking and killing one of the owners and two of his sons. A hot shot reporter from the ''Chicago Register'', Johnny Layton (Dave O'Brien) gets assigned by his editor (Arthur Q. Bryan) to cover and help solve the murders. He and his bumbling photographer "One-Shot" McGuire (Donald Kerr) begin to unwind the mystery with some comic sidelights.

In the climactic closing scene, Layton dumps a sample of the aftershave on Carruthers, leading the bat to attack and kill its own master. Mary, the last surviving member of her family, runs into Johnny's arms.

On the day of Alice Wentworth's wedding, mad scientist Dr. Lorenz sends the young bride an unusual orchid, the scent of which places the young woman in a state of suspended animation resembling death. He then spirits her body away to the basement laboratory of his isolated mansion and extracts glandular fluid from behind her ears to inject into his vain and aged wife in order to renew her youth and beauty. This is only the latest in a series of brides who appear to die at the altar and whose corpses subsequently vanish en route to the hospital or mortuary, and the police are thoroughly stymied.

A young journalist, Patricia Hunter, investigates the case and discovers it involves an unusual orchid. She is directed to Lorenz, a known expert on orchids, and visits his mansion where she meets with a chilly reception from his wife. She is forced to spend the night when a storm washes out the bridge to town, and discovers horror in the cellar beneath the Lorenz mansion: a crazed old woman and her two sons, one a sadistic dwarf and the other a hulking half-wit, all of whom assist Lorenz in his activities; and a mausoleum in which he keeps the bodies of his bride-victims, not all of whom may be entirely dead yet.

Also staying the night is a neighboring young doctor, who attends Countess Lorenz for other medical issues. When Patricia confides in him what she is investigating and what she has witnessed in the house, he agrees to help her. She leaves the next day for the city and, with her editor, develops a plan to trap Lorenz with a staged wedding and plenty of police protection, but he outfoxes them, chloroforming Hunter and carrying her to his laboratory to now use her bodily fluids upon his wife. However, during his escape, his dwarf-accomplice is shot and captured by the police. Back at the mansion, Lorenz is stabbed by the crazed old woman, Fagah, who holds Lorenz responsible for her sons' deaths. He strangles her, then collapses and dies. Fagah rallies weakly and stabs the Countess to death. The police, and the young doctor who has led them to the mansion, arrive and Hunter is freed.

J. Wellington Gedge lives with his rich wife (who inherited a fortune from her first husband) at the Château Blissac, near St Rocque, Brittany. She wants them to live in France though he longs to return to his hometown, Glendale, California. Mrs Gedge is going on a short trip to London, but has invited some guests: the American Senator Opal and his daughter, and the Vicomte de Blissac. Mrs Gedge wants them to make Mr Gedge the American Ambassador to France, an idea which appalls Mr Gedge. At the nearby Hotel des Etrangers are two American criminals, confidence trickster Gordon "Oily" Carlisle and safe-blower "Soup" Slattery. Oily admits that he and his wife, "Gum-Shoe Gertie", had a falling-out a year prior. Soup tries to rob Mr Gedge, but Gedge has no money. They bond over their losses in the stock market crash. Gedge mentions that he was rich when he married and gave his wife sixty thousand dollars' worth of jewels, which are usually kept in a safe. Soup plans to rob the safe, with Oily acting as the inside man (which they call "working the inside stand").

American millionaire Patrick "Packy" Franklyn is engaged to the beautiful but austere Lady Beatrice Bracken. He sees his old friend, the fun-loving Vicomte de Blissac. Beatrice wants Packy to befriend the intellectual novelist Blair Eggleston. She is going to see her family in the country and is certain that Packy would get into trouble or "hot water" of some kind if left to himself. Packy goes to a barbershop, but the staff are on strike. For fun, Packy acts as barber for Senator Ambrose Opal, famous for supporting Dry legislation far stricter than the Volstead Act. Packy does a bad job and flees from the angered senator. This upsets Jane, since now her father will be especially unreceptive to the news that she is engaged to the impecunious Blair Eggleston. Packy apologizes to Jane, and encourages Blair to approach Senator Opal, who assumes Blair is his new valet. Jane wants Blair to keep up the act and win the senator's favour. Senator Opal accidentally sent a letter meant for his bootlegger to Mrs Gedge, and she threatens to publicize it unless he makes Mr Gedge ambassador. The senator agrees to consent to Jane marrying whomever she likes if she recovers the letter. Packy charters a yacht and follows them to St Rocque to help Jane.

Soup, Packy, the Vicomte (in a parrot-like lizard costume), and Mr Gedge (dressed as an "Oriental potentate") enjoy St Rocque's annual fancy dress carnival, the Festival of the Saint. Packy helps Soup escape the police after a fight, and Soup offers to help him. Both the Vicomte and Mr Gedge get very drunk at the festival, and the next day, Packy, hoping to help Jane, lies to each man that he mortally injured the other in a brawl; each man agrees to avoid trouble by having Packy visit the Château pretending to be the Vicomte. Jane, disappointed in Blair for not helping her obtain the letter, is glad to see Packy. Senator Opal believes Packy is Jane's secret fiancé, and approves since Packy is a millionaire and former Yale football star. While locating the safe in Mrs Gedge's room, Senator Opal is spotted by Mrs Gedge's lady's maid Medway. He suspects Medway is a detective, and orders Blair to find out. Oily has befriended Mrs Gedge under the alias of the Duc de Pont-Andemer. Playing their roles, Packy and Oily feign speaking French to each other in front of Mrs Gedge's secretary, Miss Putnam. Oily recognizes Medway, who is actually Gertie.

Mrs Gedge returns and places her jewels and letter in her safe, but Soup refuses to rob the room while a woman is sleeping there. Packy claims he is a detective and gets Mrs Gedge to change rooms, though Miss Putnam, who is actually a detective hired by Mrs Gedge, knows Packy is lying. Blair, acting on Packy's advice, tells Medway he is a detective to see if she admits to being one, but this causes the thieves Medway and Oily (who have reconciled and plan to betray Soup) to tie him up and leave him in a boathouse for a while. Lady Beatrice appears, hears about Packy and Jane, and ends her engagement to Packy. Soup, who was forced by Senator Opal to sit on a window-sill for hours after being caught burgling, has misgivings about helping the senator but still decides to help Packy get the letter. The Vicomte and Mr Gedge see each other and happily get drunk again. Packy realises that he loves Jane but resolves to help her marry Blair anyway. Soup, Oily and Gertie, and Packy and Jane attempt to burgle the safe at about the same time. Gertie knocks out Soup and Oily manages to open the safe, but Kate Putnam shows up with a pistol. Oily and Gertie escape empty-handed. Packy eats the letter before Mrs Gedge can take it. Soup recognizes her as his old partner in crime, Julia. Packy uses this to blackmail Mrs Gedge into taking Mr Gedge back to Glendale, and finds Blair in the boathouse. Blair is finished with Jane's schemes and leaves her. Packy and Jane confess their feelings for each other. Soup, having made off with five pieces of jewellery from Mrs Gedge's safe, decides to retire and start a farm.

His daughter Lilja has decided that her father, the farmer Hrafn, and his wife Gróa, should move into a home for the elderly. Both Lilja and the delivery man Jón have been led to believe that Hrafn has been working to close up his remote farmhouse. What no one knows [SPOILER ALERT!] is that Gróa has not been taking a nap the past two days; she has died, and Hrafn has been busy preparing a grave for them both. By the time his daughter and family pull up to the farmhouse, Hrafn has laid himself at the bottom of the pit he has dug, next to the coffin he has built for his wife, and pulled the rope which causes a load of dirt to fall, burying him alive.

After a doctor informs Donnelly (Gleeson) that his wife died at 3 o'clock in the morning, he brings Donnelly to his wife's bedside to say goodbye, then excusing himself as the doctor is unusually busy: there'd been two cot deaths, and a woman shot so brutally by her son 'she had no head left on her'. Donnelly spends a few final moments awkwardly talking to his wife and gives her a photo of 'David', their pet rabbit.

While on a train ride home, Donnelly sits opposite a chain-smoking kid (Conroy), who reveals himself to be a manic foul-mouth. In his forlorn state, Donnelly tolerates the kid, allowing himself to be engaged in some inane conversations. Less accepting of the kid's abrasive manners are a couple sitting across the aisle. After some animated exchanges, the kid leaves to get something from the buffet cart. At this time, Donnelly inquires, and learns that the couple just lost their son from a cot death.

The kid returns after the couple leaves their seats, where Donnelly tells the kid about the baby's death. The kid seems surprised and immediately asks, 'Did they kill "it"?'. When Donnelly explains that it was 'cot death', the kid asserts that they must have 'banged it on something'. Upon the couple's return, things heat up. The two almost come to blows, but Donnelly steps in.

Donnelly goes to the buffet cart to get a drink. The man comes out to get tea and engages Donnelly in a brief conversation. With her husband gone, the woman is now left alone with the kid, who quickly moves to harass her as she clutches a picture of her deceased baby. He accuses her of 'bang[ing] it on something', because the baby was 'ugly'. Aghast, the woman steps on a table to get away from him, only to trip, fall, and tear the photo. Moments later, the kid, now back in his own seat, is startled by a thump at the window; the woman had thrown herself out of the train. He goes to investigate, to discover an open gate with the torn picture of the baby on the floor.

Donnelly and the husband return. The kid nonchalantly informs the husband that his wife has jumped off the train, and is 'dripping down the half of it'. The husband takes this as a joke, and sets out to look for his wife. When Donnelly turns to see the blood on the window, he pulls the emergency stop. The police arrive and the man learns of his wife's suicide. Donnelly and the kid are questioned by a policeman, who questions the kid: 'Do I know you from somewhere?'. As the train departs, the policeman sees the kid wildly waving goodbye, and realizes he is 'wanted'. He orders the train stopped, 'and tell the boys to get the guns out'.

On their way again, the kid tries to get Donnelly to take his side. When he gets no sympathy, the kid reveals that his mother was murdered last night, but he is not mourning. Donnelly tells the kid that his wife just died as well, and begins to weep. The kid again presses Donnelly with his 'deadly' story of a cow with trapped wind. Donnelly capitulates, and the kid tells his 'true' story, which is so bizarre that Donnelly can't help but laugh. 'Best day of me fucking life – that cow exploding', the kid concludes.

As the train pulls into the station, Donnelly notices armed cops everywhere. He realises that the kid is responsible for the matricide mentioned by the doctor in the opening scene. A shootout between the kid and the cops ensues, which leaves the kid mortally wounded. His last words are regrets that he didn't even hit one policeman. The kid dies as Donnelly cradles him. He then takes one of the kid's six shooters and hides it in his coat.

At home, Donnelly prepares to kill himself. He looks in the gun which contains two bullets. As he is about to shoot himself, he hears scratching sounds from David, his wife's pet rabbit. He takes David in his lap, and tells the rabbit: 'I'll be following you shortly', before shooting it in the head. Moving the gun to his own head, Donnelly fumbles and drops it, accidentally discharging its last bullet. He looks at the smoking six shooter, then at the dead rabbit in his arms. He sighs, looks skyward and moans, 'Oh Jesus; what a fuckin day.'

At golfing seaside resort Bingley-on-Sea, nerve specialist Sir Hugo Drake is impressed by the golfing skill of Dr. Sally Smith, an American general practitioner. Sir Hugo tells her he is looking for his nephew William "Bill" Bannister. Bill was seen with a woman of flashy appearance at Bingley. Bill is rich and impulsive, with a habit of falling in love at first sight. Sir Hugo regards himself as a parent figure to Bill, and has come to take him back to Bill's country house, Woollam Chersey in Hampshire. Nearby in a hotel, "Squiffy" Bixby, Lord Tidmouth, who has divorced four times, sees his first ex-wife, Charlotte "Lottie" Higginbotham, who has a maid, Marie. Lottie was formerly on the stage but married a rich man. She is now a widow, and sort of engaged to Bill, an old friend of Tidmouth's. Bill does not want to marry Lottie anymore. Tidmouth explains this tactlessly to Lottie and she faints. Bill tells the hotel bell-boy and also Tidmouth to get a doctor. To Bill's surprise, the bell-boy brings Sally, whom Bill has fallen in love with. Bill nervously confesses his feelings for her. Sally says in an unemotional way that if she ever loves a man she will inform him simply as if she were saying good morning, but says she still has not met the right man. Tidmouth brings another doctor, Sir Hugo. Sir Hugo agrees with Sally that Lottie only needs rest and tells Bill to go home.

Around two weeks later, Bill, Sir Hugo, and Tidmouth are all at Bill's country house. Bill is in a bad mood because of his unrequited love for Sally, though Sir Hugo thinks he is pining for Lottie. Sir Hugo invites Lottie to the house, believing that in the old aristocratic manor, she will be clearly out of place and Bill will lose interest in her. Bill confides in Tidmouth that he is in love with Sally and that he telephoned her earlier. Pretending to be his own valet, he told her that Bill was seriously ill and needed a doctor so that she would come. Bill keeps all this secret from his busybody uncle. Sally reflects that she finds Bill agreeable but she does not want to marry an idle person who does not work and lives on inherited money. When Sally arrives at the house, she sees that Bill is healthy and remains aloof when he tries to tell her his feelings again. It is late, and Sally decides to sleep in a room in the house. Lottie arrives, and Tidmouth tries to tell Bill that they have a visitor, but Bill mistakenly thinks Tidmouth is referring to Sally. Sally sees Lottie at the house and thinks she and Bill are still romantically involved.

The next morning, Sir Hugo learns from Bill that a lady arrived the previous night and, thinking Bill is referring to Lottie, is disappointed when Bill says that he loves her. Sir Hugo tells Lottie he does not want Bill to marry her. At first she is insulted, but Sir Hugo convinces her that she would be bored with Bill, who does not like dancing or partying in town like she does. She is much more similar to Tidmouth. Lottie and Tidmouth agree that they suit each other and want to get married again. Tidmouth informs Sally that Lottie is only at the house because she was invited by Sir Hugo. Bill finally makes it clear to Sir Hugo that he loves Sally, which pleases Sir Hugo, who greatly admires Sally's skill at golf. Sally continues to turn down Bill until she sees him do some paperwork for his dairy farm. Seeing that he does in fact work, she now loves him and says good morning to him.

''Don't Tell'' is based on the true story of Lyndal, a young woman who had been sexually abused at a prestigious private school and, with the help of a determined lawyer, sued the powerful church that denied her abuse for ten years.

After a falling-out concerning Bertie's relentless playing of the banjolele, Jeeves leaves his master's service and finds work with Bertie's old friend, Lord "Chuffy" Chuffnell. Bertie travels to one of Chuffy's cottages in Somersetshire to practise the banjolele without complaints from neighbours. Chuffy hopes to sell his dilapidated manor to the rich J. Washburn Stoker. Mr Stoker plans to rent out the property to the famous "nerve specialist" (or, as Bertie prefers, "loony doctor") Sir Roderick Glossop, who intends to marry Chuffy's Aunt Myrtle. Chuffy has also fallen in love with Mr Stoker's daughter, Pauline Stoker, a former fiancée of Bertie, but feels unable to propose to her until his finances improve.

Bertie plans to kiss Pauline in front of Chuffy to spur Chuffy to propose. However, it is Mr Stoker who sees the kiss. A fight between Mr Stoker's son Dwight and Chuffy's cousin Seabury divides the Chuffnells and Stokers. Mr Stoker returns to the yacht in which he and his family are staying. Thinking Bertie and Pauline are still in love, Stoker keeps Pauline on board to keep her from him. Chuffy writes a love letter to Pauline, which Jeeves smuggles aboard the yacht by briefly entering Mr Stoker's employ; Pauline is so moved that she swims ashore to Bertie's house, planning to visit Chuffnell Hall in the morning. Bertie lets her sleep in his bed while he tries to sleep in the garage. Unfortunately, he is seen by Police Sergeant Voules, who informs Lord Chuffnell. Chuffy, thinking Bertie is intoxicated, takes him back up to his bedroom. Seeing Pauline there, Chuffy assumes she and Bertie have resumed their romantic relationship. Chuffy and Pauline argue, and return to their respective homes.

The next day, Mr Stoker invites Bertie to his yacht, but locks him in one of the rooms. Stoker found out about Pauline's visit to Bertie, and plans to force them to marry. Jeeves helps Bertie escape: Mr Stoker has hired some blackface minstrels for his son's party, and Bertie disguises himself by blacking his face with boot polish to go ashore with them. Bertie returns to his cottage. His new valet, Brinkley, is drunk and chases Bertie with a carving knife, then sets the cottage on fire, destroying Bertie's banjolele. Searching for butter to remove the boot polish from his face, Bertie goes to Chuffnell Hall. Chuffy, thinking that Pauline loves Bertie and that Bertie should not try to abandon Pauline, refuses to give him butter.

Jeeves, again in Chuffy's employ, informs Bertie that Sir Roderick had blackened his face with boot polish to entertain Seabury; unappreciative, Seabury made a butter-slide using all the Hall's butter to make Sir Roderick fall, resulting in an altercation and Sir Roderick leaving the hall. Jeeves suggests that Bertie sleep in the Dower House, where Jeeves will bring him butter the next day. However, Brinkley is occupying the Dower House. Bertie sees Sir Roderick, who now feels friendly towards Bertie, since Bertie dislikes Seabury. Sir Roderick goes to Bertie's garage to find petrol, which he says can remove boot polish; Bertie, wishing to avoid Sergeant Voules, does not join him. Bertie sleeps in a summer-house.

In the morning, Bertie meets with Jeeves in Chuffy's office. Mr Stoker is looking for Bertie; Jeeves tells him that Bertie is in the Dower House. Pauline appears, and Bertie reveals himself suddenly to her. Startled, Pauline shrieks, bringing Chuffy running to her. The couple reconciles. After Mr Stoker returns from a run-in with Brinkley, Jeeves delivers a cable saying that Mr Stoker's relatives are contesting the will of his late uncle, who left him fifty million dollars, on the grounds that the deceased was insane. Stoker is confident that Sir Roderick will testify against this. However, Sir Roderick has been arrested trying to break into Bertie's garage; his testimony will not have much weight if he is imprisoned. Jeeves suggests that Bertie switch places with Sir Roderick, as he could hardly be charged with breaking into his own garage. The plan succeeds. Stoker will buy the Hall, and Chuffy and Pauline are to be wed. Jeeves reveals that he was responsible for the cable. Stating that it has never been his policy to serve a married gentleman, Jeeves returns to Bertie's employ. Very surprised and grateful, Bertie has difficulty finding words, and simply says, "Thank you, Jeeves."

A Swiss businessman wants to buy land in southern Sweden for a gigantic amusement park, his new project called "Deutschneyland" (a wordplay of Deutschland and Disneyland). Some of the locals dislike the idea, including the magically talented Lindberg family, and work to frustrate the development plans.

The introduction shows the Dungaga, an imperial industrialized race, conquering the more spiritual Lorian race. The protagonist, Mia, is the daughter of the Lorian priestess and an unknown father. Like the rest of her people, she is enslaved to do menial labor under the supervision of her half-brother Hume. As she sees her Dungaga stepfather Gar hit her mother, she manifests a light-based magic that she uses to strike down Gar. At her mother's advice, she flees the village.

In her travels, Mia meets the enigmatic lizardlike Shulin, the slime-based Grodol warriors, a familiar baby dragon named Elanduru, and several Dungaga dissidents. It is revealed that the Dungaga are controlled by the three sons of the dark god Baphomet, who wish to summon him into the world. After defeating the three sons, Mia must rally the free people of the world and obtain the blessing of the five gods, in order to strike out into Baphomet's realm and defeat him.

Ian Curtis and Debbie Woodruff marry in 1975 in their home town of Macclesfield at ages 19 and 18, respectively. Ian retreats from domestic life, preferring to write poetry in solitude. On 4 June 1976 they attend a Sex Pistols concert with Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and Terry Mason, who are starting a band. Mesmerized by the concert, Ian volunteers to be their singer. They name themselves Warsaw, and Terry moves into a managerial role with the addition of drummer Stephen Morris. The band debuts 19 May 1977 and soon rename themselves Joy Division. Ian and Debbie finance their first EP, ''An Ideal for Living'' (1978).

During his job as an employment agent, Ian witnesses his client Corinne Lewis suffering a seizure. Unsatisfied with the brief mention Joy Division receives from television host Tony Wilson, Ian demands that he put the band on his programme. In April 1978 Joy Division plays a battle of bands, impressing Tony and Rob Gretton, who becomes their new manager. They perform "Transmission" on Tony's programme and sign to his Factory Records label; Tony signs the contract using his own blood.

In December 1978 Ian suffers a seizure on the way back from the band's first London gig. He is diagnosed with epilepsy and prescribed medications that leave him drowsy and moody. Learning that Corinne Lewis has died of a seizure, he pens "She's Lost Control" about her. He begins to neglect Debbie, who gives birth to their daughter Natalie in April 1979. Ian quits his job to go on tour, leaving Debbie to work and care for the baby.

Ian admits to Belgian journalist Annik Honoré that he is miserable at home and considers his marriage a mistake. The two begin having an affair during Joy Division's January 1980 European tour. On returning home, Ian tells Debbie he is unsure if he still loves her. During the rehearsing of "Love Will Tear Us Apart", Rob informs the band that they will be departing 19 May for a tour of the United States. Debbie finds evidence of Ian's infidelity and confronts him. He promises that the affair is over, but continues to see Annik during the recording of ''Closer'' in Islington.

Ian suffers a seizure mid-performance and is comforted by Annik, who admits she is falling in love with him. He attempts suicide by overdosing on phenobarbital but doctors save his life. He continues to perform, but is exhausted by the strain and overwhelmed by the audience's expectations. At a performance at the Derby Hall the stress proves too much and he is only briefly able to go onstage. The audience riots when Alan Hempstall of Crispy Ambulance steps in to cover for Ian, and the gig is ruined. Ian tells Tony that he believes everyone hates him and that it is his own fault. When Debbie learns that Ian is still seeing Annik, she demands a divorce. Bernard attempts to use hypnotherapy on Ian, who then goes to stay with his parents. He writes to Annik admitting his fear that his epilepsy will eventually kill him, and confesses that he loves her.

On 17 May 1980, two nights before Joy Division is due to depart for America, Ian returns home and begs Debbie not to divorce him. When she refuses, he angrily orders her out of the house. After drinking alone and writing Debbie a letter, he has another seizure. Regaining consciousness the following morning, he hangs himself from the Sheila Maid in the kitchen. Debbie discovers his body and staggers into the street, crying for help. The news of Ian's death leaves the remaining Joy Division members stunned, while Tony consoles Annik. The group gather in a café with Gillian Gilbert, foreshadowing the future of the band. Ian's body is cremated.

At a run-down, understaffed hospital, Dr. Akiba refuses to admit a patient with a strange black rash and is alerted to a serious crisis in Room 3 where a burnt victim dies, having apparently been given the wrong drug. Akiba, Dr. Uozumi, and four nurses decide to cover up the cause of death and move the body to an unused room. The head nurse then discovers that the patient that Akiba previously refused to admit has been left in the hallway and informs him.

However, when Akiba goes to check, he discovers that Doctor Akai had taken the patient and decides to study his symptoms: though he is still alive, his body mass is liquefying into green goo. Not knowing how much Akai knows about the events in Room 3, Akiba and the others reluctantly agree to help with the examination but when they return to the patient's room, they find he has vanished and the head nurse unconscious.

The head nurse awakens and begins acting strangely while she starts to bleed green goo from both her ears and eyes. The doctors realise they are at risk of infection and decide to put her on a bed and cover her with plastic in an attempt to limit the infection's spread. Soon after, the mean nurse finds the young nurse drawing blood on herself. Their conversation goes awry, when the young nurse lets out a maniacal laughs and plunges two needles into her body, splattering the mean nurse with green goo.

While speaking with a patient he killed earlier, Uozumi is overcome with emotional guilt. Akiba walks in, but finds Uozumi alone. His eyes turn white and green goo starts seeping from him. Akiba panics and turns to find the mean nurse, now infected and covered in green goo, smiling and hanging upside down from the ceiling. After finding the nurse giving her own blood to the dead burn patient and running into the infected head nurse, Akiba flees the room.

Akiba confronts Akai and accuses him of creating and spreading the virus. Akai denies this and explains that the infection is actually spread mentally, infecting the subconscious of its victims. He then urges Akiba to remember what really happened in Room 3 earlier in the night. Dr. Nakazono walks in to find Akiba talking to himself, forcing him to realize that he's been speaking with his reflection. He looks around and sees the corpses of the two nurses who are dead and covered in blood with no green goo in sight. Soon, Dr. Nakazono realizes that the last few hours have all been a hallucination. Nakazono calls the police, as Akiba recalls the events in Room 3 and realizes that "Akai" was actually the burn patient. The same series of events is shown again, but with Akiba as the burn patient and Akai as Akiba, giving the order for the wrong drug, which massacres the entire staff.

The hospital is evacuated the next morning as all of the staff, except Nakazono, are dead and the police are searching for Akiba who has disappeared. When Nakazono leaves the hospital, she sees all the red lights change to green and vice versa; panicking, she accidentally cuts her hand and green blood pours out. A shot of a locker is seen in the room where the burn victim was kept. Someone inside the locker is calling for help as green goo starts pouring out of it. The top of the locker opens and Akiba's hand covered in goo reaches out before falling to the floor.

The first part of the movie takes place in Bangkok, Thailand. Gou Fei's (Chow Yun-fat) friend Sam Sei (Anthony Wong) borrows money from a loan shark to give Gou Fei's departed mother a proper burial. The loan shark kidnaps Sam, and Gou Fei rescues him by confronting the loan shark and persuading him to give more time for Sam to re-pay the loan. The loan shark does not comply and orders his cohorts to kill Sam, but Gou Fei punches two of them before he engages a knife fight with the remaining gang members. After doing so, the loan shark attempts to shoot Gou Fei, but he wrestles the gun out of the shark's grasp, frees a trapped Sam Sei and escapes. Not wanting to lose face, the loan shark promises to kill them, so Gou Fei and Sam Sei flee the city.

To earn money, they team up with Sam's cousin Judge (Simon Yam) for a heist. The group meets up, although a fight between Gou Fei's and Judge's friend (Chung and Psycho respectively) breaks out, which is triggered by Gou Fei making remarks about Lau Ngang. After the initial group meeting, Judge, meanwhile, is offered money from the loan shark to kill Gou Fei and Sam during the heist.

The heist begins with Gou Fei blocking traffic while Lau Ngang tosses a grenade into an irate driver's car, which explodes. The intended target is a lorry and the group shoots and kills the passengers. Psycho gets in the truck but kicks Chung out and prevents him from boarding. The heist is successful, but Judge betrays Gou Fei by attempting to kill him, only to kill Chung instead. A car chase ensues between the two. The scene ends when Gou Fei flips his car up-side down. Judge examines the wreckage only to be ambushed by Gou Fei. Another fight ensues, Judge slices Gou Fei's right finger and thumb but is interrupted by a resident who shoots in the air telling them to leave.

The stolen truck, now occupied by Lau Ngang and Psycho, shoot at the house, killing everyone but a girl. Gou Fei takes shelter, but Sam Sei appears with a gun intending to kill Gou Fei (at the behest of Judge), but shoots him once in the chest and the rest at the floor. Sam Sei walks out with a pair of bloody eyes to prove that he has "killed" Gou Fei (Judge made remarks about Gou Fei's "mesmerising eyes" earlier). Convinced, he shoots the pressure cooker, causing it to explode, burning alive the previously shot resident and the girl, leaving her with 3rd degree burns.

Gou Fei, assumed to be dead, returns to the city, finding Sam now a competent gangster. Seemingly seeking revenge, he steals the shipment of guns Judge was hoping to sell and ransoms them back. The money is for the hospital stricken girl burned in the fire fight. The pair meet again, but not before Gou Fei guns down all of Judge's cohorts including Psycho. Judge gives Gou Fei the money and asks for the goods, but Gou Fei simply detonates the goods in the end, much to Judge's chagrin. The two shoot at each other, but it's Gou Fei who gains the upper hand when he throws his butterfly knife at Judge. Gou Fei finally kills Judge before quipping "Go masturbate in hell!"

A writer named Adrian Messenger believes a series of apparently unrelated "accidental" deaths are actually linked murders. He asks his friend Anthony Gethryn, recently retired from MI5, to help clear up the mystery, and provides him with a list of the victims' names. Soon afterward, Messenger's plane is bombed while he is en route to collect evidence to confirm his suspicions and, with his dying breath, he tells a fellow passenger the key to the mystery.

The passenger survives and turns out to be Raoul Le Borg, Gethryn's old World War II counterpart in the French Resistance. The two of them join forces to investigate Messenger's list of names and decode his cryptic final words. They are joined by Lady Jocelyn Bruttenholm, Messenger’s cousin and a former love interest of Gethryn, who Raoul is strongly attracted to.

The first conclusion Gethryn and Le Borg draw from Messenger’s words is that there is important information in the manuscript of his unpublished book. Unfortunately, the murderer has beaten them there; he has taken several pages and re-typed them, removing certain information, and murdered the typist to conceal the error (encountering Jocelyn on his way out). After inspecting the manuscript, Gethryn spots the error, but he is powerless to undo it, and arrives too late to save the typist. From Jocelyn’s brief encounter with the murderer, Gethryn determines that he wears realistic masks to disguise his appearance.

Next, Gethryn and Le Borg visit the only living name on the list, James Slattery. When they arrive, they are told by James' invalid twin brother, Joe Slattery, that James died of a heart attack several years earlier. The two of them leave in disappointment, assuming all names on the list have died. That night, however, Joe sees and recognizes the masked murderer, who pursues him, knocks him out and pushes him into the ocean with his wheelchair, drowning him. The following day, his mother reveals the truth to Gethryn; “Joe” was actually James, who impersonated his deceased brother to collect his disability pension.

From James' mother, and from the widow of another name of the list, Gethryn and Le Borg establish that all on the list were together in a prisoner of war camp in Burma, where a Canadian sergeant betrayed his fellow prisoners, foiling their escape attempt. It stands to reason that the Canadian is the murderer, and killed each of the names on the list to prevent them from identifying him. They deduce that he is about to come into prominence and cannot risk being recognized. Almost by accident, Messenger’s final clue falls into place; it is revealed that the Canadian stands in line to an inheritance of the Bruttenholms, (pronounced "Brooms") Jocelyn’s family of landed gentry, who avidly engage in fox hunting.

Having disposed of all possible witnesses to his wartime treachery, the Canadian, George Brougham (pronounced 'Broom'), appears at a Bruttenholm estate fox hunt and introduces himself as a member of the family (he has previously been seen only in disguise). It then becomes clear to the visiting Gethryn and Le Borg that Brougham's next victim is to be the young heir, Derek, who comes before Brougham in inheritance. In an attempt to divert Brougham, Gethryn informs him of his investigation of Messenger’s list, calculating to set himself up as the next victim.

That night, Brougham sabotages the next morning’s hunt by laying a drag with a fox in a sack over the fields. He especially marks a blind spot behind a high wall, and moves a large hay tedder behind, intending for Gethryn (who has been given the honor of leading the hunt) to be impaled upon its lethal tines. Unbeknownst to Brougham, his plan goes awry when a farmer repositions the tedder early the next morning. The hunt begins, but comes to a halt at the specified spot. Gethryn reveals to the gathered crowd that he discovered and removed the hay-tedder booby trap earlier that morning and, with the help of the lead fox hound, will detect the scent of the culprit amongst a group of hunt saboteurs. Brougham, once again disguised, is identified and runs off, mounting Derek's horse. When Derek shouts a command to the horse, the animal stops short, throwing Brougham and impaling him on the very same machine he intended for Gethryn.

Cugel is easily persuaded by the merchant Fianosther to attempt the burglary of the manse of Iucounu the Laughing Magician, which is filled with precious magical items. Caught by Iucouno's trap, Cugel agrees that in exchange for his freedom he will undertake the recovery of a small hemisphere of violet glass, a magic "Eye of the Overworld", to match one already in the wizard's possession. A small sentient alien entity of barbs and hooks, named Firx, is attached to Cugel's liver to encourage his "unremitting loyalty, zeal and singleness of purpose". Firx's only form of communication with its host is to cause pain to his liver if Firx senses that Cugel is lapsing in his mission and his return home. Iucounu then uses a spell to transport Cugel via flying demon to the isolated Land of Cutz, which is very far away.

There, Cugel finds two bizarre villages, one occupied by wearers of the magic violet lenses, the other by peasants who work on behalf of the lens-wearers, in hopes of being promoted to their ranks. The lenses cause their wearers to see, not their squalid surroundings, but the Overworld, a vastly superior version of reality where a hut is a palace, gruel is a magnificent feast, and peasant women are princesses — "seeing the world through rose-colored glasses" on a grand scale.

The people are not willing to just give Cugel an Eye, but insist that he be on a many year-long waiting list for one. Cugel gains an Eye by trickery, and makes a perilous escape from Cutz. He then undertakes an arduous trek back to Iucounu, cursing the magician the entire way; this forms the principal part of the book.

Cugel voyages across mountains, wastelands, and water, encountering unusual characters with curious beliefs and customs. He faces many challenges, including bandits, ghosts, and ghoulish creatures. Using a Machiavellian mindset, he survives by tricking or betraying the people he encounters. He joins a religious cult and tricks them into crossing a vast desert, which leads to many of his comrades dying. Cugel also falls victim to the trickery of others, such as when he is fooled into being locked in a watchtower in a lakeside town or when he is lured into imprisonment in a cave by the devious Rat People. Finally, he gets a spell that magically returns him home.

After many pitfalls, setbacks, and harrowing escapes, including a voyage back in time a million years, ending in the eviction of Firx from his system, and a grateful wizard speeding him by a spell back home, Cugel returns to Iucounu's manse, where he finds the wizard's volition has been captured by a twin to Firx. Cugel manages to extirpate the alien, subdue the magician, and enjoy the easy life in the manse, until he tries to banish Iucounu and Fianosther (who himself has come to pilfer from Cugel) with the same spell that the magician had used on him. But Cugel's tongue slips in his hubristic attempt to utter the incantation, and the flying demon seizes him instead, delivering him to the same isolated spot as before.

Author Michael Shea wrote an authorized sequel, ''A Quest for Simbilis'' (DAW Books, NY, 1974). Vance's own Cugel sequel was published as ''Cugel's Saga'' in 1983.

In San Francisco, wealthy investment banker Nicholas van Orton, estranged from his ex-wife and his younger brother Conrad, is haunted by having seen his father die by suicide on his father's 48th birthday. For Nicholas's own 48th birthday, Conrad presents him with an unusual gift—a voucher for a game offered by a company called Consumer Recreation Services (CRS), promising that it will change his life. Though doubtful, Nicholas meets fellow bankers who enjoyed the game. He goes to the CRS office to apply, but the time-consuming psychological and physical examinations required irritate him, and he is later informed that his application has been rejected. Soon Nicholas starts believing that his business, reputation, finances, and safety are endangered. He encounters a waitress, Christine, who appears to have been endangered by the game. Nicholas contacts the police, but they find the CRS office abandoned.

Eventually, Conrad appears at Nicholas's house and apologizes, claiming CRS has attacked him. With no one else to turn to, Nicholas finds Christine's home, discovering she is a CRS employee and her apartment was fake. When Christine says they are being watched, Nicholas attacks a nearby camera, and armed CRS personnel swarm the house and fire upon the pair, who flee. Christine tells him CRS has drained his bank accounts using the psychological tests to guess his passwords. His bank confirms such. He begins to feel dizzy and realizes that she has drugged him. As he loses consciousness, she admits she is part of the scam and that he made a fatal mistake in giving his card security code over the phone.

Nicholas wakes entombed alive in a Mexico cemetery, and sells his gold watch to return to San Francisco, where he finds his mansion foreclosed and most of his possessions removed. He asks for Conrad in a hotel but is told that his brother has been committed to a mental institution due to a nervous breakdown. He retrieves a hidden gun and seeks his ex-wife for help. While apologizing to her for his neglect, he learns that Jim Feingold, the CRS employee who conducted his tests, is an actor working in television advertisements. He forces Jim to find the real CRS office and takes Christine hostage, demanding to be taken to the head of CRS.

Attacked by CRS guards, Nicholas takes Christine to the roof. Christine, realizing Nicholas's gun is not a prop, frantically tells him it is a part of the game, his finances are intact, and his family and friends are waiting on the other side of the door. He refuses to believe her, and Nicholas shoots the first person to emerge—Conrad, bearing a bottle of champagne. Devastated over the accident, Nicholas leaps off the roof but lands on a giant air cushion. He is greeted by Conrad (who is alive, since the gun was indeed actually a prop, and Christine's fear of the gun faked) and the rest of the people from the game; everything had been staged by Conrad for his birthday present. Conrad intended to help Nicholas become a better person and embrace life. After a birthday party with friends, Christine declines Nicholas's offer for a date as she has another job in Australia. She offers instead to have coffee with him at the airport.

The Kite is set in a village called Deir Mimas over the border of the pre-occupied territories in southern Lebanon (occupied by Israel). The 16-year-old Lebanese girl Lamia (Flavia Bechara) lives with her family in the village. Her family had promised to marry her off to her cousin Samy (Edmond Haddad), who lives on the Israeli side. Lamia's mother, Amira (Randa Asmar) was dejected and unwilling to send her daughter away because that meant that Lamia could never come back because of the tense political situation at the border.

Lamia, too, is completely reluctant to agree to the marriage because she has never seen him nor does she love him. She is simply a naïve young teenager who has no idea about marriage. Similarly, Samy was not much interested in marrying his cousin either; however, he agreed to the marriage because he thought it would help Lamia escape her village.

To conduct the wedding, since there is a no-man's land between the Lebanon side and Israel side, they communicate with each other through megaphones and can only see each other through binoculars. Before the marriage, Lamia had to get a pass from the authorities to cross the border. The day of the wedding, the entire village gathers at the border gates to witness Lamia being sent across the border. On the Israeli side, people wave a white flag as a signal to start. Lamia hugs her family and starts her long walk towards the Israeli border in her majestic wedding gown and a lone bouquet. She keeps looking back, knowing that she may never return.

Meanwhile, the movie reveals that an Israeli soldier, Youssef (Maher Bsaibes), stationed at the border is in love with Lamia. After Lamia comes to live in Samy's house, she barely eats or sleeps or talks; this goes on for 20 days. Later, during an argument with her husband, Lamia tells him that she loves someone else, who turns out to be Youssef. Samy's family gets frustrated with Lamia and takes her to the border so that she can talk to her mother. Lamia is given binoculars, but instead of looking at her mother, she turns to look at Youssef and exchanges smiles with him. Both families fume at this and her binoculars are taken away.

Because of her continuous unpleasant behavior, Lamia becomes unwanted in Samy's house and she is forced to go back. Samy warns Lamia that no one else would want her anymore if he divorces her and she would be alone forever. Lamia faces a great dilemma because she does not want to be with her husband but she does not want to go back either (because of Youssef).

Unfortunately, Lamia returns to Deir Mimas, to her and the soldier's utter disappointment. She becomes a subject of insult in her home village, which is seen when a shop-owner does not accept money from her, calling it "money of dishonor".

The ending of the movie has been purposely left vague and open to interpretation. It appears like a dream or surreal scene where Lamia magically crosses the fence of the border and finally gets to be with Youssef.

As people are enjoying drinks in a bar, a man covered in blood—identified onscreen as "Hero" (Eric Dane)—enters through the door and warns them all of impending danger. No one heeds his warning, so he shows the bar patrons the head of a repulsive creature to make them take him seriously. He is soon pulled through a window and decapitated by one of the monsters. After the carnage, a woman—"Heroine" (Navi Rawat)—bursts through the door and reveals herself to be the recently deceased man's wife. After a brief sentimental moment between the wife and her late husband, the bar patrons begin boarding up the windows in the bar. Despite their efforts, a young monster bursts through an uncovered window and begins attacking. As a monster outside bursts its hand through "Vet" (Anthony "Treach" Criss), "Edgy Cat" (Jason Mewes) has his face torn off and is accidentally shot dead, and the little monster cuts off the leg of one of the women — "Harley Mom" (Diane Ayala Goldner)—who is initially assumed to have died from massive blood loss.

The monster disappears for some time, then is found attempting to sexually penetrate one of the deer heads nailed to the wall. A shotgun blast removes the deer head and monster. The monster drops into a freezer which is then sealed shut, trapping it inside. Following this, the remaining windows are boarded up and the bar patrons are given a moment of peace. Trying to call for help, they learn that the only phone in the bar has been hit by a stray shotgun blast and rendered useless. One of the women—"Tuffy" (Krista Allen)—suddenly realizes that her son Cody (Tyler Patrick Jones) is still upstairs and runs to get him. Once she finds her child the group rejoices until the boy is pulled through a window and eaten by one of the monsters, leaving only his right foot behind. Tuffy is incapacitated by grief, while the monster vomits a stream of slime at one of the group—"Beer Guy" (Judah Friedlander). As the remaining people regroup downstairs, they realize that the slime has a decomposing effect and that Beer Guy is being slowly overcome by its effects.

The group kills the young monster in the freezer and hangs it outside. The monster's parents quickly eat the child, have sex and produce two offspring in a matter of seconds, all of whom begin to attack the pub with renewed fury. Meanwhile, one of the women—"Honey Pie" (Jenny Wade)—begins washing off the blood and has to take off her clothes, much to the amusement of the others. The patrons regroup and enact various attempts to escape or drive off the monsters, including using Harley Mom's body as boobytrap while the Heroine and the "Coach" (Henry Rollins) attempt to escape. Upon discovering she's still alive, "Bossman" (Duane Whitaker) continues to prepare to sacrifice her to the creatures when she is suddenly grabbed by a baby monster that starts sexually assaulting her. The distraction fails, leading to the accidental death of the Heroine at the hands of another character, "Bozo" (Balthazar Getty). Driven by rage over the death of her child, Tuffy aggressively takes charge of the remaining survivors, which results in the audience seeing her nickname change from "Tuffy" to "Heroine 2". After "Coach" and "Bossman" are killed, "Honey Pie" successfully makes it to a truck, giving the other characters brief cause for hope (until they realize she is speeding off by herself).

A fight to the death between the last remaining humans and monsters ensues, resulting in the deaths of "Beer Guy" and supposedly the "Bartender" (Clu Gulager). Bozo, his brother Hot Wheels (Josh Zuckerman), and Tuffy (Heroine 2) survive, and drive off to retrieve the Heroine and Hero's daughter. One person—"Grandma" (Eileen Ryan)—is shown to still be alive within the bar but is attacked by one of the remaining monsters.

Flashbacks reveal Veronica's backstory: in small-town Neptune, California, Veronica – daughter of well-respected County Sheriff Keith Mars (Enrico Colantoni) is a typical teen who was dating Duncan Kane (Teddy Dunn), and was popular with loving parents. But when her best friend and Duncan's sister, Lilly Kane (Amanda Seyfried), is murdered, Veronica's life falls apart. Keith accuses software billionaire Jake Kane (Kyle Secor), Lilly's father, of being involved in the murder. This provokes Neptune's wrath, and Keith is ousted from office and replaced by Don Lamb (Michael Muhney) in a recall election. Veronica's mother, Lianne Mars (Corinne Bohrer), unable to face the loss of status and economic security, develops a drinking problem and suddenly leaves town. Veronica's boyfriend also ends their relationship, and her friends turn their backs on her. To prove that she is unaffected by the rejection, Veronica attends wealthy classmate Shelly Pomroy's "09er" party. Her drink is spiked with GHB and she is raped, but Sheriff Lamb refuses to take her report seriously. These events shock Veronica and she changes her attitude towards her former friends, becoming tough and cynical.

Estranged from all her "09er" friends—wealthy students from the fictional 90909 ZIP code—including Duncan and Lilly's ex-boyfriend, Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring), and feeling the drop in income and status that her father's dismissal from office brings, Veronica takes a part-time job in her father's newly opened private investigation agency, Mars Investigations. Although the case of Lilly's murder is officially closed following the confession of a former Kane Software employee, Abel Koontz (Christian Clemenson), Veronica continues her own investigation into what happened. Her investigation discovers new evidence which suggests that Koontz is innocent.

In the present, Veronica starts her Junior year at Neptune High by freeing new student Wallace Fennel (Percy Daggs III), who had been stripped and duct-taped to the school flag pole. Wallace explains that while working at the local Sac-n-Pac, he alerted the sheriff's department to two PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) bikers who took alcohol without paying. Sheriff Lamb exposes Wallace as the witness, and despite Wallace's attempts to retract his accusation, Lamb walks away with proof from the in-store video camera. Wallace's duct-taping is PCH retribution for his honesty. In a convoluted scheme to help Wallace, Veronica sets up Logan by placing a bong in his locker. Once the bong is taken to the evidence room at the sheriff's department, Veronica triggers it to smoke and spark by remote control, leading to the arrival of the fire department. The fire chief, a friend of Veronica, switches the video from the Sac-n-Pac with one Veronica filmed of a deputy receiving sexual favors. When the bikers are in court, that video is shown instead, embarrassing Lamb and undermining the case against the bikers. Wallace is forgiven and Eli "Weevil" Navarro (Francis Capra), the bikers' leader, becomes Veronica's occasional ally.

At Mars Investigations, Duncan and Lilly's mother, Celeste Kane (Lisa Thornhill) hires Keith to ascertain if her husband Jake is having an affair, despite her open contempt for both Keith and Veronica. Keith is busy with other projects, and Veronica takes it upon herself to follow Jake. Veronica takes photos of him at the Camelot hotel as he meets with an unseen woman after midnight. Once Keith sees the license plate number of the woman's car, he stops the investigation and files the photograph. Puzzled by his actions, Veronica finds the file and learns that Keith has continued his own personal investigation of Lilly's murder. Veronica discovers that the car belongs to her missing mother, Lianne, and begins to investigate the murder herself.

The year is 196303 BC. A group of cavemen rises from the mud, and the first thing on their minds is finding something to eat. After two unsuccessful attempts, the group decides to eat one of their own. Suddenly, the men meet women, but don't know how to make love to them. The elder of the men sees a pair of stegosaurus performing doggystyle, which inspires the elder to do the same thing with one of the women. Nine months later, that same woman is pregnant with two boys, Ah and O. The cavemen like Ah, but are frightened by O and abandon him. Meanwhile, a brontosaurus abandons one of her eggs. Both O and the baby brontosaurus Igua meet, and instantly become friends.

Years later, while trying to feed O, Igua comes across a stranded egg. Before O can try to eat it, the egg hatches and inside it is a baby pterodactyl named Croak. Croak and O become friends as well, but Igua becomes jealous and doesn't want O to see Croak again. As O grows up into an adult, he meets up with Croak again, who tries to help O become smarter. Their first "lesson" is how to fly. As O tries to fly, Igua steps in and takes O away. The next day, O looks in a pool of water and sees his reflection and discovers that he's a man, not a brontosaurus. He decides to leave Igua and search for his own kind. As O sets out into the jungle, he runs into several creatures that he mistakes for men, including a wild boar and a giant worm. At nightfall, O becomes lost in the jungle and has an encounter with a menagerie of unusual creatures that nearly kill him. However, he soon finds Croak and the two fly away together. While flying, Croak accidentally crashes into a dimorphodon and drops O, thus separating the two.

Elsewhere, Igua tries to get together with his own kind. He finds a group of brontosauruses at a nearby lake, but they reject him due to Igua smelling too much like "man". Igua is crushed and decides to find O. As O begins to search for man, he comes across a group of workaholic creatures named "No-Lobes". They let him stay, but O causes chaos, which results in O discovering the wheel. After O destroys the No-Lobes's crops with the wheel, he is kicked out and the quest for man continues. While exploring, O is caught by a feline creature with a long tail, which she uses to seduce her victims before eating them. O decides to name her "No-man". "No-man" uses her tail to seduce O, then drags him off to her own kind. Before the felines eat him, they are distracted by a new-born baby. O and "No-man", who has a change of heart, run off together, with the others quickly behind them. O and "No-man" give them the slip, then they both have sex. While the two sleep, they are interrupted by a stampede of giant turtles. The feline tribe catches up with them, and catches "No-man". O uses a lone giant turtle shell and a couple of wheels to ride up to the tribe and tries to catch "No-man", but misses. O rolls off into the desert, leaving "No-man" to have her tail cut off. O crashes into a palm tree in the middle of the desert and is left to walk again.

Later, O runs into Croak again. O is in need of water, and Croak just happens to be searching for water. They find what appears to be water, but before O can drink, he is stopped by a dragon. The dragon tries to breathe fire at O, but it comes out his anus instead. To get water, O decides to help the dragon by sticking a cork up the dragon's butt. This causes the dragon to breathe fire from his mouth. The dragon thanks O and lets him drink. However, the watering hole is in fact a tar pit, but the dragon gives him a lift to a nearby lake. After O drinks plenty of water, he takes a brief nap. When he wakes up, he sees that he's tied down to the ground by a colony of ants. O gets himself free and climbs up a tall building made out of grass, which cracks and sends O crashing into a pool of water, which drowns half of the ants. O continues on to the Arctic, and meets up with a group of Norwegian barbarians. O shows them fire, which intrigues the group. They use their fur coats to light up the fire even more, but the fire melts the ice and their coats are lost in the bottom of the ocean. The group chases after O, but Croak flies in and saves him. As Croak flies O to safety, O is eaten by a shark. O eventually escapes from the shark and finally meets his human family.

The elder recognizes O and instantly dies. O takes over as leader and tells them that he'll teach man what he has learned on his travels. While teaching them, Igua finally catches up with O. However, O is still angry at Igua. Meanwhile, Ah (O's brother, though neither of them know that they are related) takes over as leader and shoves O away into the fire that was made by Ah. Igua saves him, and both O and Igua reconcile their friendship. Ah (in caveman talk) tells his people that they must show the world who is boss. They set out reshaping the earth in their own image and destroy any creature standing in their way. As a result, the dragon disappears from the face of the earth, the No-Lobes are all exterminated in a war against Ah, the dinosaurs drive themselves to extinction by committing mass suicide, the feline clan is slaughtered and used for clothing and jewelry (save for No-Man, who later dumps O), and the ant colony attempts to escape via a rocket made of grass, which ends up crashing back down and killing them all, as well as causing Pangaea to split into the earth's continents. O, Croak and Igua escape the devastation and soon find a deserted island where they spend the rest of their lives, with O taking upon the title of the missing link and contemplating the severity of his actions.

Diane Andrews is a haughty Wall Street floor trader without any romantic interests. One day, Sheikh Selim, the ruler of an oil-rich Gulf country, who has been tracking Diane has her drugged, kidnapped, and brought to his harem overseen by eunuch Massoud. Despite Diane's initial protests, as the two come to appreciate each other, they fall in love. Meanwhile, a series of events makes Selim realise that he can no longer rule his country and harem the way he and his ancestors used to do. Eventually, he takes the radical decision to evacuate his isolated castle.

The series focuses on Eiri Kurahashi, a college art student who works in an antique shop. One day, he sees the image of a girl in an antique glass. To his shock, she appears to be moving and living out her life before his eyes. He becomes infatuated with the girl, and one night at midnight, he somehow makes contact with her. He learns that her name is Cossette, and that she was an aristocrat's daughter during the 18th century. She reveals to him that her spirit has been entrapped within the glass because the artist Marcello Orlando murdered her. She tells Eiri that, in order to set her free, a man must be willing to take upon himself punishment for the sins Marcello committed.

As the series progresses, Eiri is tortured mentally and physically by Cossette, who demands that he prove his professed love for her. It is revealed that Eiri is the reincarnation of Marcello, and that Cossette is becoming as infatuated with him as he is with her. Also depicted are the efforts of the women in Eiri's life—relatives, friends, mentors, and the girl who secretly loves him—to free him from what is becoming apparent to them as a self-destructive path.

Several residents of a Paris boarding-house write letters to their friends and family back home; their primary subject is their reaction to each other. The main character is Miranda Hope, an angular but likeable Yankee Miss from Bangor, Maine who, quite bravely for a young woman of that era, is traveling in Europe alone. In her letters, she chatters to her mother about seeing the sights in Europe but doesn't like the Old World's treatment of its women, "and that is a point, you know, on which I feel very strongly." Her expressions of petulance with William Platt, who we realize must have been a suitor of hers back in Maine, are so offhand as to be amusing. Although she is in general the least affected and most sympathetic character in the story, her unawareness of the disdain in which most of the characters hold each other (including herself) makes her seem somewhat naive.

Meanwhile, society girl Violet Ray of New York writes to a friend that Miranda, who she sees as provincial, is "really too horrible." Another boarder, wannabe aesthete Louis Leverett (quite possibly a self-satire by James) gushes in his letter that "the great thing is to live, you know," amid much precious verbiage about the good, the true and the bee-a-u-tiful. An English boarder, Evelyn Vane, pens a scoffing note that Louis is always talking about the color of the sky, but she doubts if he's ever seen it except through a window-pane; and the German sees Leverett's "decadence" as further evidence that the English-speaking world is weak and ripe for takeover.

The Frenchman Leon Verdier almost drools in his letter about the charms of ''ces demoiselles'' among the boarders, and focuses primarily on their appearance. The rather threatening German professor is the only character both cynical and intelligent enough to realize how disdainful all the English speakers are of each other. However, he's also the least sympathetic character in the story. (James disliked Germany and its culture.) While the other characters despise each other mostly on personal grounds, or from cultural misunderstanding, Herr Professor despises them all based on their national traits and general sub-human status (he calls the Frenchman "simian"). In a letter to his German friend, he simultaneously brags of his erudition and predicts that the weakness of these other nationalities augurs a bright future "for the deep-lunged children of the Fatherland!"

The game begins as the Roman army, under the command of centurion Agrippa (voiced by Rick Weiss), is fighting a Germanic army in the northeastern provinces. In Rome, Julius Caesar (Michael Bell) is on his way to the Senate when he is stabbed. As he dies, he looks at his killer and says "Et tu, Brute?" As he is cremated in the Foro Romano, Cicero (Peter Renaday) reveals the assassin to the public; Vipsanius (Daniel Riordan), Agrippa's father. As Vipsanius maintains his innocence, Cicero announces Caesar's successor, Antonius (Chris Cox). Listening from the crowd, Octavianus (Scott Menville), Caesar's nephew, refuses to believe Vipsanius is guilty. Meanwhile, in Germania, Agrippa receives word of Caesar's death, and orders his men to return to Rome.

Soon after the funeral, Octavianus meets Pansa (Jack Angel), formerly Caesar's most trusted spy. With Pansa's help, Octavianus sneaks into the Senate where Maecenas (Larry Cedar), Antonius' secretary, proposes that rather than immediately executing Vipsanius, they hold a gladiatorial tournament across the Empire, the winner of which will perform the execution. Antonius approves of the idea, but dictates that Vipsania (Moira Quirk), Vipsanius' wife, be publicly executed immediately. Agrippa arrives back in Rome, and Octavianus explains the situation. At the execution, presided over by Decius Brutus (Daniel Riordan), Agrippa attempts to save Vipsania, but as they flee, she is stabbed in the back by Decius, who then defeats Agrippa in combat. However, before Agrippa can be arrested, he and Octavianus are saved by a woman on a chariot. She reveals her name is Claudia (Nicole Balick), a female gladiator. She tells them about the gladiatorial tournament, and that her brother, Sextus (Roger Rose) runs a gladiator camp which Agrippa could join to gain entry to the tournament and possibly save his father. Meanwhile, Octavianus will remain in Rome and investigate the murder.

As Agrippa fights his way through the tournament, Octavianus begins to follow Cicero's protégé, Marcus Brutus (Cam Clarke). At the camp, Claudia tells Agrippa she and Sextus are not brother and sister; he rescued her as a child after her brother was killed by a Roman soldier. Meanwhile, Sextus is visited by Iris (Heather Halley) and Charmian (Jennifer Hale), who come with "a direct order from our mistress." They want Sextus to assassinate someone, in return for their mistress aiding his plans. Sextus agrees. In Rome, Octavianus finds Cicero stabbed in his office. The dying Cicero tells him a group of conspirators are responsible for Caesar's assassination, and Vipsanius is innocent. Marcus is a member of the group, but the actual murderer is "another Brutus." Meanwhile, Agrippa makes it to the finals of the tournament in the Colosseum. Octavianus heads to meet Marcus, where he finds multiple senators murdered, and a distraught Marcus, who says the other Brutus is killing off the members of the conspiracy. However, he refuses to reveal his identity.

At the camp, Claudia tells Agrippa Sextus is really the son of Pompeius, who was killed in battle by Caesar. She explains he plans to assassinate Octavianus (Caesar's only surviving blood relative) in order to gain support for his conquest of Rome. Meanwhile, Octavianus finds a note in Caesar's handwriting speculating as to the worthiness of possible successors, and learns that Antonius was not his chosen heir. At the camp, Sextus abruptly disappears along with a number of gladiators, and Claudia learns he is working for Iris and Charmian. In Rome, Sextus confronts Octavianus, and is about to kill him when Claudia intervenes. Octavianus flees, and witnesses Decius stabbing Marcus. A dying Marcus tells Octavianus that Decius is the "other Brutus." Maecenas then has Octavianus arrested.

In the final of the tournament, Agrippa faces Decius, whom he defeats and is about to kill him when Maecenas arrives in the arena, announcing the return of Caesar. He explains the man killed was a decoy employed because Caesar knew about the conspiracy, announcing the murder was carried out by Decius, not Vipsanius. Caesar arrives and addresses Antonius, telling him he did not chose him as his heir. Iris and Charmian revealed Caesar's true choice to Antonius, who masterminded the conspiracy. A shocked Antonius admits his guilt, at which point Maecenas reveals Caesar really is dead, and the man pretending to be him is his true chosen heir - Octavianus. A furious Antonius orders Decius to kill Octavianus, but Agrippa intervenes and kills Decius. At that moment, however, Rome is attacked by Sextus, supported by soldiers loyal to Antonius, who is able to escape the arena. Agrippa and Claudia head to Ostia and confront Sextus. Agrippa defeats him and begs him to surrender. However, Antonius attacks the docks, and Sextus sacrifices himself to save Claudia. As a battle rages at sea between those loyal to Octavianus and those loyal to Antonius, Agrippa faces Antonius, whom he defeats and kills.

Back in Rome, Agrippa, Octavianus and Claudia mourn Sextus. She tells them she is leaving Rome, but will keep her eye on things. As she leaves, Agrippa asks her to promise she will return, but she doesn't answer him. Octavianus then vows to fulfill Caesar's dream of the Pax Romana, with Agrippa vowing to help him any way he can. In the epilogue, a content Iris and Charmian state it is time to tell their mistress they have "reached the end of the beginning."

David (Troy Ruptash) is a well-known artist who is blocked. He decides to take a job as a waiter to try to find inspiration. His friend and roommate Shannon (Thom Allison), a pre-op male-to-female transsexual, stumbles across the Main St. Diner, owned by Matt (Vince Corazza) and Violet (Cherilee Taylor), who are looking for a waiter. David gets hired and quickly becomes close with the couple although they don't know of his standing in the art community and are surprised to learn that he's gay. David's friend Kryla (Lynda Boyd), a columnist for the Winnipeg Tribune, tracks David down at the diner against his wishes. An annoyed David demands that she write up the diner in her column, which she does. The diner's business picks up considerably.

Shannon, whose sex reassignment surgery has been repeatedly delayed because of her HIV-positive status, begins to become ill. David has a painting installed and Kryla gets his photo in the paper. Matt and Violet see the photo and realize that he's famous.

David and Matt start hanging out. Matt, who had tried his hand at drawing comic books, pesters David to show him his paintings but David resists. Matt confesses that he had once fallen in love with another man in college although he hadn't acted on it. David, finding himself drawn to Matt, paints him nude (although Matt doesn't pose). He tells Matt that there's a painting he needs to see. Matt comes to David's place and sees the painting. He becomes aroused and the two begin an affair.

David paints two more portraits of Matt, who still doesn't actually pose. Kryla and Shannon hail them as his best work and entreat him to exhibit them but Matt, nervous about how Violet would react, makes him promise not to. Each also tells the other that he loves him. They keep the relationship secret, though, especially in the face of the vehement disapproval Kryla expresses to David at the idea of his sleeping with a married man.

Kryla soon discovers the affair when she walks in on David and Matt having sex. A panicked Matt tells David that he lied about loving him and flees. In the aftermath of the affair, Shannon convinces David to break his promise and exhibit the paintings. He does so under the title "Straightman." When Matt learns of the show he confronts David, first threatening to destroy the paintings and then offering himself again sexually. David contemptuously dismisses him. Matt tells Violet about the paintings and about the affair and admits that he is in love with David. She demands a divorce.

Shannon, who has grown progressively more ill, decides to take her life. As she dies, David runs into Kryla at a bar and they have a bitter fight.

Violet attends the opening but merely tells David that the paintings are very good. As she's leaving Matt arrives and she refuses to give him another chance. After the opening Matt again approaches David who also rebuffs him.

At film's end, Violet sells the Main St. Diner and Matt has left town. David has also decided to leave. He and Kryla reconcile.

Scully Christopher Crockett La Cruz is an actor, fortune seeker and adventurer from the long isolated orbital technocratic democracies of Circumluna and the Bubbles Congeries. He lands in what he believes to be Canada to reclaim family mining interests only to discover that Canada is now North Texas and what is left of civilization in North America is ruled by primitive, backslapping, bigger than life anti-intellectual "good ole boys" convinced of their own moral superiority.

In the tortured version of history known to the giant hormone-boosted Anglo-Saxon inhabitants who rule a diminutive Mexican underclass, the original Texas, or ''Texas'', had actually secretly ruled the pre-nuclear war United States since 1845.

Texas escaped the nuclear destruction of the rest of the United States because of the foresight of Lyndon the First. An enormous bunker then known as the Houston Carlsbad Caverns-Denver-Kansas City-Little Rock Pentagram and now referred to simply as the Texas Bunker had saved the heartland during a war that destroyed both American coasts, Europe, Russia, China, and Africa. Texas then conquered the rest of the continent, although Hawaii and Cuba remain stubbornly "unconquered".

Veronica and Troy (Aaron Ashmore) are kissing outside of her house and asks her to the homecoming dance. After they say goodbye, Veronica goes in and playfully confronts Keith (Enrico Colantoni) about tracking Troy. He denies it. In a flashback, Lilly helps Veronica pick out a dress for homecoming. The next day, Wallace and his new friend Georgia (Kyla Pratt) talk to Veronica about starting an investigation—Georgia has received an email from a stranger, Karl, requesting money to help out with a gambling problem. Georgia reveals that she actually gave him the money, but he is late on paying it back. Veronica attempts to catch the person in a disguise.

Later, Troy invites Veronica on a date, and she accepts his invitation to the dance. In another flashback, Logan, Duncan (Teddy Dunn), Lilly, and Veronica pose for pictures before the same dance the previous year. Veronica soon receives a call from Karl. At the meeting, Georgia does not recognize the man (Alexander Scarlis) who appears. They decide to meet back tomorrow after Veronica doesn't have the money in cash. After, Veronica confronts the man and finds out that the man's real name is Jimmy Spain, who has played a role named "Karl" in another supposed "project." After the show, Karl comes up to her and attempts to con her, after which she questions him. He reveals that he is actually taking part in a reality show called "Duped!" in which he and others con people while it is all being caught on camera. Veronica tells him it is a scam, and he gives her the phone number of the people who auditioned him. Wallace tells her it is the number of a video game club.

Veronica walks into the club in full costume. Veronica soon finds a gamer's username which matches the email address ("Grrrantastic"). Veronica takes "Grrrantastic"'s ID and figures out that he is a college student at San Diego State University. Afterwards, Veronica talks with Wallace while they are preparing for a fake college interview, who tells her that he has a crush on Georgia. In a flashback, Veronica, Logan, Duncan, and Lilly play Truth or Dare?. Wallace and Veronica are taken to an SDSU party, where the host tells them that "Grrrantastic" (Grant) and one other person, Liam, are known as the "Silicon Mafia." Veronica snatches the key to the partners' room, and she also posts the picture of the actor on the wall. Both instances prove a connection between the "Mafia" and Georgia.

The next day, Veronica finds Logan looking at old videos of Lilly while assembling a memorial video. In a flashback, the group plays Never Have I Ever. Veronica's statement is that she has never gone skinny dipping. Keith forcibly works his way into the "Silicon Mafia" 's lair, although his real objective is to plant an audio recorder, which he does. Veronica finds out the passcode to their alarm system. Meanwhile, Keith and Troy have an awkward talk, during which Keith tells Troy that he cancelled his surprise reservation for Veronica at the Four Seasons. Keith traps the "Mafia" by telling them that he will give them an advance screening of a new game. After the distraction is complete, Veronica sneaks into the dorm. She reveals in a voiceover that they are making money off a video game they are creating through conning people. She completely disassembles their console. The two come back and see that Veronica has completely foiled their plan and escaped. They then pay the money back in exchange for knowledge of where their equipment is. Georgia kisses Wallace.

At Lilly's memorial service, Celeste (Lisa Thornhill) makes a speech before the fountain is revealed and the video plays. However, at the end of the video, Logan has put footage of the chaotic night of the dance, which the students enjoy. Afterwards, Weevil (Francis Capra) is shown to be crying. The night of the homecoming dance, Veronica stops the car and goes skinny dipping, fulfilling her promise made to Lilly on the corresponding night in the past.

The story of Major follows the life of Gorō Honda from kindergarten to his career as a professional baseball player. The story focuses on how the main protagonist overcomes tremendous challenges.

Subsections are divided according to the official website's story sections.

Kindergarten ~ First grade

Gorō's father, Shigeharu Honda, is a baseball pitcher bouncing between the major and minor league teams of the NPB. Nonetheless, Gorō looks up to his father and wishes to be a professional baseball player just like him. Gorō's mother, Chiaki Honda, died from an unknown disease two years before the events of the story. Aside from his father, Gorō is very close to two other people: Momoko Hoshino and Toshiya Sato. Momoko is Gorō's kindergarten teacher and watches out for Gorō, as there are no other children of Gorō's age in the class. Toshiya is another child from Gorō's neighborhood, the only one of Gorō's age, and to whom Gorō taught baseball.

The father and son are struck a cruel blow when an arm injury prevents Honda from continuing his baseball career as a pitcher. Gorō is especially shaken by the fact that his father cannot pursue his career as a baseball player. For Honda, Gorō and baseball are all he has left in his life. For his son's sake, Honda takes his best friend's advice, revives his batting instincts, and successfully transforms into a slugger. Amidst these struggles, Momoko is drawn deeper and deeper into the family's life. Eventually, Honda proposes to Momoko.

Right when Honda establishes himself in a major league team, the Yokohama Marine Stars, the Tokyo Giants sign a contract with the American MLB player Joe Gibson, famous for his huge physical build and hard fastballs. When the Marine Stars with Honda and the Giants with Gibson finally meet on the field, Gibson strikes out every single Marine Stars batter, except for Honda. At his second at-bat, Honda hits a home run off Gibson's pitch. After Honda's home run, the Marine Stars coach launches a series of bunt attacks, scoring additional runs, and psychologically shaking up Gibson who considers the tactic unsportsmanlike. By Honda's third at-bat, Gibson has completely lost his mental focus, and accidentally pitches a dead ball that strikes Honda's head. The umpire immediately calls Gibson off the mound, though Honda quickly gets back onto his feet and continues with the game. Honda's excellent play makes him the headline of major newspapers. The next morning, Honda dies due to internal bleeding in his skull, leaving his heartbroken son and fiancé in mourning.

Little League

Three years have passed since Momoko adopted Gorō as her son upon Honda's death. When Gorō reaches fourth grade, he is finally old enough to join the local little league team, the Mifune Dolphins. However, the local kids are mostly interested in soccer, and Gorō has to get his new school friends to join him to have enough members to keep the baseball team from being dismantled.

Gorō shows himself to be an exceptionally gifted baseball player. The team coach recommends that Gorō join the nearby Yokohama Little team instead, which has better players, coaching, and resources. When Gorō visits the team, he discovers that not only is his childhood friend Toshiya at Yokohama Little, but his father, Shigeharu Honda, was a member of the Yokohama Little team with the current coach when they were younger. Gorō finds himself torn; following in his father's footsteps would mean abandoning the friends he asked to join the Mifune Dolphins. Gorō has a big fight with Momoko over the issue, and Momoko seeks advice from Hideki Shigeno, Honda's old friend and teammate. While meeting with Shigeno, Momoko coughs up blood and is hospitalized. While it turns out to just be a gastric ulcer, it makes Gorō realize that the living people in his life are much more important than the dead ones.

Meanwhile, Joe Gibson has just returned to the MLB after pitching in Japan for three years. He offers Gorō an all-expenses-paid invitation to travel to America and watch the MLB All-Star game, where Gibson will be the starting pitcher for the National League. At the game, not a single of the AL's top players can touch Gibson's pitches, and Gibson earns a standing ovation from the audience. Gibson explains that this was his way to show Gorō how great a slugger Honda had been since Honda had hit a home run off Gibson's best pitch. After the game, Gibson offers to allow Gorō to throw a ball at him. Gorō responds that he will postpone this "punishment" until the day he can pitch as well as Gibson.

Back in Japan, with renewed determination, Gorō leads the Mifune Dolphins through various trials and practice matches to defeat Yokohama Little, the best team in the region. In the end, the Dolphins do defeat Yokohama Little, but Gorō is injured in the process, making him unable to play for a few months. At the end of the season, Gorō's adoptive mother marries Hideki Shigeno, and the new family plans to move to Fukuoka after Shigeno is traded from the Marine Stars. Gorō, unable to face his teammates, leaves without saying goodbye, leaving them heartbroken.

Junior High

Gorō moves back to Mifune when his stepfather is traded back to the Blue Oceans. Gorō finds his little league friends grown up and attending Mifune East Junior High School. Gorō surprises his friends when he tells them that he has been playing soccer and doesn't plan on playing for the junior high baseball team due to a shoulder injury he sustained in Fukuoka. Gorō reveals to his friends that he has switched to being a southpaw pitcher. At first, Gorō is not interested in playing baseball because he wants to play with hard balls, not the rubber ones used in the junior high league.

During a match where Mifune East Junior High faces Mifune West Junior High, Gorō takes to the mound after seeing Mifune West insult his friends. In the game, Gorō's team manages a comeback victory. Together, Gorō and his friend Komori Daisuke rebuild the junior high baseball team. Eventually, they enter the regional junior high tournament, where Gorō once again finds himself playing against his friend and rival Toshiya Sato, who plays on the Tomonoura Junior High School team. Mifune eventually beats Tomonoura in a close game.

Gorō's friendship with Toshiya goes downhill when Toshiya decides to go to Kaido High School, where Gorō has no desire to go. A Kaido scout urges Gorō to enter Kaido, but Gorō refuses the offer, saying as "as long as Toshiya goes to Kaido, I won't enter Kaido." The scout tells Toshiya to quit applying for Kaido, as they want Gorō instead. Gorō and Toshiya make a bet: their two teams will play against each other, and the winner will attend Kaido. Mifune East wins, but Toshiya and Gorō decide to take on Kaido together.

After a tournament defeat against Kaido Junior High, Gorō prepares to attend Kaido High to improve his pitching. Gorō, Komori, and Toshiya try out for the baseball team of the prestigious private high school. Komori is disqualified forced to attend Mifune High instead. Gorō and Toshiya make it through the first round of tryouts. Gorō then succeeds at an academic examination designed to test his determination.

Kaido High School

Immediately after they graduate middle school, Gorō and Toshiya are sent to Dream Island, where they undergo six months of hard training and make some new friends. Gorō then proceeds to the Atsugi campus, where he defeats a scholarship team. Gorō and Toshiya make the junior varsity team and spend a year and a half together as teammates. However, in their second year, Gorō reveals that his sincere desire is to challenge the excellent players of Kaido instead of playing on the same team as them. Toshiya is hurt by Gorō's decision but respects him for it. Gorō leads the junior varsity team to victory in a scrimmage against the varsity team and then quits Kaido High School to play for another team.

Seishu High School

Gorō has returned home after quitting Kaido. On arrival, his mother voices her dissatisfaction with the fact that he did not consult with her about his departure. She insists that Gorō be accountable for his actions and accept the responsibility to pay the application fee at any school that he chooses to enroll. Gorō's enrollment is rejected by several schools due to the Kaido assistant coach, Egashira, threatening to sue other schools for accepting him. Gorō is finally able to avoid Egashira's interference by enrolling at Seishuu High School. A girls-only school until just two years prior, Seishuu does not have a baseball team. Gorō enrolls, determined to create a baseball team from scratch. After he has enough committed players, Gorō and the team enter the summer tournament. First, Gorō and his new teammates play an exhibition match with the second-string players from Kaido. In the game, Gorō's foot gets injured when a rival player steps on it in a supposed accident. Despite the injury, Gorō and his team persist in the summer tournament and manage to reach the quarterfinals against Kaido. After a close game that goes into extra innings, Kaido wins and moves on to Koshien, while Gorō collapses from exhaustion.

Minor League Baseball

Despite losing the match against Kaido, Gorō attracted the eyes of many scouts during his time with the Seishuu High School team, including some from the Yokohama Marine Stars and the Tokyo Warriors. However, upon learning that Joe Gibson is still pitching in the MLB and has dedicated his 300-win season to his "young friend in Japan," Gorō loses interest in Japanese professional baseball and leaves for America to try out for the MLB. Meanwhile, Sato is recruited by the Tokyo Warriors, while Mayumura is hired by the Yokohama Marine Stars.

Gorō's fastball, while ineffective against Major League sluggers, allows him to start in Triple-A instead of the rookie league. At first, he joins the Cougars but is soon released after a fight with Joe Gibson Jr. from the Oklahoma Falcons. Eventually, Gorō joins the Memphis Bats.

In Triple-A, Gorō finds a new rival: Joe Gibson Jr, son of Joe Gibson and an outstanding slugger. Junior views the death of Gorō's father as the cause of a tragedy that occurred on his own family, and he challenges Gorō to a bet: If Junior can hit a home run off Gorō, Gorō is to return to Japan and never set foot on American soil again. On the other hand, if Gorō can strike out Junior, then Junior will visit Gorō's father's grave and apologize for his insults. Gorō manages to strike out Junior with his increasingly deadly fastball.

The Bats go on to win the Triple-A playoffs.

Baseball World Cup

After the baseball season is over, Gorō returns to Japan. Shimizu finally admits her feelings for Gorō, and they became a couple. Meanwhile, Gorō learns from Toshi that there is going to be a Baseball World Cup the following year hosted in America, and for the first time, Major League players will be allowed to compete in it. Due to Gorō's impressive performance in the practice match between Rookies and the All-Star Japan team, he is selected as a replacement pitcher starting the second round of preliminaries. Gorō pitches as the closer against Venezuela and South Korea, earning a win and a save, respectively. Then, Mayumura earns a win pitching as closer against the Dominican Republic, advancing Japan to the semi-finals.

Shimizu comes to America to cheer Gorō on and encounters Toshiya's younger sister, Miho Sato. The day before the semi-finals match against Cuba, Toshiya runs into his sister, and the traumatic memories of being abandoned by his parents seven years prior are rekindled. Toshiya's body goes into involuntary shock, and he is hospitalized. Miho feels guilty about the incident, but Toshiya calls her and asks her to watch the next game. Toshiya makes several excellent plays against Cuba's aggressive offense in the semi-finals, and Gorō gets the win as the closer.

After the Cuba game, Gibson Jr. reveals to the Team USA's manager, as well as to Gorō, that his father, Joe Gibson, has angina pectoris. Junior hopes that the manager and Gorō might be able to dissuade Gibson from getting on the mound and potentially killing himself. However, with the players mostly in an "exhibition game" mentality, Gibson takes the mound in the 8th inning of the USA vs. Venezuela semi-finals, risking his life to raise the spirits of his teammates.

The following day, Gibson collapses during a practice session, and Gorō rushes to the hospital to see him. Gibson reveals to Gorō that, in a chance meeting with Momoko 10 years prior, he asked her why she had not accepted any monetary compensation from him. Momoko simply asks Gibson to remain a top-class baseball player until Gorō grows up so that Gorō can be proud of having a father who hit a home run off of such a great pitcher. Momoko's words were the pillar that supported and drove Gibson all these years. He felt that if he did not play in the Baseball World Cup and face Gorō on the mound, he would have failed Gorō and Momoko. Gorō comforts Gibson, telling him that he has done enough, and urging him to watch Gorō and Junior's showdown on TV.

The Japan vs. USA finals game begins with Japan taking a five-run lead, prompting Gibson to leave the hospital and go to the stadium to cheer his teammates on. Japan sends out Gorō in the 8th inning to protect their 1-run lead, but Junior hits a home run off Gorō's fastball. The game goes into extra innings. Gorō and Junior keep up consecutive no-hit innings until the 15th inning, in which Toshiya's bat breaks during an at-bat. The bat's flying shrapnel hits Gibson in the heart. Gibson catches the ball and uses his remaining strength to throw out a runner. He collapses soon after.

Gorō, determined to strike out Gibson Jr, pitches the fastest pitch of his life: a fastball. However, Junior hits a home-run off the pitch, sealing the World Championship for the USA team.

After the finals, Gorō loses his desire to play baseball and returns to Japan instead of going to Florida for spring training. But upon seeing his old teammates play in Japan, Gorō rekindles his desire to play and leaves to join the Hornets in Florida.

Major League Baseball

As the new MLB season begins, Gorō performs exceptionally well for the Hornets in exhibition matches. In his first official MLB game, he pitches a no-hit no-run game up until the 8th inning, when he suddenly loses his control. In his second game, his pitches start to go wild in the 5th inning. Suspecting "yips," the team's catcher, Keene, stops Gorō from voluntarily stepping off the mound, gambling on the chance that Gorō will overcome his struggles. Gorō throws at the batter's head and is ejected by the umpire. In his third game, Gorō is unable to retire a single batter. He is removed from the game in the first inning and sent back to the Triple-A Bats to improve his play.

Believing that Gorō's defeat at the hands of Gibson Jr. was the cause of his yips, the Hornets send Gorō to Billy Oliver, a sports psychologist, for treatment. After Gorō recovers from his yips, he feels aimless, leading to performance struggles.

Later, Gibson retires after a defeat at the hands of Gorō and the Hornets. Gibson's departure from baseball is treated as voluntary retirement, but in reality, Gibson takes the opportunity to start from scratch. He signs a minor league contract with Double-A Bulls. Gibson fights his way back up to the majors and waits for Gorō to rechallenge him.

Ultimately, the Hornets lose to the Salmons, ending their World Series chances. Gorō heads back to Japan to take a rest and solidify his relationship with Shimizu. A flash-forward eight years shows Gorō being brought out to close the last game of the World Series, where the Hornets face off against the Raiders. During the match, Shimizu is shown giving birth to her and Gorō's first child. The ending finds Gibson Jr. against Gorō in one final face-off.

Return to Japan

Following the events of Season 6, the Major OVA finds Gorō, after a splendid fourteen-year career, forced to retire from the Hornets. He can no longer pitch due to a shoulder injury despite surgery and rehabilitation. He rejects some offers of coaching positions and decides to return to Japan to continue playing baseball as a hitter and fielder. Before leaving, Gorō promises Toshi he will meet him again on the field as a batting opponent in the Major League, and Sato pledges to wait for Gorō. Gorō takes two years to train himself as a fielder and a hitter. Afterward, he joins the Blue Oceans and returns to being a professional player, inspiring his daughter and his son as his father had inspired him.

At a rural English garage, two children, Jeremy and Jemima Potts, find a car formerly used for racing in Grand Prix in Europe until it crashed and burned in 1909. When they learn the car is due to be scrapped, they beg their widowed father, inventor Caractacus, to save it; he makes lots of unsuccessful attempts to sell his inventions to raise money to buy it, until he earns tips from a song-and-dance act at a carnival. He purchases the car and rebuilds it with a new name, "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" for the unusual noise of its engine. In the first trip in the car, Caractacus and the children picnic on the beach with a wealthy woman with whom they have previously had awkward encounters, Truly Scrumptious. Caractacus tells them a tale about nasty Baron Bomburst, the tyrant of fictional Vulgaria, who wants to steal Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

The story starts with the quartet escaping Bomburst's pirates. The Baron then sends two spies to capture the car, but they capture Truly’s father, Lord Scrumptious, then Caractacus’ father, Grandpa Potts by accident, mistaking each for the car's creator. Caractacus, Truly, and the children see their Grandpa Potts, being taken away by airship, following it to Vulgaria, which involves the car sprouting wings and propellers to fly. Grandpa is taken to the castle, and has been ordered by the Baron to make another floating car just for him. He bluffs his abilities to the Baron to avoid being executed. The Potts' party is helped and hidden by the local Toymaker, who now works only for the childish Baron. Chitty is discovered and then taken to the castle. While Caractacus and the Toymaker search for Grandpa and Truly searches for food, the children are kidnapped by the Baroness's Child Catcher, as children are against the law in Vulgaria under Bomburst's rule.

The Toymaker takes Truly and Caractacus to a grotto beneath the castle where the townspeople have been hiding their children. They concoct a scheme to free the children and the village from the Baron. The Toymaker sneaks them into the castle disguised as life-size dolls for the Baron's birthday. Caractacus snares the Baron, and the children swarm into the banquet hall, overcoming the Baron's palace guards and guests. In the ensuing chaos, the Baron, Baroness, and the evil Child Catcher are captured. Jeremy and Jemima are freed by Caractacus and Truly and fight against the guards. Chitty comes to their rescue and, at the same time, they are reunited with Grandpa. The Potts family and Truly bid farewell to the Toymaker and the rest of the village, then fly back home to England.

When Caractacus finishes the story, they set off for home, stopping to drop Truly off at Scrumptious Manor, where Caractacus dismisses any possibility of them having a future together, with what she regards as inverted snobbery. The Potts family arrive back at their cottage where Lord Scrumptious surprises Caractacus with an offer to buy one of his inventions, the Toot Sweets, as a canine confection, re-naming them Woof Sweets. Caractacus, realising that he will be rich, rushes to tell Truly the news. They kiss, and Truly agrees to marry him. As they drive home, he acknowledges the importance of pragmatism as the car takes off into the air again, this time without wings.

Set in the late 15th century during the reign of King Yeonsan, two male street clowns and tightrope walkers, Jangsaeng (Kam Woo-sung) and Gong-gil (Lee Joon-gi), are part of an entertainer troupe. The effeminate and beautiful Gong-gil specializes in female roles ; their manager prostitutes him to rich customers, and Jangsaeng is sickened by this practice. After Gong-gil kills the manager in defense of Jangsaeng, the pair flee to Seoul, where they form a new group with three other street performers.

Together the group comes up with a skit mocking some members of the royal court, including the king and his new concubine Jang Nok-su. Though they make a lot of money from the performance, they are eventually arrested for treason and flogged severely. Jangsaeng makes a deal with Choseon, one of the king's consultants, either to make the king laugh at their skit or to be executed. They perform their skit for the king, but the three minor performers are too terrified to perform well. Gong-gil and Jangsaeng barely save themselves with one last joke at the king, who laughs and then makes them all a part of his court.

When the king wants to see more performances, the clowns decide to make flyers asking for other minstrels to audition to join the group. The other clowns notice that Jangsaeng and Gong-gil have identical handwriting, as Jangsaeng learned to write by watching Gong-gil. The corruption within the court is revealed when the clowns put on a performance ridiculing the council members by implying that they receive expensive gifts for favours. The king is delighted by the skit, but upon seeing that the council members are not amused, turns on them and asks them one by one if they are guilty of what the clowns are mocking them for. He banishes a corrupt minister and orders that his fingers be cut off and displayed to all the other council members as a warning.

Over time, the king falls for Gong-gil, whom he calls to his private chambers often to perform finger puppet shows. Jangsaeng becomes jealous of this relationship and suggests that they leave, but Gong-gil does not immediately agree. Meanwhile, the king becomes more and more unstable. He makes the clowns perform a skit depicting how his mother (played by Gong-gil), the favorite concubine of the former king, was forced to take poison after being betrayed by other jealous concubines. The king then slaughters these concubines at the end of the play, and the Queen Mother dies from shock. Jangsaeng then asks Gong-gil to leave with him and the gang once more before the king kills them too during one of his homicidal fits. Gong-gil, who initially sympathized with the king, begs the tyrant to give him his freedom but the king refuses.

The king's main concubine, Jang Noksu, becomes increasingly enraged by the attention the king has been lavishing on Gong-gil. The council members try to have him killed during a hunting trip, resulting in the death of one of the members of the street performing team. Days after the hunting trip, the king forcibly kisses Gong-gil and his violence against the members of his own court escalates, especially at the mention of his father who he feels still rules over the kingdom even after his death. This leads the performing troupe to finally decide to leave the palace, because the king has become too unpredictable, but Gong-gil begs Jangsaeng not to leave him alone as he is not allowed to leave the palace. Then, Jang Noksu tries to have Gong-gil jailed by having flyers run in Gong-gil's handwriting insulting the king severely. Jangsaeng takes the blame for the crime for which Gong-gil has been falsely accused, as their handwriting is the same, and is set to be beheaded the next morning.

Choseon secretly releases Jangsaeng, however, telling him that he should forget Gong-gil and leave the palace. But Jangsaeng ignores the advice and returns to walk on his tightrope across palace rooftops, this time openly and loudly mocking the king. The king shoots arrows at him while Gong-gil tries in vain to stop him. Jangsaeng falls and is caught, and has his eyes seared with burning iron as punishment before being thrown into prison again. Gong-gil attempts suicide, but his life is saved by the palace doctors : the king then loses interest in him and goes back to his consort.

The king has Jangsaeng walk his tightrope blind. As Jangsaeng tells the story of his and Gong-gil's trials and tribulations while balancing on the rope, Gong-gil runs out to join him. Gong-gil asks Jangsaeng what he would like to return as in his next life and Jangsaeng replies that he would still choose to be a clown. Gong-gil answers that he too would return as nothing else but a clown. At the very end there is a popular uprising resulting in an attack on the palace, and as people storm the court, Jangsaeng and Gong-gil jump up from the rope together, and Jangsaeng tosses away his fan. The last scene is a happy one where Jangsaeng and Gong-gil appear to be reunited with their clowning troupe, including the friend who died earlier during the hunting incident. The whole company jokes, sings and dances, as they all walk away cheerfully into the distance.

The plot happens when the Bermuda Triangle is on the news. Meanwhile, Doraemon and friends go camping after helping Nobita to finish his homework. They use an adaptation light to survive underwater, and an underwater buggy to commute. This buggy has feelings and likes Shizuka. Doraemon takes out a big tent that provides all their needs, and that night they have a barbecue, with Gian and Suneo wanting to go the Atlantic but disallowed by Doraemon. That night, Gian and Suneo take Buggy and travel through the Atlantic Ocean, trying to find a treasure ship. They lose consciousness, and their friends, who have been looking for them, think they're dead, but they wake up soon. They find the ship and Nobita, who is outside, sees a sea horse. Along the way, they discover that the environment gun that Doraemon used to protect them is running out of energy leaving them vulnerable to the sea. They are rescued by some marine creatures. Nobita and his friends are later captured by these creatures, revealed to be inhabitants of the underwater kingdom of Mu. It is revealed that another undersea kingdom, Atlantis, now controlled by robots, was about to destroy the Earth with nuclear weapons after mistaking a volcano eruption for an invasion. With the help of a young boy from Mu, Nobita and his friends attempt to stop the robots, but are all captured. However, when things are at their grimmest, Buggy sacrifices itself to destroy the computer that controlled all the robots and nuclear weapons. After returning to Mu, Doraemon and his friends are hailed as heroes before returning home.

As Delany's Nevèrÿon series, ''Phallos'' uses a frame story — a double frame, in fact. The first is a brief trio of paragraphs telling of a young man, Adrian Rome, whose adolescent encounter with the book leads to his adult attempt, a decade later, to acquire a copy: and how he settles for an on-line synopsis posted by one Randy Pedarson of Moscow, Idaho. The second frame is more complex: it concerns the fictive editor Randy Pedarson, presumably of Moscow, and his relations with two graduate students, Binky and Phyllis, also enthusiasts of the novel, at the university there. According to Pedarson's posting, as far as Pedarson can tell, an anonymous gay pornographic novel, ''Phallos'' (one of Pederson's three favorites: the other two are John Preston's ''Mr. Benson'' and William Talsman’s ''The Gaudy Image'' — both of which are known for their better-than-average writing), was published in 1969 by Essex House of West Hollywood, California. While the anonymous introduction to that volume suggests that ''Phallos'' was known to numerous literary gay men of the past, from the 18th century advocate of Greek beauty, Johanne Joaquim Winkelmann, through the 19th century Oxford aesthetician and novelist Walter Pater, to the historian John Addington Symonds (whose seven-volume ''The Renaissance in Italy'' [1875-86] acted as a sort of counterbalance to Pater’s brief single volume [of 1873/75], ''The Renaissance'', still widely read and quoted today), and moving on to such characters as Baron Corvo (pseudonym of Frederick Rolfe) and sex researcher Havelock Ellis, Pederson concludes that all this is simply the kind of bogus folderol that accompanies so much of the pornography published in that licentious decade, as an attempt to legitimize it.

Pederson goes on to synopsize ''Phallos'' — during which synopsis, now and again, he quotes from it more or less liberally. That synopsis, along with the footnotes — some of them as extensive as five or six pages — provided by his friends, recent Ph.D.'s Binky and Phyllis, make up the text of Delany's novella.

Fictional novel

''Phallos'' proper begins with a Greek epigraph — the "Anaximander fragment," presumably the oldest piece of written Greek philosophy extant from the Ionian presocratics, dating from the last years of the 6th century BCE. This is glossed by a footnote from Binky, who, in four pages, gives his version of Nietzsche's, Hegel's, Heidegger's, and finally Sir Karl Popper's take on Anaximander, with a few potshots by Phyllis (virtually footnotes to the footnote).

Pederson reproduces ''Phallos''’s whole first chapter. It serves as a prologue to the novel proper as well as to his own synopsis. Also, it introduces us to our narrator, Neoptolomus, the son of a gentleman farmer on the island of Syracuse in Sicily who reads Heraclietos and can recite some of Aesop’s fables in Greek. His mother is a one-time Egyptian slave woman, freed long ago. When his parents are killed by a fever in his 17th year, Neoptolomus comes under the protection of a rich Roman merchant who keeps a summer villa in the area. The rich Roman takes young Neoptolomus to Rome and sponsors him as an officer in the Roman army and, on his release, asks him, in return, to travel to Egypt and help him acquire some lands across the Nile from the city of Hermopolis. The Roman Emperor Hadrian is visiting Hermopolis at the time, and Neoptolomus becomes involved with the murder of the emperor’s favorite, Antinous. At the temple of "a nameless god," whose priests control the lands across the river at Hir-wer, Neoptolomus learns that on the day of Antinous's death, bandits have broken into the temple and, from the statue of the god, stolen the "golden ''phallos'', encrusted with jade, copper, and jewels" — ''phallos'' is Greek for the male member. This theft has thrown the whole religious system into chaos. Almost immediately Neoptolomus finds himself kidnapped by a bandit gang, whose leader is certainly the man who killed Antinous. The first third of the novella deals with Neoptolomus, his relation with the bandit chief, and the period before and after the bandit sells him to a scholar in Alexandria. The plot is interlarded — indeed, held together — by numerous gay sexual encounters. While Pederson mentions them, his synopsis omits much — indeed, most — of the explicit sexual description.

After several years of the hero's wanderings, the novel's middle third finds Neoptolomus back in Rome. Once more he is working for his Roman patron, now as a broker of warehouse space in his patron's several Roman warehouses. After his early education in the sex life of the desert and the barbarian outlands, Neoptolomus finds himself sampling the intricacies of civilized urban sex — as well as negotiating the complexities that arise for him as a gay man trying to have friendships with — and work among — straight men. His several attempts to retrieve the ''phallos'' are shown, from Rome to Byzantium, back to Syracuse, and even to the volcanic slopes of Mount Etna. The central third include a drugged ''Walpurgisnacht'' among the volcanic peaks and the sad history of a Roman street boy, Maximin, who Neoptolomus wrongly decides is trying to steal from him, though in reality he has been the victim of one of Neoptolomus's jealous lovers.

In the final third, years later an older and wiser Neoptolomus returns to Hermopolis, where he meets a young black African, Nivek, sent to the Temple of the nameless god, much as Neoptolomus had been, also to acquire rights to the land across the Nile at Hir-wer — which, since Antinous's death, Hadrian has transformed into the city of Antinoöpolis, now a shrine to the memory of the emperor's late lover, who has officially been declared a god. Here history would seem to repeat itself, only Neoptolomus is in a different role from the one he occupied as a youth. Through this switch in position, Neoptolomus comes to understand a great deal about some of the mysteries around his earlier visit to Hermopolis.

Soon, under the pleasures of his committed life-partnership with Nivek, Neoptolomus gives up his search for the ''phallos''. Because of his success both in business and in life — and because they know how much energy in the past Neoptolomus has put into searching for the ''phallos'' — many of the couple's friends, however, including a poet, a Christian priest, and a horse-loving adventurer, assume the two, now successful merchants on their own, have secretly found it. Their friends cleave to them in the hopes that they will learn more of the ''phallos'' and can perhaps share in its power.

Nivek and Neoptolomus run into problems holding their annual orgies in their own summer villa in the Apennines above Rome — sometimes with their neighbors, sometimes with their guests. Though Neoptolomus and Nivek have given up the search for the ''phallos'', because of their friends’ interest in that object they are almost as greatly plagued by its possible existence — or non-existence — as they were before. The novel concludes when Neoptolomus's rich Roman patron dies, and Neoptolomus and Nivek return to Syracuse to take over Neoptolmus's late father's lands, using some of the money that his patron has left him. Meanwhile, Neoptolomus has generously sponsored a young goatherd, Cronin, with a commission in the army, as Neoptolomus himself had been sponsored in his youth; and Nivek has just invited a sexually interesting farm worker, Aronk, to come and work for them — because he realizes that Neoptolomus finds him attractive. In a scene in which the two men embrace in an acceptance of the cyclic, yet unpredictable, nature of life, the novel proper ends. The commentary from the triptych of the editor and his friends, however, goes on. In another footnote Binky points out Pederson's tendency in his synopsis to downplay any racial tensions dramatized in the book. Phyllis has the last say, pointing out in her final note an equally misogynistic streak in Pederson's selection of the materials he has included (and, even more so, left out), so that the final word we read in the text is her accusation against Pedarson of subjecting his version of the book to a certain order of "castration".

Like the 1974 film ''The Godfather Part II'', the narrative of ''Mafia!'' consists of a series of flashbacks interwoven with the main plot. Tony is the son of a prominent Mafia don, Vincenzo Armani Windbreaker Cortino. As the film opens, Tony introduces the main thread when he exits a Vegas casino and walks to his car, accompanied by a voiceover explaining his philosophy of life. When he starts the car, it explodes.

The story then regresses more than half a century to describe the boyhood of Tony's father, Vincenzo, who was born in Italy, the clumsy son of a Sicilian postman. One day, while making a delivery for his father, Vincenzo trips and the parcel bursts open, revealing a strange white powder. The parcel's recipient, concluding that the delivery boy has seen too much, tracks Vincenzo to a street fair, where he kills his father. The boy escapes to America, where he grows to young manhood, marries, and struggles with poverty before finally finding his destiny as a mafia boss.

The film then visits the recent past; Tony has just returned from the Korean War and is bringing his idealistic Protestant girlfriend, Diane, to meet his family and friends at his big brother Joey's wedding reception (a parody of Connie Corleone's wedding in the beginning of the 1972 film ''The Godfather''). During the festivities, however, Vincenzo is shot 47 times in an attempted hit and nearly dies. Tony announces his intention to kill Gorgoni, a drug lord with whom Vincenzo had refused to do business before the attack. Diane leaves him, saying he's abandoned the peaceful ideals of his youth, and adding that she'll never be anything to his Sicilian family but "that Protestant chick who never killed anyone." Tony avenges the attack, then goes into hiding in Las Vegas, where Cesar Marzoni offers him the opportunity to manage his casino, The Peppermill. Tony accepts and his casino is a great success until he meets a femme fatale, Pepper Gianini, hired by Marzoni as part of a deep-laid plan to distract him from his duties and to drive a wedge between him and Joey.

Vincenzo recovers from his 47 gunshot wounds and visits Las Vegas, where he officially names Tony his successor. Joey, furious at being passed over, is told "You get Wisconsin." The Don then returns home, where he falls victim to his 5-year-old grandson, Chucky, who assassinates him by spraying him with malathion (parody of Vito Corleone's heart attack in ''The Godfather''). The film returns to the present after Tony catches Joey and Pepper cavorting in a hotel room together and walks out in disgust - only to have his car explode.

Tony is horribly but temporarily disfigured, and attends his father's funeral in a wheelchair, where he spots the killers when he sees little Chucky taking a payoff. However, he decides to postpone vengeance until he can win back Diane's love and put his life in order. Diane has by this time become President of the United States, and is on the brink of declaring total world disarmament when Tony goes looking for her. He persuades her to put world peace on the back burner until after their wedding. During the ceremony, with the help of Vincenzo's mother (Dukakis), several henchmen, and gangster Nick "The Eskimo" Molinaro, he settles the family's accounts in an orgy of slaughter (filmed similarly to the end of ''The Godfather''), even arranging the harpooning of Barney the Dinosaur as a bonus.

The Simpsons and many other prominent Springfielders go to see a performance of ''Stab-a-Lot: The Itchy and Scratchy Musical''. The audience greets the performance with a standing ovation. Juliana Kellner, the show's director, and a former student of Springfield Elementary School, greets the reception along with Principal Skinner. Principal Skinner acknowledges Juliana's straight A's at the school, but attributes her "B or two" in Math to being a girl. The audience is outraged by Skinner's remark. Skinner's attempts to defend himself make the situation worse, and he is beaten by the ''Itchy and Scratchy'' puppeteers.

The next day, the teachers of Springfield Elementary and other Springfield women stage a protest outside the school against Skinner. To pacify them, Skinner holds a conference in the school's auditorium, inviting all protesting ladies to attend. Nothing he says or does (such as wearing a skirt, and saying that men and women are equal but not identical) has a good effect on the women, so he has a new breakdown onstage. Chalmers introduces them to their new principal, Melanie Upfoot, who for her first act, segregates the school across gender lines. At first, Lisa is looking forward to the all-girls school, but quickly grows disenchanted when Ms. Upfoot does counterproductive New Age-type math "lessons" like asking the girls how math makes them feel. Lisa infiltrates the boys' school, where she sees that actual math is being taught, but Skinner, now an assistant to Groundskeeper Willie, tells Lisa she has to leave.

With the help of Marge, Lisa disguises herself as a boy named Jake Boyman (nicknamed "Toilet" by the boys after he gets toilet paper stuck to the sole of the shoe) and attends the boys’ school. During the math class, she gives a wrong answer and is corrected by Martin, but she feels happy to have learned something. Unfortunately, being with the boys means having to act like one, and during lunch, Lisa inadvertently gets into a fight with Nelson. Despite her efforts to use her intelligence to escape her situation, she gets beaten up. When Bart returns home that day, he is happy to have seen a fight and runs upstairs to tell Lisa, only to discover that Lisa is the boy who got beat up. While he remains amused that his sister is actually "Toilet", he forcefully says "no one should be forced to be a girl" and that he'll help her blend into the boys' school.

A subplot of the episode involves Homer and Marge's relationship, where, during the morning after the incident, Marge tries to cheer Lisa up by pointing out the contributions of the women to society, including how her own role as a housewife requires math to manage their family finances. When Homer and Bart interfere with the conversation, remarking that the men are more important than the women, Marge retaliates by forcing Homer to sleep on the couch. The next night, Homer tries to apologize for his sexism, but his ham-handed efforts to do so end with him again forced to sleep on the couch. When Homer tries to get comfort from Santa's Little Helper, he unwittingly insults the dog by claiming that "everyone knows I'm smarter than YOU." The offended dog then kicks Homer out of the house and forces him to sleep in his dog house, where Homer wonders what he did to deserve these punishments.

Lisa begins to master the code of the boys, including eating French fries that fell onto a dirty restaurant floor and punching a defenseless Ralph Wiggum; this last act wins over Nelson and the other bullies and "Jake Boyman" becomes an accepted part of their world. Lisa does well in math class, and at an awards ceremony is recognized for her outstanding performance in the subject. She then reveals her true identity to the whole school, and she explains why she had to disguise herself. Actually proud but wanting to annoy his sister once again, Bart gets up and tells everyone that she did well only because she was acting like a boy; in response to which she throws her award at him, immediately then becoming shocked at the violent turn her behavior has taken, perhaps as a result of acting like a boy. After that, the boys all engage in a chair fight. Lisa walks off stage to Martin playing the flute, but quietly sneaks up behind him and hits him with a chair. By the next episode, Skinner becomes the principal again and the gender segregation in the school stops.

While driving the Springfield Elementary School's students to school, Otto stops to meet the members of Metallica, whose tour bus has broken down. Behind him, however, Bart takes over driving the school bus, embarrassing Otto in front of Metallica, who hitch a ride with Hans Moleman instead (with Hans revealing he used to date Lars Ulrich's grandmother). At the school, a fuming Otto arrives and spanks Bart. Noticing this act of corporal punishment, Principal Skinner suspends Otto from driving the school bus. For this reason, Marge has to drive carpool to several of Bart and Lisa's friends. After picking up Milhouse Van Houten, Sherri, Terri, and Nelson, she finally picks up a boy named Michael. Michael, clearly an outcast with no friends, is bullied by Nelson in the car. He forgets his math book at home, prompting Marge to drive him back to pick it up. While there, his math book is handed to him by his father, Fat Tony. Terrified, Nelson immediately takes back all his insults.

News of Michael's "family" spreads, and everyone tries to keep their distance from him. Some, like Ralph, are in fear because Fat Tony shot their parents. Lisa joins a lonely Michael at lunch, and they become friends. She finds that Michael is a talented cook (being able to make Lisa a delicious vegetarian lunch using ingredients found in the playground) and dreams of being a chef, rather than going into the family business of "waste management". While Fat Tony drives the children home from school, goons working for his rivals, the Calabresi family, attack them. Tony manages to slip them, and when they arrive at the Simpson house, Michael invites the family over for dinner at Fat Tony's mansion, where the Calabresis show up unexpectedly for a sit-down. Fat Tony advises the Calabresis against killing him as his son, Michael, would then take his place and exact a brutal vengeance. Michael, however, arrives, serving soufflés to the mobsters, who love it, but are surprised when they find out he made them. The Calabresis laugh at Fat Tony, calling Michael "Chef Boyaregay" and leave. Fat Tony admonishes Michael for making him look weak in front of his enemies. Suddenly, an attack helicopter appears at the window and guns Fat Tony down.

Johnny Tightlips explains to the other mobsters that with Fat Tony in a coma, Michael should step up as mob boss, much to his dismay, but Homer volunteers to take his place. He proceeds to do Mafia dirty work, including plotting various ways to harm Ned, Moe and Krusty. However, Michael notices how this amount of power is corrupting Homer and Bart and seeks to put an end to it. One night, he invites the Calabresis to the Simpsons' for dinner, where he informs them that they have won and that he is out of the family business. They applaud his decision, but end up choking and dying over their own meals. Marge discovers the food had been poisoned, and although Michael appears remorseful, Lisa finds out it was intentional. At Fat Tony's mansion, Fat Tony congratulates Michael for taking down their enemies. Outside, Lisa asks Michael why he did not tell Fat Tony it was all an accident. Michael bluntly tells her to never ask him about his business, and disappears into a room with Jimbo, Dolph and Kearney, who closes the door in Lisa's face, as a reference to the ending in ''The Godfather''. Lisa opens the door to see Michael and co. playing with Hot Wheels, only to have Kearney close the door on her again.

The Springfield Isotopes win first place in the NL West thanks to their new acquisition of Buck “Home run King” Mitchell. During a game at Springfield Stadium, Buck's pop star wife Tabitha Vixx sings the first few bars of the American national anthem, then strips down to lingerie and launches into a lascivious performance of one of her own songs. Buck, humiliated, delivers a terrible performance at that night's game, and even accidentally lets go of the bat while swinging it which accidentally hits Sideshow Mel's fiancé, causing the crowd to boo at him. He later sees Homer and Marge kissing on the Jumbo-Vision.

Later that night, Buck shows up at the Simpsons’ front door and asks for help with his marriage in exchange for season tickets. Marge doubts their ability to counsel other couples. Her doubts lead to her and Homer flirting, which Buck sees as an example of what he wants with his own wife. At the first session—taking place in the Simpsons’ living room—Buck confesses he assumed Tabitha would give up her recording career to focus on his minor league baseball career, to which she responds she will not stay in a mismatched marriage. The next session takes place at Buck and Tabitha's mansion and goes much more smoothly. As a result of his now-steady personal life, Buck's game returns to superior form.

Tabitha continues her concert tour, and Homer comes to check up on her in her dressing room. There he gives her a neck rub; her loud moans and Homer's praise of the fried chicken he is eating are overheard through the door by Buck, who misinterprets them and barges in enraged and slugs Homer. Now with his marriage again on the rocks, Buck goes into another slump. Homer wants to get them back together, but Marge refuses to help. A few minutes later Tabitha knocks on the door; she tells a shocked Marge that she plans to leave Buck for good. Marge objects, insisting they stay together.

During Buck's next game, Homer hijacks the Duff blimp and spells out a message to Buck, supposedly from Tabitha proclaiming her love. Buck, reinvigorated, hits the ball into the blimp itself, causing it to deflate and crash; as Homer alone runs from the wreckage, Buck realizes Tabitha had no part in the message. He charges Homer, bat in hand, but Marge dissuades him by saying that Homer was just trying to help, and that marriage is hard work but worth it. Tabitha then comes on the Jumbo-Vision to tell Buck she wants to stay together.

The episode closes with another Isotope player, Tito, saying he does not care about the healed marriage because bandits just kidnapped his mother.

In 1980, hitman Anton Chigurh is arrested in Texas. In custody, he strangles a deputy sheriff and uses a captive bolt pistol to kill a stranger on the highway and escape in his car. He spares the life of a gas station owner who correctly guesses the result of Chigurh's coin toss.

Hunting pronghorns in the desert, Llewelyn Moss comes across the aftermath of a drug deal gone bad. He finds several dead men and dogs, a wounded Mexican man begging for water, drugs in the vehicle, and two million dollars in a briefcase. He takes the money and returns home. Feeling guilty, Moss returns with water but finds the man dead. Two men in a truck pursue him, but he escapes into a river. Reaching home, he sends his wife, Carla Jean, to stay with her mother, then drives to a motel in Del Rio, where he hides the briefcase in his room's air duct.

Chigurh, hired to recover the money, arrives to search Moss's home, where he uses his bolt pistol to blow the lock out of the door. Investigating the break-in, Terrell County Sheriff Ed Tom Bell observes the blown-out lock. Following a tracking device in the money, Chigurh goes to Moss's motel room and kills a group of Mexicans, waiting to ambush Moss, with his shotgun. Moss has rented a second room adjacent to the Mexicans' room with access to the duct where the money is hidden. He retrieves the briefcase before Chigurh opens the duct.

Moving to a hotel in the border town of Eagle Pass, Moss discovers the tracking device, but Chigurh has already found him. Their firefight spills onto the streets, killing a bystander and wounding both. Moss flees across to Mexico, stashing the case of money along the Rio Grande. Finding Moss severely injured, a passing norteño band takes him to a hospital. Carson Wells, another hired operative, fails to persuade Moss to accept protection in return for the money. Chigurh cleans and stitches his own wounds with stolen supplies and sneaks up on Wells at his hotel. Unsuccessfully bartering for his life, Wells is murdered by Chigurh. Moss telephones the room, and Chigurh vows to kill Carla Jean unless Moss gives up the money.

Moss retrieves the case from the Rio Grande and arranges to meet Carla Jean at a motel in El Paso, where he plans to give her the money and hide her from danger. Carla Jean is approached by Sheriff Bell, who promises to protect Moss. Carla Jean's mother unwittingly reveals Moss's location to a group of Mexicans tailing them. Bell reaches the motel rendezvous at El Paso, only to hear gunshots and spot a pickup truck speeding from the motel. In the parking lot, Bell finds Moss dead, as does a later arriving Carla Jean.

That night, Bell returns to the crime scene and observes the lock blown out. Chigurh hides behind the door after retrieving the money. Bell enters Moss's room and sees the vent removed. Later, Bell visits his uncle Ellis, an ex-lawman, and tells him he plans to retire because he feels "overmatched" by the recent violence. Ellis replies that the region has always been violent.

Weeks later, Carla Jean returns from her mother's funeral to find Chigurh waiting in her bedroom, per his threat to Moss. She refuses his offer of a coin toss for her life, stating that he cannot pass blame to luck: the choice is his. Chigurh checks his boots as he leaves the house. As he drives through the neighborhood, a car crashes into his at an intersection and injures him. He bribes two young witnesses for their silence and flees.

Now retired, Bell shares two dreams with his wife. In the first, he lost some money his father had given him. In the other, he and his father were riding through a snowy mountain pass; his father had gone ahead to make a fire in the darkness and wait for Bell.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, First officer LeRoy Homer Jr. gets dressed in his F.A.A. official uniform, kisses his wife and leaves for work. Passengers board United Airlines Flight 93 at Newark Liberty International Airport, including Tom Burnett, Jeremy Glick, Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Lauren Grandcolas, Donald Greene, Nicole Miller, and Honor Elizabeth Wainio. Four al-Qaeda terrorists Ziad Jarrah, Saeed al-Ghamdi, Ahmed al-Haznawi and Ahmed al-Nami, also board the flight. The plane takes off from Newark, bound for San Francisco, California.

46 minutes after takeoff, the hijackers make their move; passenger Mark Rothenberg tries to negotiate with the hijackers and is fatally stabbed and the "bomb" is revealed causing mass panic among passengers, the hijackers stab a flight attendant knocking her unconscious before wrestling their way into the cockpit and attacking the pilots. During the struggle with the hijackers, Homer courageously sends out a mayday call before he and Captain Jason Dahl are knocked unconscious. Within minutes, Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.

Aboard Flight 93, the passengers learn from family members via airphones about the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.; they decide to take action by organizing a revolt against the four hijackers. Their plan is empowered with the knowledge that passenger Don Greene has experience in flying.

The group pins their hopes on Greene being able at least to control the plane. After passengers arm themselves, pray, and make final phone calls to loved ones, Todd Beamer says, "Let's Roll!". They start their counter-attack, running down the aisle with a food cart. Jarrah shakes the plane violently to throw the passengers off balance, and Flight 93 narrowly misses a private aircraft as the passengers continue their assault, overpowering al-Nami, who is outside the cockpit. After boiling water is thrown at him, al-Nami is killed by Mark Bingham with a blow to the head with the hot water container. Seeing the passengers getting nearer, al-Ghamdi, Jarrah and al-Haznawi prepare to crash the plane, knowing they'll never reach their intended target. The passengers breach the cockpit with the food cart, and as they wrestle with al-Haznawi and al-Ghamdi to get in the cockpit, the two hijackers tell Jarrah to simply crash the plane, rather than to carry on with the rest of their mission. Jarrah puts it into a nosedive, just as the passengers finally gain entrance into the cockpit. The plane inverts, crashing into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board. Air Traffic Control can be seen and heard desperately calling for any response from Flight 93. Emergency workers then come by to investigate the crash area (denoted by the crater). The film then depicts the passage of time, and with it, the disappearance of the crater.

In this movie, Dr. Yuen (Chin Siu-ho) in the jungle of Thailand attempts to rescue a beautiful girl from being sacrificed to the "Worm Tribe" she belongs to. As a result, Yuen is damned with seven "Blood Curses" which burst through his leg periodically. When the seventh bursts, he will die, but Betsy, the beauty he saved, stops the curse with an antidote that lasts only one year, so on the advice of Wisely (Chow Yun-fat) he heads back to Thailand to find a permanent cure. Action ensues as Yuen and cohorts battle the evil sorcerer of the Worm Tribe, a hideous bloodthirsty baby-like creature, and "Old Ancestor," a skeleton with glowing blue eyes that transforms into a monster that is a cross between Rodan and Alien.

London

''Nights at the Circus'' begins with American journalist Jack Walser interviewing Sophie Fevvers in her London dressing room, following her performance in the circus which employs her. Fevvers claims to have been left as a baby in a basket on the doorstep of a brothel. Until she reached puberty she appeared to be an ordinary child, with the exception of a raised lump on each shoulder; as she begins menstruating, however, she also sprouted complete wings. As a child, she posed as a living statue of Cupid in the reception room of the brothel, but as an adolescent, she is now transformed into the image of the "Winged Victory" holding a sword belonging to Ma Nelson, the madam of the brothel. This stage of Fevvers' life comes to an abrupt end when Ma Nelson slips in the street and falls into the path of a carriage. The house and its contents are inherited by her pious brother who plans to convert it to a house for fallen women, but Ma Nelson's employees burn the place down and go their separate ways.

Fevvers continues her story, although doubt is cast on the veracity of her narrative voice throughout. She and Lizzie, she tells Walser, next move in with Lizzie's sister and help run the family ice cream parlour. However, when the family falls on hard times Fevvers accepts an invitation from the fearsome Madame Schreck. This lady puts Fevvers on display in her exclusive combination of freak show and brothel, along with several other women with unique appearances. After some time Madame Schreck sells Fevvers to a customer, "Christian Rosencreutz", who wishes to sacrifice a winged 'virgo intacta' in order to procure his own immortality. Fevvers narrowly escapes and returns to Lizzie's sister's home. Soon after their reunion, she joins Colonel Kearney's circus as an aerialiste and achieves enormous fame. The London section concludes with Walser telling his chief at the London office that he is going to follow Fevvers, joining the circus on its grand imperial tour.

Petersburg

The Petersburg section begins as Walser, living in Clown Alley, types up his first impressions of the city. The reader learns that Walser approached Colonel Kearney who, taking advice from his fortune telling pig Sybil, offered him a position as a clown in the circus. The reader, and Walser, are introduced to the other members of the circus and Walser saves Mignon from being eaten by a tigress.

In the next scene the chief clown Buffo and his troupe invoke chaos at their dinner table. Walser ducks out of the meleé only to find Mignon waiting outside for him, as she has nowhere else to go after her husband and lover have both abandoned her. Not sure what to do with the abandoned woman, he takes her to Fevvers's hotel room. Fevvers assumes that Walser is sleeping with Mignon but, though jealous, takes care of the girl. On recognising the beauty of Mignon's singing voice Fevvers introduces her to the Princess of Abyssinia. The Princess, a silent tiger tamer, incorporates Mignon into her act with the dancing cats and Walser is recruited as partner to the redundant tigress. During rehearsals, the acrobatic Charivari family tries to kill Fevvers and the Colonel reluctantly kicks them out of the circus. Buffo the Great loses his mind during that night's performance and tries to kill Walser. The Princess has to shoot one of her tigresses when she becomes jealous of Mignon for dancing with her tiger mate during the tiger waltz. After her performance, Fevvers goes to a date at a mansion belonging to the Grand Duke. Here, she almost falls victim to his amorous advances but narrowly escapes into a Fabergé egg, reaching the circus train as it is about to pull out of the station. This last scene is deliberately bewildering, developing the sense of doubt cast upon the reader in Fevvers' early narrative and laying the foundations for the fantastic occurrences of the final section..

Siberia

The Siberian section opens with the entire circus crossing the continent to Asia. The train is attacked by a band of runaway outlaws who think that Fevvers can help them make contact with the Tsar, who will then allow them to return home to their villages. As the train is now destroyed, the entire circus, other than Walser, is marched to the convicts' encampment; Walser is rescued by a group of escaped murderesses and their former guards, who have become their lovers and helped them to escape. As Walser has amnesia, the band of women leaves him for an approaching rescue party but he flees into the woods before they reach him and is taken under the wing of a village shaman.

Fevvers and the rest of the party are being held captive by the convicts. Fevvers tells the convict leader that she cannot help them as everything that they have heard about her is a lie. Depressed, the convicts sink into drunken mourning. Lizzie convinces the clowns to put on a show for the convicts, during which a blizzard comes, blowing the clowns and the convicts away with it into the night. The remnants of the circus begin to walk in the direction in which they hope civilization lies. They come across a run-down music school and take shelter with its owner, the Maestro. A brief encounter with Walser, now thoroughly part of the shaman's village, convinces Fevvers and Lizzie to leave the safety of the Maestro's school to search for Walser. Colonel Kearney leaves the group to continue his quest for civilization so as to build another, and more successful, circus. Mignon, the Princess and Samson remain with the Maestro at his music school. Fevvers finds Walser and the story ends with them together at the moment that the new century dawns and Fevvers' victorious cry "to think I really fooled you".

As well as Lester and Hugo, John Carroll, another nephew of Lester's, also lives at Rudge Hall; he is the manager of the estate. A diffident fellow, he is in love with Pat Wyvern, the daughter of the irascible Colonel Meredith Wyvern. Pat likes John but deplores his lack of backbone. In any case, the Colonel would not hear of their marrying because he is at daggers-drawn with Lester due to an incident involving an explosion.

Lester, who is a devoted trencherman, despite his miserliness, has enrolled on a fitness course at Healthward Ho. Hugo travels over there with the aim of touching his uncle for £500 to start a nightclub with his friend Ronnie Fish. Predictably he is rebuffed.

John travels up to London to meet Pat, who has just returned from France. Hugo hitches a ride. They all go out to a nightclub, The Mustard Spoon, where they are joined by Ronnie and by Soapy and Dolly Molloy, whom Hugo has just met at a boxing match. Soapy and Dolly are a pair of fraudsters, and partners in crime to Chimp. They are a married couple, but are pretending to be father and daughter. John proposes to Pat, but she rejects him. The club is raided by the police and they flee.

They all end up at Rudge Hall, where Soapy tries to sell Lester some oil stocks. It emerges, to Soapy's dismay, that Lester is not the wealthy landowner he thought he was; in fact he is broke. Dolly comes up with the idea of stealing Lester's family heirlooms and claiming the insurance (the heirlooms do not legally belong to Lester, so cannot be sold). She describes the scheme as “Money for Nothing”. Lester initially attempts to steal the heirlooms himself, with disastrous results, so they rope in Chimp.

Chimp is caught in the act by Hugo, but gets away. In order to get rid of Hugo, and stop him foiling their scheme again, Lester gives him and Ronnie £500 to start their nightclub (we learn in ''Summer Lightning'' that the venture is a failure). Chimp is persuaded to have another go, and this time the burglary goes smoothly, or so it seems. But Chimp has been seen and recognised by the butler, Sturgis, who informs John.

John travels to Healthward Ho to confront Chimp. Dolly goes with him and puts knock-out drops into his drink when they arrive. Chimp locks John up in a room with bars on the window, but eventually John turns the tables on the conspirators, and learns to his horror that Lester is in on the plot.

He dashes back to Rudge Hall and confronts his uncle. As a penance, Lester agrees to make it up with Wyvern. In the meantime, Pat, thinking that John has run off with Dolly, has accepted Hugo's proposal of marriage. When she learns of John's heroism she realises the error of her ways and sweetness and light reign.

A major character of the saga who appears in this novel is the Trader, who referenced in future novels. It also brings Doc Tanner (a senile-sounding gentleman with knowledge of pre-war America) to the group, and gives us our first glance at one of the series' long running mutant menaces : Stickies.

This book also introduces the Redoubts, in particular the Cerberus Redoubt, and the MAT-TRANS teleport chambers that are a major plot device driving the series.

A small boy fantasizes about catching an airplane he sees reflected in the water. One day he finally does catch the plane, and discovers that not everything is meant to be caught.

Director: Carlos Salces Producer: Blanca Montoya Writers: Carlos Salces/Blanca Montoya Cinematography: Chuy Chávez Distributor: Fantasmas Films/IMCINE 10 minutes In the Mirror of the Sky

Three smart Las Vegas theatrical girls decide to look for husbands; – Carol, who thinks a millionaire would be good, Abby, who is in love with baritone Vince Nichols, but is perturbed because he gambles, and June, who has a crush on Ted Lansing, a dancer. Ted, however, is in love with Abby.

Aspiring lyricist Lorenz "Larry" Hart needs a composer for his music, so Herb Fields introduces him to Richard "Dick" Rodgers and a partnership is born in 1919. They struggle to achieve success, however, and Dick ultimately leaves the business to sell children's apparel.

Larry becomes impressed with singer Peggy Lorgan McNeil, personally and professionally. But when a show by him and Dick is finally bound for Broadway, his promise to Peggy to play the starring role is ruined because Joyce Harmon is hired to play the part. Dick is attracted to Joyce, but is judged too young to be involved with her, then too old for another woman he meets, Dorothy Feiner. A string of hit songs and shows follows, but Larry seems unable to enjoy the success.

After fighting depression, things begin looking up for Larry as soon as Judy Garland agrees to do a movie with Rodgers and Hart music in it. Larry buys a home in California but can't shake his sorrow, even after Dorothy marries Dick and invites Larry to share their home. Larry attends a last show of theirs in New York City, then collapses and dies outside the theater. Dick later leads a tribute to Larry's career.

The narrator of the story, a somewhat naive American admirer of English novelist Mark Ambient, visits the writer at his home in Surrey. The narrator is very enthusiastic about Ambient's work, especially his latest novel ''Beltraffio''. He meets Ambient's beautiful but chilly wife, his sickly seven-year-old son Dolcino, and his strange sister Gwendolyn. He also learns that Ambient's wife strongly dislikes her husband's novels and considers them corrupt and pagan.

Dolcino eventually becomes much more ill. In order to "protect" him from what she sees as the baleful influence of his father, Ambient's wife withholds the boy's medicine. Dolcino dies, and the details of his mother's conduct are told to the narrator by Gwendolyn. The mother, grief-stricken over her role in Dolcino's final illness, dies herself after a few months. In a grimly ironic note to conclude the story, the narrator says Ambient later revealed that his wife had become partially reconciled to his novels and even read ''Beltraffio'' in the weeks before her death.

The legendary empire of the lost continent of Mu reappears to threaten the world with domination. While countries unite to resist, an isolated World War II captain has created the greatest warship ever seen, and possibly the surface world's only defense.

While on a magazine photo shoot one night, photographers Susumu and Yoshito witness a car drive into the ocean. While speaking with a detective the next day they spot Makoto Jinguji, daughter of deceased Imperial Captain Jinguji, who is also being followed by a suspicious character. Her father's former superior, retired Rear Admiral Kusumi is confronted by a peculiar reporter, who claims contrarily that Captain Jinguji is alive and at work on a new submarine project. The threads meet when a mysterious taxi driver attempts to abduct Makoto and the Admiral, claiming to be an agent of the drowned Mu Empire. Foiled by the pursuing photographers, he flees into the ocean.

During another visit to the detective, a package inscribed "MU" arrives for the Admiral. Contained within is a film depicting the thriving undersea continent (with its own geothermal "sun") and demanding that the surface world capitulate, and prevent Jinguji from completing his submarine ''Atragon''. The UN realizes that ''Atragon'' may be the world's only defense and requests that Admiral Kosumi appeal to Jinguji. Concurrently, Makoto's stalker is arrested and discovered to be a naval officer under Jinguji. He agrees to lead the party to Jinguji's base but refuses to disclose its location. After several days of travel, the party find themselves on a tropical island inhabited only by Jinguji's forces and enclosing a vast underground dock.

Eventually Captain Jinguji greets the visitors, though he is cold toward his daughter and infuriated by Kusumi's appeal. He built ''Atragon'', he explains, as a means to restore the Japanese Empire after its defeat in World War II, and insists that it be used for no other purpose. Makoto runs off in anger, later to be consoled by Susumu. ''Atragon'''s test run is a success, the heavily armored submarine even elevating out of the water and flying about the island. When the Captain approaches Makoto that evening they exchange harsh words; again Susumu reproaches the Captain for his selfish refusal to come to the world's aid. After Makoto and Susumu are kidnapped by the reporter, and the base crippled by a bomb, Jinguji consents to Kusumi's request and prepares ''Atragon'' for war against Mu.

The Mu Empire executes a devastating attack on Tokyo and threatens to sacrifice its prisoners to the monstrous deity Manda if ''Atragon'' appears. Appear the super-submarine does, pursuing a Mu submarine to the Empire's entrance in the ocean depths. Meanwhile, Susumu and the other prisoners escape their cell and kidnap the Empress of Mu. They are impeded by Manda, but soon rescued by ''Atragon'', which then engages the serpent and freezes it using the "Absolute Zero Cannon". Jinguji offers to hear peace terms, but the proud Empress refuses. The Captain then advances ''Atragon'' into the heart of the Empire power room and freezes its geothermal machinery before successfully escaping to the surface. This results in a cataclysmic explosion visible even to those on deck of the surfaced submarine. Her empire dying, the Mu Empress abandons the ''Atragon'' and, Jinguji and company looking on, swims into the conflagration.

The play is set in Provence, France. ''L’Arlésienne'', which translates to "the girl from Arles", is loved by a young peasant Fréderi. However, upon discovering her infidelity prior to their wedding date, Fréderi approaches madness. His family tries at great length to "save" their son, but eventually Fréderi commits suicide by jumping off a balcony.

The Bower Family Band petitions the Democratic National Committee to sing a rally song for President Grover Cleveland at the party's 1888 convention. On the urging of Joe Carder, a journalist and suitor to eldest Bower daughter Alice, the family decides instead to move to the Dakota Territory. There, Grandpa Bower, a staunch Democrat, causes trouble with his pro-Cleveland sentiments. The Dakota residents are overwhelmingly Republican, and they hope to get the territory admitted as two states (North and South Dakota) rather than one (so as to send four Republican senators to Washington rather than two). Grandpa's actions result in family strife, including nearly costing Alice her position as the town's new school teacher. The budding romance between Joe and Alice also suffers. In the end, more ballots are cast for Cleveland, but Republican nominee Benjamin Harrison nonetheless wins the Electoral College vote and the presidency. Before he leaves office, Cleveland grants statehood to both the two Dakotas, along with Montana and Washington, evening the gains for both parties. The Dakotans, particularly the feuding young couple, resolve to live together in peace.

Sheridan, a gambling addict, has taken to abducting children for a man known as Mr. Wizard in order to pay off his enormous debts to a mobster who has threatened Sheridan with grievous bodily harm; Wizard has told Sheridan only that the children go "on a boat ride" (implicitly for human trafficking overseas), and Sheridan wants no further information. While lurking in a mall parking lot in his modified van, Sheridan spots his newest probable target of opportunity - a child standing near the entrance, obviously separated from his parents and distressed. Sheridan approaches him, convincing him that he has seen the child's Popsy (as the boy calls him).

Continuing his standard procedure for the kidnappings, Sheridan lures the boy into his van, handcuffs him and drives off to make his delivery. On his way to the drop-off point, the boy shows unusual strength, biting Sheridan hard enough to leave two deep marks on his hand, as well as nearly ripping out the steel bar he is handcuffed to. In addition to these demonstrations of strength, the boy makes odd comments about his Popsy, such as his ability to find him and his ability to fly. By the time they are nearing their destination, night has fallen, and Sheridan sees an odd shape swoop by overhead. The boy claims this is his Popsy, and although Sheridan does not immediately believe it, he becomes nervous. Moments later, a wing covers the windshield and the door is ripped off, revealing a frightening and horrific, bat-like creature which slits Sheridan's throat and feeds his blood to the child.

Franklin Turtle is excited about the coming of spring, because his parents have told him he will become a big brother then. After talking with his friends about it, though, he begins to have mixed feelings. His mother reads a tale known throughout Woodland called ''The Quest of the Green Knight'' and Franklin decides to go on his own quest to end the unusually long winter, with his friend Snail as his squire.

Franklin the Turtle, his little sister, Harriet (introduced in the previous film, ''Franklin and the Green Knight''), and their parents, Mr. and Mrs. Turtle, plan to spend Christmas with their maternal grandparents (Mrs. Turtle's parents) at Faraway Farm, a farm far away from Woodland where Mrs. Turtle grew up. As the family gets ready to leave, they sing the first and third verses of ''Deck the Halls''. Franklin immediately becomes annoyed with Harriet when she throws a snowball at him, causing him to drop a large pile of presents. Franklin's best friend Bear and his little sister Beatrice come to collect Franklin's pet goldfish, Goldie, and Franklin accidentally leaves his favorite stuffed toy dog Sam behind. Franklin thinks that Harriet dumped Sam in the snow on purpose, when in reality Beatrice had found Sam and Bear had failed to give it back to Franklin before they left. Franklin is still annoyed with Harriet when they get to Faraway Farm, and he becomes even more annoyed when he learns that he and Harriet will be sleeping in the same room. Later that evening, his grandmother, Jenny, tells a strange story from her childhood about a reindeer. This story involves a flashback showing young Jenny and her father (Mrs. Turtle's grandfather and Franklin and Harriet's great-grandfather). Jenny admits that she might have imagined things just as Mr. Turtle takes a family portrait, in which Franklin gives a sad look because he still misses Sam. Jenny then shows Franklin Sirius outside and sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to him before sending him to bed.

The next day, as Franklin feeds the chickens, Jenny lets him in on a little surprise - she is fixing up an old sleigh for Grandfather Turtle. Franklin decides to help, and Jenny introduces him to her neighbors, the Collies, who collect the polish for the sleigh. That night, an ice storm strikes, causing a blackout, and while Franklin is checking the attic closet for candles, he comes across the bell from Jenny's story, revealing that she was not imagining the story after all.

Franklin shows the bell to Jenny the next morning (Christmas Eve), and suggests that they use the bell for his grandfather's sleigh. Jenny has Harriet help with the sleigh, but Harriet spills the beans at lunch, much to Franklin's frustration, although fortunately, his grandfather does not overhear. Later, Mr. and Mrs. Turtle go to check on the Collies while Franklin and Harriet continue to work on the sleigh. Despite Franklin telling her not to do so, Harriet rings the bell, and just like in Jenny's story, a reindeer appears. Franklin runs to the house to tell Jenny. In the process, Franklin distracts Grandfather Turtle, who slips on a puddle of ice and breaks his leg. Back in the house, Jenny examines him and tells him to rest. Grandfather Turtle comforts Harriet when she cries and when Franklin says that he feels guilty, Grandfather Turtle tells him it was simply an accident. Jenny sends Franklin and Harriet to their room while she cares for Grandfather Turtle.

Franklin decides to use the sleigh to go back to Woodland and find Bear and Beatrice's mother, Dr. Bear. He eventually discovers that Harriet has come along, hidden in the back. Rosie the horse, who is pulling the sleigh, is just as surprised as Franklin, and runs away, leaving the two young turtles stranded and lost in the woods. Back at the farm, Jenny finds a note that Franklin wrote saying that he is going back to Woodland to find Dr. Bear. Mr. and Mrs. Turtle soon return home from the Collies'; they discover what has happened and they and the grandparents become worried about Franklin and Harriett. Meanwhile, Franklin angrily antagonizes his little sister for her disobedience, which causes her to cry. Franklin then comforts and apologizes to her for antagonizing her. Harriett then reveals that she has the bell. With Franklin's approval, she rings it, and this time two reindeer come. One of them has the same exact bell as the one Franklin and Harriet have. Franklin realizes that the bell must belong to the other reindeer and that this is why he always comes whenever somebody rings it. With the bell back, the original reindeer creates a harness seemingly out of nowhere. With the help of the two reindeer, Franklin and Harriett soon arrive at the Bears' house and fetch Dr. Bear. Back at the farm, Jenny and Mr. and Mrs. Turtle decide to split up and try to find the children. Rosie returns to the farm and they all see Franklin, Harriet, and Dr. Bear arrive by sleigh. Dr. Bear gives Grandfather Turtle a cast for his leg and also returns Sam to Franklin, much to his delight.

That night, Franklin and Harriet see Santa Claus and the reindeer out the window. The film ends with Franklin and Harriet wishing each other a merry Christmas.

The main plot focuses around Franklin Turtle and his friends starting a new year of school after a fun and relaxing summer, only to find out that their teacher Mr. Owl is absent because he got called away on a family matter. Their replacement teacher, Miss Koala from Australia, pulls up on a motorbike and at first Franklin finds her weird. She uses phrases such as "fair dinkum" and wants to create a brand-new soccer team. Soon, however, he and everyone else in the class are won over by her "can-do" attitude.

Meanwhile, Franklin's younger sister, Harriet is upset because her best friend (Franklin's best friend Bear's younger sister) Beatrice has gone to preschool, meaning that she cannot play with her most of the time on weekdays. Her spirits are raised when she meets Beaver's younger brother Kit (Amanda Soha), but Kit is a bit shy and may not be ready to play with her, especially after an accident on the slide results in them both getting injured.

Books and films can help calm first-time students. Franklin, Canada's kid-lit turtle star of many titles in both media outlets, can tell you about his experiences with that queasy tummy. However, unlike previous episodes on the re-occurring show. Within this special edition movie Franklin walked in excited to be back to school, but did not realize the number of changes that he would have to experience on his first day of the school year. Many students around the world, let alone the nation face these same fears of change.

Hence, this special edition is able to help students cope with their fears. Watching Franklin and his class overcome their fears of change and eventually accept the fact that they were going to have an interim teacher, is an aspect that many students are able to relate to when starting a new school year.

Many students starting at a new school fear that they are unable to create new friendships, or constantly feel bored because they do not have their friends that they are used to playing with. This aspect can also be related to the movie and Franklin's sister Harriet. Although Harriet had not started school yet, she was going through an emotional time knowing that her friend was starting school and not able to play with her during the day anymore. Harriet was quickly able recover from this by being introduced to Beaver's little brother Kit. She was still a little frustrated because their personalities did not match at first, however, they were quickly able to recover from this rough beginning to their friendship.

Franklin's characters morals and maturity can are also noticed in this episode when he hands over his favourite blue blanket to his little sister, to help keep her calm. These same values are then later noticed when she copies the actions of her brother to hand them to her new friend Kit during his troubles.

Archaeologist-adventurer Lara Croft is approached by a mercenary named Larson, who is working for businesswoman Jacqueline Natla. Natla hires Lara to acquire the Scion, a mysterious artefact buried in the tomb of Qualopec within the mountains of Peru. After recovering the Scion from Qualopec's tomb, Lara is ambushed by Larson, who reveals after his defeat that she is holding merely a piece of the artefact, and Natla has sent rival treasure hunter Pierre DuPont to retrieve the other pieces. Breaking into Natla's offices to find out Pierre's whereabouts, Lara discovers a medieval monk's diary, and learns that the Scion is a powerful artefact composed of three pieces, which were divided between the three rulers of the ancient continent of Atlantis, and one of these pieces is buried alongside former Atlantean ruler Tihocan, beneath an ancient monastery, St. Francis' Folly, in Greece.

Navigating the monastery, and following several firefights with Pierre, Lara locates the tomb of Tihocan, where she finally kills Pierre and recovers the second piece of the Scion he had taken. From a mural, she learns that Tihocan unsuccessfully tried to resurrect Atlantis after a catastrophe struck the original continent. After combining both pieces of the Scion, Lara is a shown a vision that reveals the third and final piece of the Scion was hidden in Egypt after the third Atlantean ruler, a traitor who used the artefact to create a breed of monsters, was captured and imprisoned by Tihocan and Qualopec. Making her way through Egypt to the lost city of Khamoon, Lara kills Larson and recovers the third Scion piece.

Emerging from the caves, Lara is ambushed by Natla and her three henchmen, who take the Scion. Lara escapes and stows away aboard Natla's yacht, which takes her to a volcanic island holding an Atlantean pyramid filled with monsters. After dispatching Natla's henchmen and making her way through the pyramid, Lara finds the Scion and sees the rest of the vision, revealing Natla to be the betrayer. Lara faces Natla, who reveals that she intends to use her army to push forward humanity's evolution, as she believes both Atlantis and current civilisation are too soft to withstand disaster. Lara decides to destroy the Scion, and Natla's attempt to stop her sends her into a crevasse. After fighting a large legless monster, Lara shoots the Scion, setting off a chain reaction that begins to destroy the pyramid. Lara kills a winged Natla and escapes the exploding island.

One year after graduation, New York City lawyer James "Brick" Davis (James Cagney) has no clients because he refuses to compromise with his ideals and integrity. His friend Eddie Buchanan (Regis Toomey) tries to recruit him as a federal agent or "G Man" (government man), but Davis is unsure. However, when Buchanan is killed while trying to arrest a gangster, Davis changes his mind, determined to bring the killer to justice. He bids farewell to his mentor, "Mac" MacKay (William Harrigan), a mob boss who financed his education to keep Davis on the right side of the law. He bids farewell to Jean Morgan (Ann Dvorak), the star of MacKay's nightclub who has feelings for Davis.

Davis travels to Washington, D.C. to begin his training. A mutual dislike forms immediately between him and his instructor, Jeff McCord (Robert Armstrong) which eventually subsides as time passes, but not before McCord openly mocks and derides Davis' attempts at training . However, Davis is attracted to McCord's sister Kay (Margaret Lindsay) which strengthens his determination to remain passive despite McCord's efforts to rile him.

Meanwhile, MacKay retires and buys a resort lodge out in the woods of Wisconsin. His men, free of his restraint, embark on a crime spree. Hamstrung by existing laws (federal agents have to get local warrants and are not even allowed to carry guns), the head of the G-Men pleads for new laws to empower his beleaguered men. They are enacted with great speed.

Davis identifies one of the perpetrators, Danny Leggett (Edward Pawley), by his superstition of always wearing a gardenia. Not having completed his training, he can only give agent Hugh Farrell (Lloyd Nolan) tips on Leggett's habits. His quarry is tracked and captured by Farrell, but he and some of his men are gunned down, and Leggett flees.

McCord is put in charge of the manhunt and given his choice of five agents. He picks Davis, a decision that later pays dividends when Jean is brought in for questioning, Davis learns she is now married to Collins (Barton MacLane), one of the crooks. She inadvertently lets slip that the gang is hiding out at MacKay's lodge (against MacKay's will). In the ensuing wild shootout, Davis kills MacKay, who was being used as a human shield. Before he dies, MacKay forgives his distraught friend. Davis then tries to resign from the department but McCord talks him out of it by reminding him that McKay's death wasn't his fault and asks him to stay on.

Only Collins gets away. McCord and Davis go to Jean's apartment to warn her. Jean is not there, but Collins is, and shoots at them. Davis pushes McCord out of the way and takes a bullet meant for him. Collins gets away. Davis ends up in the hospital (where Kay is a nurse) for his shoulder wound. Collins kidnaps Kay to use as a hostage. Jean finds out where he is hiding and telephones Davis, only to be shot by her husband. Davis bolts from his hospital bed, has some final words for the dying Jean, sneaks inside the garage and rescues Kay. Collins is shot to death by McCord as he tries to drive away. Kay escorts the still-bandaged Davis back to the hospital, vowing to "handle your case personally."

A student ("Girl") at a Pennsylvania university uses the campus rideshare board to find a ride home to Wilmington, Delaware for Christmas. She joins another student ("Guy"), who is driving home to Wilmington. Unusually, he seems to know quite a lot about her. He claims they have a class together, although she never noticed him.

They stop at an isolated gas station so Girl can use the bathroom. The Girl says she needs to wait to let her nails dry, but Guy strangely offers her a piggyback ride into the store. She refuses, but he picks her up anyway and carries her into the store.

In the restroom, the door becomes stuck, and while she pounds on the door, she hears Guy and the clerk talking about her, but they do not let her out. After she manages to escape the bathroom, she angrily asks them why they didn't let her out. The two boys seem puzzled. Before they leave, Girl hears Guy asking the clerk for directions, although he claimed to have driven the route many times.

Guy then leaves the highway saying the route, marked with accident crosses, is a scenic shortcut. The Girl expresses concern but consents. Girl learns that Guy has lied about living in Delaware during the conversation. Girl demands to know exactly what is going on when suddenly Guy has to swerve to avoid a car racing straight toward them. His car ends up buried in a snowdrift. Guy observes that the oncoming car left no tire tracks. While Guy walks back to the gas station, Girl sees a dark bloated figure stagger past the car. She calls out, but it only pleas not to be thrown in the river, and then a fish emerges from the specter's mouth. Guy returns, saying the gas station is closed, but she observes that he had only been gone a very short time.

Huddling in the car, Guy admits he had been interested in her, and when he saw that she was going to check a student ride board to get home to Delaware, he saw a chance to get her alone for six uninterrupted hours to begin a relationship. The Guy said he intended to confess later and hoped they would positively look back at his gesture.

They think help has arrived when a Pennsylvania Highway Patrol cop knocks on their window. He ignores their predicament, believing they were "parking". The Girl believes he is a corrupt cop looking for a bribe. He violently drags the Girl to the back of his old-fashioned patrol car, but the Guy hits the cop with a tire iron. They both jerk awake, finding that the Guy has the tire iron frozen in his frostbitten hands. She realizes the Guy was injured in the car crash but had been hiding it.

The cop keeps reappearing, always heralded by Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" on the car's radio. The Girl dreams of the many people the cop has killed until the priests discover him.

The Girl has the idea to use an old telephone in the car to call for help from the junction box on a nearby telephone pole. She tells the Guy to honk the horn when the song appears on the radio. She climbs the telephone pole, connects the telephone, and reaches 911 but is unsure if they can hear her. Returning to the car, she finds that the Guy has died.

Girl sees headlights approaching, thinking that it is the cop, but it turns out to be a snow-plow driver responding to her call. The snow-plow driver puts Guy's body on the back of the truck, and they leave. While driving, he tells her that in the early 1950s, a corrupt cop murdered people on this stretch of road, and their bodies were never found. In 1953 he ran a young couple off the road, but lost control and also died in the ravine. Frequently, around this time of year, more people die on this road. In 1961, the priests were found frozen to death in their beds.

The plowman sees headlights and believes more help has arrived. Instead, the ghostly cop runs them off the road. Despite Girl's pleas, the driver gets out to help the person in the other car. Girl follows him, and the pair see the two burning cars from 1953 down the ravine. They see the priests walk down to the trapped cop, but instead of helping him, they pull the microphone from his police radio, leaving him to burn alive. His burned body crawls out and tears up the plowman, who freezes solid.

She runs back to the truck and tries to start it, but the ghostly cop reappears. The ghost of Guy appears and hits the cop with a tire iron.

She jerks awake and realizes she's back in the car, with Guy's body next to her. She screams in despair, but Guy's ghost appears and leads her through the ruined priests' home, to the gas station where he disappears. He says again that this will be a sweet, funny story.

Coroners load Guy's body into a van as Girl is wrapped in a blanket by a paramedic.

Valerie Russell, a high school student, discovers that her single mother and her boyfriend, Tom, are having an affair. Val runs away to New York City and meets up with a group of teen-squatters, including Lolli (as in lollipop), Dave, and Luis. Val earns the nickname "Prince Valiant" after she helps a drag queen locate her shoe.

She soon learns about the group's contact with a troll, Ravus, who lives beneath a bridge, as in the fairy tale "Three Billy Goats Gruff". Ravus makes "Never", which faeries in exile take in order to resist iron. These exiles are dispersed throughout the city, and Dave and Luis must deliver the glamour to them. Never can be used as a highly addictive drug by humans, who can then use magic for a short time. Lolli and Dave introduce Val to "Nevermore", as they call it, and she, like the other squatters, is soon hooked.

Ravus, despite Val's first impressions, is much kinder than he appears. He begins to teach her swordplay and the bond between them strengthens. Val's mounting problems and addiction take a nasty turn, and the trust Ravus has in her is threatened.

Many of the Seelie court exiles are being poisoned and Ravus is blamed. When Val's friend Ruth arrives, attempting to convince Val to come home, Val agrees, but not before saying goodbye to Ravus. She cannot find him in his alcove, so she finds Ruth, Lolli and Luis by Belvedere Castle. Luis, making sexual advances toward Lolli very unexpectedly, informs her Dave has angrily stormed off. A tree-spirit faerie leads Val to a festival by the water, where faeries and humans called "sweet tooths" run around freely. Ravus arrives, and delirious and half-starved, Val kisses him. Mabry arrives as well, and Val realizes she is the one who killed all the Fey. She tries to tell Ravus but Mabry cuts in, telling Ravus Val has been stealing his potions, and she flees as he becomes enraged.

Ruth and Val go to find evidence of Mabry's murders, and they find a harp in which Mabry has strung the hair of those she's killed, including that of Tamson, Ravus' best friend and Mabry's ex-lover. When the hairs are plucked, they sing of their deaths, revealing that Mabry is responsible for Tamson's death and Ravus' exile. They discover that Dave has been impersonating Luis, uncontrollably high off Never he got from Mabry after putting poison in Ravus' potions for her. Dave takes off his glamour and falls unconscious. Ruth rushes him to the hospital as Lolli runs off, and the real Luis and Val search fo Ravus so he can cure Dave. They find that Mabry has cut out Ravus' heart. Val pulls back the curtains and turn Ravus to stone, and Val and Luis pursue Mabry into the Unseelie Court. She challenges Mabry to a first-blood duel for Ravus' heart with Ravus' glass sword, and after a moment's decision to never use Never again, fights Mabry on talent alone and stabs her in the throat. She and Luis place Ravus' heart back into his chest, healing him. Ravus gives Luis the tools to go heal his brother, and he and Val admit their love for one another.

Eventually, Val decides to leave the streets and return home with Ruth. She and Ravus continually see one another, and Val says she plans to go to New York for college so she can see him. Val is happy her life is back to normal, with the exception of having a faerie for a boyfriend and never being able to introduce him to her mother.

At a top-secret chemical research facility called Hope Center #1, located on a far-west coast of Papua New Guinea, a trial run on a module called "Operation Sweet Death" is set to commence in the morning. Two technicians working below the facility exchange sexual banter about a girl, when they discover strange activity coming from their equipment followed by a "dead" rat, which begins twitching and comes back to life, violently biting one of the technicians in the throat, causing the dying man to bump a valve that releases a toxic green gas throughout the facility. Subsequently, the entire staff of the facility turn into flesh-eating zombies. The lone survivor, Professor Barrett (the head of "Operation Sweet Death") records an apology message, then removes his gas mask, exposing himself to the gas as it fills his own office. The film then cuts to the near-future, where a four-man team of INTERPOL commandos, consisting of Lt. Mike London and his men Osborne, Zantoro, and Vincent, are deployed to eliminate a group of eco-terrorists who have taken hostages inside a large building at the US Embassy in Barcelona, Spain. The terrorists demand the closing of all the Hope Centers, which both the government and the military deny exist. Under orders of the local authorities, the press does not publicize the terrorists' demands or mention the disaster at Hope Center #1. After another team pumps tear gas into the building, Lt. London and his three commandos burst in, killing the terrorists. The terrorist leader, who lays dying on the floor, informs the commandos that they are doomed to be devoured by "men like you... your brothers" before he bleeds to death.

Once the mission is completed, the team loses contact with Hope Center #1. Thinking that terrorists have infiltrated the complex, the military deploys the four commandos to Papua New Guinea. They land their plane in a native graveyard, and are unable to find any communication channels or anybody to give them further instructions for their deployment, so they steal a vehicle and drive to an abandoned religious schoolhouse. There, they meet journalist Lia Rousseau and her cameraman, Max (called Pierre in the Italian version), who are investigating a series of mysterious, violent attacks on the locals. Lia and Max travelled with their friend Josie, her husband, and a seven-year-old child. Josie is killed by a zombified priest, while her husband has his heart torn out by his son, who died in his lap inside a vehicle. Zantoro shoots the boy and the priest in the head, killing, both of them and saving Lia, but the group has to quickly flee the area, leading Vincent and Lt. London at odds over what to do with their new rescued civilians. While stopping at a native village, they encounter several flesh-eating zombies. The commandos and the journalists travel through the New Guinea jungle in the commando's jeep, trying to survive while evading the zombies. Lia attempts to connect with the natives, stripping her clothes off and wearing symbolic body paint, but while the natives are welcoming to the new visitors, Lia suspects that night that the commandos are there for nefarious reasons. While interrogating Vincent about this, a zombie attacks them both and they all have to flee again, leaving the villagers behind.

Max encounters a group of zombies the next day, and wishes to film them with his camera for news reel footage. Lia calls him back, and Vincent goes after Lia, trying to protect them, much to Lt. London's chagrin. He and Zantoro are able to rescue Max, but Zantoro, mentally unstable by that point, plays with the zombies and annoys. Lt. London even further. Lia and Vincent start an awkward romance, bonding over chewing tobacco and jokes about what they would do if they had both met under different circumstances. The next day, the group takes refuge at an abandoned plantation, only to come under attack from the zombie residents. The plantation appears abandoned, but Vincent discovers an elderly lady's corpse, which reanimates and savagely attacks him. Meanwhile Osborne puts on a green ballet tutu and top hat and dances to "The Old Folks At Home", neglecting to bring his machine guns with him; this leads to him being eaten alive by the zombies. Zantoro is horrified by the loss of his friend and shoots at the zombies. Lia is nearly killed by a zombie that pulls her hair, but Vincent manages to kill his elderly attacker, rescue Lia and reunite with the rest of the group. Max holds the door shut for Zantoro, who lights a torch and then chases the zombies with it when Max steps aside. The group expect Zantoro to leave with them, but instead he remains in the building, waving his torch around at the zombies aimlessly while shouting profanities at them. Lt. London believes Zantoro is mentally ill, and orders Vincent to take his guns away from him, which Zantoro refuses to let him do. They all manage to escape together, picking up Zantoro after he lights a zombie on fire, but their vehicle stalls. Lt. London is able to get it started, but zombies nearly turn the vehicle over and yank the doors off the hinges. The group continue on their way into the morning, but Max and Lia are unable to stay awake, and Zantoro sobs at random moments of lucidity whenever he remembers the death of Osborne. They make their way to a beach, escape by raft, and finally arrive at Hope Center #1, where they find all of the workers either dead or roaming the facility as zombies. The group splits up, but Max is dragged into a horde of zombies and eaten alive, and Zantoro attempts to save him by randomly shooting into the horde, only to be dragged in my them and taken up the elevator shaft, where he is killed off-screen. A zombie leaps on Lt. London and infects him, but does not kill him, leaving him severely ill and irritable. Lia and Vincent learn about the experimental chemical accidentally released, which is causing the zombie infestation. Lia theorizes, while London interprets alone from from audiotaped notes and papers left behind in the lab's research offices, that the chemical, "Operation Sweet Death", had been intended to curb the Third World population by driving its people to prey on each other. Lia vows to tell the world, but a horde of zombies – including their now zombified comrades – close in and devour the last survivors of the team. They drag Vincent away to be killed off-screen, while they also pull out Lia's tongue and push their hands into her brain, causing her eyeballs to pop from the sockets.

Sometime later, the zombie contagion has spread beyond the country's borders and throughout the world. While politicians and scientists dispute the matter, a young couple in the developed world is attacked and devoured by a horde of zombies in a city park. A young girl jokingly approaches a homeless person in the park to ask him for a cigarette, and he attacks her, as more old men join in and bite various parts of her body. Her boyfriend is grabbed and surrounded, as well. The screen freezes and credits roll over the decaying face of one of the last zombies in view.

People Returning

April 1945. The German army is losing the war and Tito's Yugoslav partisans are rapidly gaining ground.

Giulia is a woman who earns a living by singing in a tavern in an unnamed village in what appears to be an ethnically Italian area of Istria. She had a child named Carlo six years earlier by a Slav named Novak, who has now become a partisan leader. It appears that Novak had raped Giulia, but Novak will later claim Giulia reported him to the police to get rid of him. The Italian police would rather believe an Italian woman than a Slavic man. The movie does not give a clear answer as to whose version of the story is true. Novak comes back to Giulia to claim his child, but she refuses to give him up. She attracts the attention of German soldiers and Novak must flee.

Francesco is an 8-year-old child, only son of physician Giorgio Bottini and music schoolteacher Marta. He lives with his parents in the same village as Giulia and Carlo. He meets Ettore, an Alpino who is tired of war and drops his rifle in disgust when Francesco mentions that he likes heroes of war. Ettore has come back to see his girlfriend Anja again, who is Slavic and works at Don Bruno's orphanage.

New Masters

Fearing for Carlo's safety, Giulia burns all his pictures so that Novak will not be able to recognize him, and gives Carlo to Don Bruno, the local priest, who takes him into his orphanage. Meanwhile, the Germans leave the village, which is taken shortly afterwards by the partisans. Novak enters a school, interrupting a music lesson of Francesco's mother, and orders all Italian books to be burnt. From this point, Novak will usually whistle the song the children were singing at various parts in the movie, making it his leitmotiv. At the same time, Francesco's father is threatened by Bostjan, Novak's henchman, and is forced to leave his clinic because he is Italian.

Don Bruno has to give Carlo to Francesco's family, because he thinks his orphanage is too dangerous for him. Francesco and Carlo become officially brothers, even if Francesco at first rejects him.

Escape

The partisans start rounding up civilians, taking away everybody including children. Eventually, Francesco's family is also captured along with Carlo. On the trucks they are loaded on, children are separated from their parents, a scene that hints at Nazi concentration camps of the same war. It turns out that Novak wants all the children of the village to check, one by one, which one will react to the sight of Marta, whom he has kidnapped and keeps in his camp. Just before Carlo's turn, Anja manages to infiltrate the camp and take away Carlo and Francesco, with Ettore's help.

Carlo and Francesco lose contact with their friends and return to an emptied home village. While waiting for help, German artillery starts pounding the village, and a shell makes Carlo deaf. Believing he cannot take care for him anymore, Francesco tries to bring Carlo back to Don Bruno's orphanage. On their way there, they see a convoy of partisans transporting Italian civilians, among them Francesco's parents. The civilians are gunned down by the partisans and thrown in a foiba, into which Francesco climbs down shortly after to find his parents dead, chained in iron wire. There is also a dying dog, which the partisans apparently threw down in order to keep the dead spirits from haunting them.

The search continues

With the help of Ettore, Francesco and Carlo finally manage to reach Don Bruno's orphanage. Shortly after, Novak and his partisans reach the orphanage. Don Bruno, Anja and Ettore hide all the children, hoping that Novak will believe they have left to Italy. Novak, however, understands the priest's bluff, and orders his men to pour gasoline around the orphanage. Don Bruno, then, is forced to admit there still are children, and calls them out loud—but only the Slavic ones, thinking they do not have anything to fear from Novak. Novak, again not falling for Don Bruno's bluff, orders to set fire to the gasoline; the children have to exit, and Anja is recognized by Bostjan and captured for being a quisling. Carlo, Francesco and other two children, however, manage to escape through a conduit.

Novak brings the children to his camp, again to show them to Giulia to understand whether one of them is his son. Don Bruno, when questioned, refuses to point out the child to Novak, because he considers him an assassin; Don Bruno is then kept prisoner by Novak.

Breaking out

The four children, having nowhere to go, reach Novak's camp and, whistling a code, find out that Don Bruno is in there. Francesco confronts Walter, a friend of his parents, who is still collaborating with the partisans; however, it turns out that he has been kept in the dark about Novak's ethnic cleansing. Walter offers himself to help contact Don Bruno, since he still has access to the partisans' base. He discovers that Anja and Giulia are also imprisoned in the same facility.

Exiting the complex, Walter meets Francesco and Ettore, who has in the meantime escaped pursue by partisans. Ettore, disguised with a partisan's uniform, starts pouring gasoline through the base, taking advantage of the fact that most soldiers are drunk. At the same time, in the base, Bostjan rapes a helpless Anja. While Novak is interrogating Don Bruno, Ettore ignites the gasoline, causing a series of chain explosions in the base's weapon caches.

While the partisans are busy trying to contain the damage, Walter liberates Don Bruno and tells him to go with the children to Gorizia by the mountains, to avoid partisan patrols. Don Bruno finds and liberates Anja, still shocked by Bostjan's rape, while Walter finds Giulia. Ettore, in the meantime, finds most of the Italian prisoners in the base and liberates them, but most of them are rapidly recaptured by the partisans.

Giulia is finally reunited with her son Carlo, and together with Don Bruno, Ettore, Anja, Francesco and other children they take refuge in an abandoned coastal battery. They escape from the partisans' pursue by using a rope to reach the sea, but, to buy time and seal the door behind them, Giulia leaves them and surrenders to Novak. Walter reaches the coastal battery and confronts Novak, accusing him of genocide. Novak responds that that land is theirs, not the Italians', and that the Italians still have to pay a large debt (implied, in lives).

The following morning, the children's group reaches a small boat. Anja, still struggling with the memories of her rape, does not want to leave, but Don Bruno convinces her to continue. Ettore has by now understood that something terrible has happened, even if it is not clear how much he knows.

Choice

Novak brings the remaining Italian prisoners to another foiba, and guns them down in front of Walter and Giulia, who are kept aside. He then brings Giulia to the brink of the foiba, and asks her to come back to him, telling her he still loves her. Giulia eventually smiles to him, and jumps into the foiba. Novak, shocked, orders his troops to chase the children's group, but one of his lieutenants, Drasko, protests that the Communist party's orders are to march on Trieste, not to hunt down children and priests; he eventually leaves Novak, along with a group of partisans.

The children's group is meanwhile proceeding through the mountains, avoiding partisan patrols. Trying to catch a hare with a slingshot, Francesco sets off a landmine, attracting Novak's attention. The children have to waste precious time as Ettore bears them out of the minefield, and are eventually cornered by Novak's forces. Novak, knowing they can hear him, threatens to kill Walter, still his prisoner, if his son is not brought to him. As Walter yells to them not to surrender because Novak is killing all the Italians, Novak shoots him.

Memories

As the children's group continue their escape, Ettore and Don Bruno visit the graves of Ettore's former comrades-in-arms. A group of veterans from campaigns in Greece and Albania, they were betrayed by a band of partisans who had asked them to join the resistance, and killed them with a machine gun as soon as they had handed over their arms. Ettore, after remembering them, takes back his guns from a cache he had left in a building close to his comrades' graves, and symbolically returns to be a soldier. He uses some dynamite to cut down a large tree in front of Novak's jeep, being dissuaded by Don Bruno from shooting at Novak with his rifle when he had the chance.

Meanwhile, the children and Anja are found by Bostjan and one of his partisans, but as Bostjan threatens to execute Anja, Ettore arrives, immobilizes Bostjan and kills the other partisan. As Bostjan tries to grab a weapon, Ettore kills him too. Anja, shocked by the memories of her rape by Bostjan that have come back, tries to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff, but Ettore succeeds in dissuading her.

Betrayal

The group reaches another village, which proves to be devoid of any people. There, they meet the Pavans, an upper-class family fleeing from Maresco. Their car (a luxury for the times) has stalled and they are stranded with their luggage. The Pavans try to protect their wealth and provisions, and do not allow their well-dressed children to talk to the others. Yet, they join the group as they do not have alternatives, trying to bring with them part of their cumbersome luggage for some time.

As they march on, Carlo is soon unable to walk due to a wound in his ankle, but he has finally regained his hearing. The group has to slow down, and Mr. Pavan grows nervous. Mr. Pavan learns that Carlo is the reason Novak is stalking them, and when his turn comes to carry him, he lags behind until he has a chance to bring the child to Novak, hoping he would let them go. Novak finally meets his son, but is ambushed by Ettore. Novak proposes to let the child decide where to go, but Carlo says he wants to go back to his mother. Ettore orders Novak and his men to drop their weapons, that are picked up by three Italian soldiers that Francesco had just stumbled upon. They leave Novak and his men unarmed and alive, and they proceed.

Last stand

However, Novak surrendered easily because he knew the road to Gorizia was blocked, and that he had time to regroup. As the children's group, together with the soldiers, is forced to move towards the coastline, they find an abandoned fortress. Ettore and the Italian soldiers decide to remain there to delay the advance of Novak's soldiers, who are chasing them, accepting the implication that they will likely not survive the fight.

At the abandoned fortress, Don Bruno quickly marries Ettore and Anja, since this could be their last time together. Mr. Pavan is forced to remain and fight, even if he tries to bribe his way out. When Novak and a dozen of his soldiers arrive, Mr. Pavan tries to surrender, only to be shot in the back by a partisan. Ettore and the other Italians continue to resist from their vantage position, and in the end only Novak and Ettore are left. Francesco, who has found a gun, runs back to the fortress to avenge his parents and kill Novak; Don Bruno runs after him, but arrives only in time to take the bullet from Novak's gun and save Francesco's life with his own; Ettore manages to grab a rifle and kills Novak.

Ettore and Francesco find Anja and the other children in a long line of refugees bound for a merchant ship that will bring them back to Italy.

After reading a newspaper article revealing Koontz's innocence, Duncan demands the truth from his parents, Jake and Celeste Kane (Lisa Thornhill), who tell him that they arrived home one night to find Duncan covered in blood and holding Lilly's body. Cassidy "Beaver" Casablancas (Kyle Gallner) tells Veronica that on the weekend of Lilly's murder, he had gone surfing in Mexico with Logan and Dick Casablancas (Ryan Hansen), but that Logan had driven back to Neptune to see Lilly. Veronica and Keith discover that a shot glass Logan bought for Lilly in Mexico is on the list of evidence found in Lilly's bedroom and car. Talking to Keith on the phone, Veronica suggests that Logan is the murderer; she is overheard by the leader of the Latino biker gang PCHers, Eli "Weevil" Navarro (Francis Capra), who had a relationship with Lilly.

Keith ends his relationship with Wallace's mother Alicia Fennel (Erica Gimpel), to give Lianne a second chance. He sues the Kanes for refusing to pay the $50,000 reward for finding Duncan; they agree to pay if Veronica signs away any future claim to their estate. Once Veronica signs, Keith shows her the DNA test that proves he is her father, meaning Veronica was never a potential Kane heir.

Logan is arrested, and once released he angrily breaks up with Veronica for providing the evidence against him. He tells her that when he saw Lilly after returning from Mexico, he knew their relationship was over and wrote her a letter, which he left in Lilly's car along with the shot glass. Veronica realizes that the letter was never found, and sneaks into a dinner party at the Kane household to search Lilly's room for it. Duncan finds her in the room, and they discover several videotapes which show Lilly having an affair with Logan's father, Aaron Echolls (Harry Hamlin). Veronica concludes that when Aaron learned that Lilly had taken the tapes and she refused to return them, he killed her in a fit of rage, leading to Duncan's discovery of Lilly's body and his parents' mistaken belief that he killed her.

In Lilly's room, as a hidden person watches from a closet, Veronica calls Keith and tells him that she will bring home the tapes, noting that Aaron is at the party. Before she leaves, Veronica tells Duncan that they are not related. Elsewhere, Logan drunkenly stands on a bridge railing; Weevil and the PCHers arrive and menacingly close in on him.

As she drives home, Veronica discovers Aaron is in the back seat of her car, and intentionally crashes into a power pole to escape him. Although both are knocked unconscious, Veronica awakens first and flees to the back porch of a nearby house, hiding the tapes in various places as she runs. Aaron traps Veronica in a refrigerator on the porch, demanding she reveal where the tapes are, and when Keith arrives, Aaron sets the refrigerator on fire. Keith is burnt while freeing Veronica, and Aaron is hit by a truck while trying to escape. The police arrive and Keith and Aaron are taken away on stretchers as Aaron is read his rights. Jake vows to see Aaron fry for his actions and is also arrested, for obstruction of justice.

Keith wakes up in hospital to find Alicia by his side. Veronica arrives home and tells her mother to leave; she knows that Lianne is still drinking and did not finish her rehab. Lianne packs her bags, taking the $50,000 Kane settlement check as she leaves.

Veronica dreams about floating on pool rafts with Lilly, in a pool covered with flowers, and they say their final goodbyes. Veronica wakes up and answers the door, telling the unseen visitor, "I was hoping it would be you."

A mysterious man named Edward Paladin shows up in place of Johnny Carson on ''The Tonight Show'', but all is not what it seems. A subsequent investigation by detectives Richard Cheyney and Pete Jacoby finds strange items in his possession, hinting that he may not be from our reality. These include passes for the studio which are the wrong color and a bright blue one dollar bill with a picture of James Madison on it rather than one of George Washington, implying that Madison served as the first President of the United States instead of Washington in Paladin's universe.

Bookkeeper Nick Cherney is sent to jail for embezzling from Johnny Torno's trucking company. One week before getting out, he sees a newsreel showing Johnny welcoming home his brother Jess, a heroic Catholic chaplain just returned from a World War II prisoner-of-war camp. Nick decides to get back at Johnny and hires Rocky (a fellow-inmate being released ahead of Nick) to murder Jess.

Jess is staying in a local hotel room, about to depart for his first parish in another city. Johnny arrives not long after his brother has been shot by Rocky. Knowing that he is about to die, Jess indicates that a clue can be found in the room's Gideon Bible. However, the book is not there.

Johnny investigates on his own, resulting in much tension with the police. He tracks down and questions people who occupied the hotel room, believing that one of them is in possession of the bible. He hires Carla North, herself a one-time resident of the room, to help him search. He insists she stay at his luxury apartment while he moves into his office.

While Johnny is questioning another hotel guest, he notices Rocky watching him and sets a trap. Rocky manages to escape, after Johnny wounds him.

Later, aboard a train, Rocky attempts to blackmail Nick, who deals with this by causing his ex-con acquaintance to fall off the train. Nick then goes to Johnny's trucking company office to look for the bible Carla has apparently found. While there, he murders manager Warni Hazard.

Johnny learns of this murder and returns to his apartment to ask Carla to locate Pablo Cabrillo, the last name on the list. But, she is tired of Johnny's obsessive nature and leaves him. Johnny is then confronted by the police, who subsequently put a 24-hour watch on him. With help from his employees, he manages to slip away.

Johnny drives to see Pablo Cabrillo, who turns out to be a GI blinded in the war. He admits to stealing the Bible, because it was his only inspiration during his intense despair. Pablo agrees to let Johnny look at the bible, but they learn that it was stolen only an hour earlier by a young, beautiful woman.

Johnny angrily goes to church where, in a burst of rage, he breaks a stained-glass window that he himself had recently sponsored. Remorseful, he returns to his office to write a check to replace the window; while there he receives word that Carla has checked into a hotel. Nick arrives at Johnny's office and agrees to help find Carla, who shortly arrives at the office with the bible. The police show up moments later to tell Johnny that they found his gun—one he had taken from Rocky.

With Nick watching worriedly, Carla gives Johnny the missing Bible. Inside it he finds not information about the killer's identity, but a reference to Romans 12:19 forbidding revenge, and a plea from his brother to not seek retribution. Nick thinks he is off the hook. Relieved, he turns to leave.

However, when he gets to the head of the stairs, he spots Rocky on the floor below. In a shootout, Nick fatally wounds Rocky, but before he dies Rocky identifies Nick as the mastermind behind Jess's murder. Holding all of them at gunpoint, Nick confesses in front of the police before Johnny shoots and wounds Nick.

Pursued by Johnny and the police, Nick flees to the roof in a rainstorm. Nick has a clear shot at Johnny, but is out of bullets. Johnny aims at Nick, but remembers his brother's message. Nick flees as the police close in, accidentally steps on the main power supply to Torno's huge neon sign, and is electrocuted.

The novel is set in the present day. Its title refers to a house in Laos inhabited by three American Air Force pilots who have been missing since the Vietnam War. Following the arrest of one of the MIAs, for trafficking drugs while dressed as a priest, the novel depicts American life in a post-9/11 context through the involvement of the two sisters.

The story begins with a stag hunt. Beginning in Carlisle, King Arthur and his knights chase a great white stag, which eludes them until Percival finally captures it in Galloway. At this point, Fergus, working the land in the service of his father, spots the knights and is inspired by them. Fergus persuades his father to give him a suit of armour, so that he can follow after the knights and join them. Fergus makes his way to Carlisle, killing two bandits on the way, whose heads he brings to the king. Arriving at court, he is mocked by Kay, the seneschal. Kay challenges Fergus to prove his worth by, among other things, defeating the king's bitter enemy, the Black Knight; Fergus accepts. After being taught knightly arts by the daughter of the royal Chamberlain, he is knighted by Arthur and receives encouragement and a sword from Percival and Gawain.

-locations in Great Britain. The site is one of the most important locations in the ''Roman de Fergus''. Following his introduction to chivalry, Fergus makes his way to Liddel Castle, where he first encounters Galiene, the niece of the castellan. She declares her love for him, but he only promises to return after he has fulfilled his quest. Having vanquished the Black Knight, Fergus returns, only to find that Galiene has disappeared. At this point, the magic of love hits Fergus. He searches for her in vain for a year, until he meets a dwarf who tells him that he will retrieve his lost love if he can obtain a shield from a hag in Dunnottar Castle. With renewed hope, Fergus makes his way to Queensferry, to cross from "England" into "Scotland"; however, he gets into a dispute with the boatmen, dispatches them all, and is forced to sail himself over. Upon reaching Dunnotar, Fergus slays the guardian of the shield, and returns to Lothian. It is then that he is told that Galiene is the new ruler of Lothian, but is besieged in Roxburgh by a neighbouring king. On the way to Roxburgh, he is waylaid at Melrose by the husband of the hag-dragon he dispatched at Dunnottar. Emerging victorious, Fergus takes up residence in Melrose, and from there wreaks havoc on the army. He defeats some of its greatest knights, but this is not enough to lift the siege.

After a while, the king sends his nephew Arthofilaus to demand that Galiene surrender the castle. She refuses, but they agree that if she can find a suitable knight, they will settle the dispute by single combat. Galiene soon regrets the deal, as she is unable to find a willing candidate among her men. She therefore sends her attendant, Arondele, to request a knight from Arthur at Carlisle. However, Arthur is unable to provide one because all of his knights are out searching for Fergus. Dejected, Arondele heads back to her mistress. On the way, she passes Melrose and relates the story to Fergus, before returning to Roxburgh. News of the attendant's failure brings Galiene to grief, because the combat must take place the following day. When the time arrives, Galiene prepares to throw herself from the castle tower. However, she catches sight of a shining shield in the distance. The mysterious knight slays Arthofilaus, and the king gives up his claim to Lothian. It is then that Galiene learns the identity of the knight, her lost love Fergus. By then, however, he had already departed.

Back at Carlisle, King Arthur learns of the events and pardons the defeated king. Arthur decides personally to set out in search of Fergus, but Gawain counsels that he has a better chance of finding him if he hosts a tournament. The tournament is arranged at Jedburgh, and the prize is Queen Galiene and her kingdom. During the week-long tournament, Fergus remains invincible, defeating, among others, Kay, Lancelot and the Black Knight. It is after this that Fergus and Galiene are united in marriage, and Fergus becomes King of Lothian.

A mysterious stranger (the Asgardian god Loki in disguise) coerces a group of master supervillains to join forces in a conspiracy to destroy the superhero team the Avengers. Loki does this to strike back at his adopted brother Thor, and due to his bitterness that he inadvertently caused the formation of the Avengers. The supervillain team consists of Doctor Doom, the Kingpin, Magneto, the Mandarin, the Red Skull, and the Wizard. Loki also attempts to recruit Apocalypse, Cobra, and the Mad Thinker, but they all decline. Loki also approaches Namor, but he rejects the offer stating he is not a villain anymore.

To assist the master villains, Loki engineers a jailbreak at the Vault. The lesser villains are then directed against heroes (mainly the Avengers and Spider-Man) who have never fought them before, the theory being that the unfamiliarity will act in the villains' favor.

While they did manage to give many of the heroes unusual fights, the plan eventually fails as the master villains fail to cooperate and bicker with each other. An example of this is where Magneto, a mutant and a Jewish Holocaust survivor, attacks the Red Skull, whose Nazi beliefs include a prejudice against mutants, and imprisons him in a buried crypt. The supervillain pawns are defeated by the heroes. A frustrated Loki reveals himself and imprisons the Red Skull, the Mandarin and the Wizard. Meanwhile, Doctor Doom is revealed to have been using a Doombot, the Kingpin makes a timely exit and Magneto is not present. The Avengers track the group and defeat the villains, with Thor forcing Loki to flee back to their native home of Asgard.

Loki commits one last act of villainy and fuses three Sentinels to form the robot Tri-Sentinel, so that it can destroy New York City. The Tri-Sentinel is stopped by Spider-Man, who at the time possessed the powers of Captain Universe.

Wing Commander II

The year is 2655. The TCS ''Tiger's Claw'', pride of the Terran Confederation's fleet, is on campaign in the Enigma sector, near the Kilrathi sector headquarters, the ''K'tithrak Mang'' starbase. In a sudden attack, it is lost with all hands, save a few pilots who had been transferred off, and one who was out on patrol: the player's character, whose name and call sign are specified by the player. Origin personnel, in these days, called him "Bluehair" after his most defining feature; in ''Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger'', his name was changed to Christopher "Maverick" Blair. Blair's claims that some sort of "Kilrathi stealth fighter" destroyed the ''Claw'' are summarily dismissed, especially since his flight data recorder is damaged. He is court martialed for treason (reduced to negligence, without the flight recorder as evidence), demoted to Captain, and branded as "The Coward of K'Tithrak Mang". Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn attempts to force Blair to resign; when Blair refuses, he is transferred to InSystem Security and exiled to Caernarvon Station in the backwater Gwynedd system.

Ten years later, Blair, flying a patrol, is startled to engage Kilrathi fightercraft in the area. Not long after, Admiral Tolwyn's flagship, the TCS ''Concordia'', shows up on sensors, under heavy attack by a Kilrathi cruiser and her fighters. Blair and his wingman Captain Elizabeth "Shadow" Norwood together save the ship, and he is briefly reunited with some of his friends from the ''Claw''—Colonel Jeannette Devereaux, Lieutenant Colonel Mariko Tanaka, the Kilrathi defector Colonel Ralgha ''nar'' Hhallas, Captain Etienne Montclair, and Major Zach Colson— used to assist in the attack on the Kilrathi cruiser, before being packaged back to Caernarvon. Colonel Devereaux requested a transfer for Blair to the ''Concordia'' but on the flight back, Blair states to Shadow that he probably won't get reassigned due to his past with Admiral Tolwyn. But Blair and Shadow have barely returned when the ''Concordia'' is attacked again, and an explosion on the flight deck has crippled her ability to launch fighters. In the ensuing battle, Shadow is killed, Blair triumphs, and Tolwyn, ever-mindful of the need for good pilots, takes The Coward of K'Tithrak Mang onto his flagship.

Blair's time there is not particularly easy. At least one pilot, Captain Dirk "Stingray" Wright, believes the slander spread about the ''Claw'''s destruction, and he and Blair's stauncher supporters (Tanaka, ''nar'' Hhallas, Devereaux) are frequently at odds. The flight deck explosion, a bizarre murder, and radio transmission records suggests that there is a traitor aboard the ''Concordia''. Tolwyn frequently credits Blair's successes to his wingmen (particularly ''nar'' Hhallas). Though Maverick encounters Kilrathi Strakha stealth fighters several times, his black box always manages to malfunction or be destroyed. His repeated claims regarding the invisible ships frustrate Devereaux, who despite her belief that he didn't have anything to do with the destruction of the ''Tiger's Claw'' does not believe his statements about the cloaked ships.

Not long into the campaign, Blair's oldest friend Mariko "Spirit" Tanaka approaches him with terrible news: the Kilrathi have her fiance Phillip. He was captured some ten years earlier when the ''Tiger's Claw'' defended the Firekka system from Kilrathi attack, and the Kilrathi are demanding her betrayal in exchange for his release. Even worse, Phillip is being held on the captured Heaven's Gate starbase, which ''Concordia'' has orders to destroy. In the end, Blair and Tanaka are assigned to the strike, but sabotage cripples Spirit's plane. With no recourse, she rams the station, destroying it, her fiance and herself in one herculean explosion. The news is not all bad, though: shared grief over their friend draws Blair and Jeannette "Angel" Devereaux into a budding romance.

Despite tragedy and setback, the tide begins to turn. Maverick and Angel fly a critical mission in which they trace a Kilrathi destroyer back to the ''K'Tithrak Mang'', placing its location for the first time in the history of the Enigma Campaign. Blair is finally able to clear his name when he and Zach "Jazz" Colson engage Strakha stealth fighters and return, flight recorders intact, to tell the tale. Following an altercation with Angel when he reveals classified information he should not know, Jazz reveals that he, in fact, is the traitor who has been responsible for the message leaks, sabotages and murders, Blair is able to apprehend him. Finally taking matters into his own hands, Blair flies a single-handed strike against ''K'tithrak Mang'', destroying it and defeating Imperial Crown Prince Thrakhath ''nar'' Kiranka in combat. If the campaign has not gone so well, ''Concordia'' jumps back to Gwynedd and Blair destroys a Kilrathi invasion fleet preventing a disastrous strike against Terra.

''Special Operations 1''

Establishing immediately that the canonical ending involves Blair destroying ''K'tithrak Mang'', the newly promoted Colonel Blair, along with Colonel Ralgha "Hobbes" ''nar'' Hhallas, is scheduled for a transfer to the "Special Operations" division of Intelligence, under Col. Taggart, who is Chief Field Officer of Intelligence and Special Operations in the Enigma Sector. Their transfers are delayed, however, by increasing Kilrathi presence in the Pembroke System, including the brand-new ''Gothri''-class heavy fighter; even worse, the Rigel Supply Depot is attacked by ''Confederation'' ships, which open fire on Blair when he arrives to investigate.

The hostile fighters are from the TCS ''Gettysburg'', a ''Waterloo''-class cruiser. She was stationed in the N'Tanya system, where a Kilrathi colony has been undergoing a rebellion against the Empire. Loyalist Kilrathi citizens were allowed to leave N'Tanya peacefully, but the ''Gettysburg'''s skipper, Commodore Cain, ordered his pilots to open fire on their transports. The entire flight group, led by Wing Commander Colonel Ransom, Lieutenant Colonel Poelma, and Lieutenant Jason Bondarevsky, mutinied against the order to kill innocent civilians, and Cain was dispatched back to Confed HQ. The mutineers soon parted ways: Ransom wanted to live as a pirate, while Poelma and Bondarevsky were all for returning to Confed. It was Ransom's group that captured the Rigel depot; Poelma and Bondarevsky, in the meantime, have been promised pardons by Confed C-in-C. Blair is assigned to bring them back to the ''Concordia'' and destroy the Rigel depot. In doing so, he gets a chance to try out the Fleet's newest torpedo bomber, the YA-18A ''Crossbow'', which the ''Gettysburg'' was field-testing. The returning ''Gettysburg'' crew was acquitted, and Bondarevsky in fact promoted and decorated for his integrity.

Taggart arrives aboard the ''Bonnie Heather'' and retrieves Blair and ''nar'' Hhallas, as well as Major Edmond, the ''Concordia'''s communications officer, for their Special Operations duties, which will take place on Olympus Station in the Ghorah Khar system. Like N'Tanya, Ghorah Khar is in rebellion, and Taggart's Special Operations involve helping these rebels succeed, in the form of contributions of leadership, pilots and matériel. Blair also helps intercept a Loyalist dead drop, replacing the invasion plans contained within with Confed-developed plans that will lead the Kilrathi fleet into an ambush. The Kilrathi arrive in far more force than anticipated, and Maverick and Hobbes fly several strikes against these attack groups.

At this point comes an unexpected complication: Taggart is ambushed at a jump point and the ''Heather'' crippled. All seems lost when another flight of Kilrathi ships jumps in, but they start shooting the ''first'' flight. Blair and Hobbes arrive, drive them off, and rescue an ejected Kilrathi pilot to see if they can get some answers. This ejected pilot turns out to be none other than Crown Prince Thrakhath ''nar'' Kiranka: the second flight, he explains, was an assassination attempt led by Khasra, a cousin of Thrakhath, in a bid for the throne of Kilrah. Though Thrakhath is imprisoned in the brig, a power failure allows him to escape; he grabs Hobbes's Crossbow and sorties out to avenge himself upon Khasra. Blair, attempting to retrieve him, is forced to help out, and the war's two best pilots together make short work of the Kilrathi rebels, while Thrakhath escapes.

The remaining Kilrathi fleet attempts to destroy Olympus Station once and for all; Olympus's flight group is already seriously thinned, and their communications have been jammed. Blair, leading the defense, knows his chances are grim, until a group of pilots from the ''Gettysburg'' (with Bondarevsky announcing their presence to Blair), sent along by a concerned Admiral Tolwyn, saves the day. With Ghorah Khar securely in Confederation hands, the N'Tanya, K'arakh and Shariha colonies manage to successfully rebel against the Empire. Thrakhath, with tons of military intelligence in his head, takes advantage of the fact that the Enigma Sector fleets are distracted with Ghorah Khar and captures Deneb Sector Command in less than six hours.

''Special Operations 2''

Blair's leave on Akko Base in the Canewdon System is cut short, but he doesn't mind one bit: Zachary "Jazz" Colson, the traitor from ''Wing Commander 2'', has been sentenced to death, and Maverick will be escorting his prison ship. However, a distraction allows the Mandarins, a society of human traitors that Jazz belongs to, to hijack the ''Bastille'' and free Jazz. When he returns to the ''Concordia'', Blair discovers that a new squadron has arrived: the Wild Eagles, under command of Todd "Maniac" Marshall, flying the experimental ''Morningstar'' heavy fighters. Almost immediately the Morningstars show their problems: their jump drives don't work very well, forcing Blair to jump out and rescue an ejected pilot, Captain Maria "Minx" Grimaldi. She's very thankful for the rescue. Finally, while on patrol, Blair encounters a crippled Kilrathi ''Dorkathi'' transport, which surrenders. A Mandarin agent on board reveals that this freighter, the ''Gamal Gan'', was headed to Ayer's Rock, the Mandarins' home base. This is the first indication that the Kilrathi are actively aiding the Mandarins, though the player has known for a while: one of the game's opening scenes shows the Emperor ordering a Mandarin to capture a Morningstar using them.

The Mandarins begin transmitting propaganda movies, specifically the hijacking of several Terran freighters. The raids are quite clearly led by Zach Colson. The crews of the freighters are eventually traded for several Mandarin prisoners. Even worse, Thrakhath's ambitions are realized when a Mandarin traitor sets off a bomb on the ''Concordia'''s flight deck and steals a Morningstar. The traitor, Maria Grimaldi, heads for Ayer's Rock; clever deployment of Kilrathi patrols prevent Maverick and Maniac from following her.

Deciding that it's time for some cover agents of their own, Paladin takes over the ''Gamal Gan''. He renames it the ''Grimalkin'' and transfers Maverick and Maniac back to Special Ops. Hiding two Morningstars aboard the ''Grimalkin'', the three infiltrate the Ayer system. The Morningstar's torpedoes are supplemented by a new weapon: the "Mace" tactical nuclear missile. Though unguided, it can be detonated manually by the launching pilot, and does splash damage to whatever's in range. Minx makes it to an escape pod, but escape pods are not enough to prevent radiation poisoning. Jazz stole her Morningstar, giving Maverick the opportunity to shoot him down before returning to the ''Concordia''. In a humorous scene, Maniac's Morningstar, which broke down just after launch for the mission against Jazz, is seen drifting and deserted in space, evidently neither Blair nor Paladin cared to rescue him (Maniac returns, hale and hearty, in the next game in the series, ''Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger''). Thrakhath once again turns defeat into victory, by savaging the 6th Battle Fleet; the Confederation is forced to retreat, once again, from the Enigma sector.

Akeelah Anderson, an 11-year-old spelling enthusiast, attends Crenshaw Middle School, a predominantly black school in South Los Angeles. She lives with her widowed mother, Tanya, her three older siblings, Kiana, Devon, and Terrence, and her infant niece, Mikayla. Her principal, Mr. Welch, suggests that she sign up for the Crenshaw Schoolwide Spelling Bee, which she initially refuses. After being threatened with detention for the remainder of the semester, due to her skipping school numerous times, she enters the spelling bee and wins.

Dr. Joshua Larabee, a visiting English professor, tests Akeelah and decides that she is good enough to compete in the National Spelling Bee. Nevertheless, Dr. Larabee declines to coach her because she is rude to him. As a result, Akeelah studies on her own to prepare for the district spelling bee. Although Akeelah misspells her word during the final round of the bee, she makes it in the regional bee when one of the finalists is disqualified for cheating. Akeelah also meets and befriends Javier Mendez, a 12-year-old Mexican-American boy and fellow speller. Javier invites her to join the spelling club at his Woodland Hills middle school.

At Woodland Hills, Akeelah meets Dylan Chiu, a Chinese-American boy who won second place at the past two national spelling bees and is in his final year of eligibility. Contemptuous after Akeelah misspells a word, he tells her she needs a coach. Afterwards, Javier invites Akeelah to his birthday party, while Tanya is depressed over Terrence's bad behavior, Akeelah's grades and frequent truancy, and her husband's death at the hands of a mugger five years prior. When she finds out about Akeelah going alone to Woodland Hills, she forbids Akeelah from participating in the upcoming state bee and forces her to take summer school to make up for her skipped classes. To circumvent this prohibition, Akeelah forges her deceased father's signature on the consent form and secretly studies with Dr. Larabee.

At Javier's party, Akeelah nearly beats Dylan in ''Scrabble''. Afterwards, Akeelah overhears Dylan's overly competitive father insulting her and berating his son for nearly losing to "a little black girl". During the state bee, Tanya comes inside and interrupts her daughter before she can spell her word. Tanya chastises Akeelah for going to the bee without her permission but relents after a side discussion with Dr. Larabee and Mr. Welch. Javier protects Akeelah from disqualification by stalling until she can return. Dylan, Javier and Akeelah advance to the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

As Christmas approaches, Akeelah goes out to buy Dr. Larabee a present, but when she meets him, he reveals that he is quitting being her coach because she reminds him of his deceased daughter, Denise; she died of an unexpected terminal illness when she was younger than Akeelah. Instead, Dr. Larabee gives Akeelah 5,000 flashcards to study. Without her coach, rejected by her best friend Georgia, and feeling the pressure from her neighborhood residents to make them proud, Akeelah loses her motivation. However, Tanya tells her that if she looked around her, she would realize that she has "50,000 coaches". Akeelah recruits her family members, classmates, teachers, friends, and neighbors to prepare in earnest. After reuniting with Dr. Larabee, Akeelah goes to Washington, D.C. with him, along with Tanya, Georgia, Mr. Welch, and Devon, unaware that her coach has paid for four of their tickets. Georgia rekindles her friendship with Akeelah after she invites her.

During the competition, Akeelah becomes a crowd favorite. After all the other competitors are eliminated, only Dylan and Akeelah remain. The two finalists are allowed a break, during which Akeelah overhears Dylan's father harshly pressuring him to win, so Akeelah attempts to intentionally lose. Dylan, fed up with his father's competitiveness, intentionally misspells as well. Dylan tells Akeelah that he wants a fair competition. The two then proceed to spell every word listed by the judges until the two are declared co-champions. After Akeelah spells pulchritude (the same word she misspelled at the start of the film), she is officially declared a winner.

The gang observes that "Ugly Naked Guy", who lives across the street from them, is moving out. Ross (David Schwimmer), who has lived in Joey (Matt LeBlanc) and Chandler's (Matthew Perry) apartment since his botched wedding with Emily, wonders if he should try to get Ugly Naked Guy's apartment. He, Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) and Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) visit it, and Ross is enthralled, but while he goes for an application, the girls see Chandler and Monica (Courteney Cox) having sex in Monica's apartment. Though initially shocked, Phoebe calms down after Joey and Rachel reveal the two have been together since hooking up at Ross's wedding. Joey, who has been keeping the secret for several months, is relieved that almost everyone knows. However, Rachel and Phoebe want revenge, and decide to mess with the duo by having Phoebe pretend to be attracted to Chandler. Chandler later informs a skeptical Monica that Phoebe was flirting with him.

Upon discovering that Ugly Naked Guy is subletting the apartment himself, Ross attempts to bribe him with a basket of mini-muffins. However, many people have bribed him with extravagant gifts such as a pinball machine and a mountain bike. Ross eventually acquires the apartment after he and Ugly Naked Guy share the mini-muffins whilst nude.

Monica overhears Phoebe flirting with Chandler, and realizes he was telling the truth. However, she also realizes that Phoebe knows about their relationship and is just trying to mess with them. They confront Joey, who inadvertently reveals Rachel knows as well. Chandler and Monica decide to turn the tables by having Chandler reciprocate Phoebe's advances; to which Rachel and Phoebe realize what the couple are doing and proceed to up the stakes. The game of chicken between the two culminates with Chandler and Phoebe going on a tense date in Chandler and Joey's apartment while Monica hides in the bathroom and Rachel and Joey eavesdrop in the hallway. After Phoebe and Chandler share an awkward kiss, Chandler finally breaks down and reveals he is in love with Monica. Monica reveals that she is also in love with Chandler, shocking Phoebe who thought they were only in a casual relationship. Joey is relieved that he no longer has to keep their relationship a secret. However, the others inform him that they still have to keep it a secret from Ross, much to his chagrin.

In the credits scene, Ross shows his new apartment to his boss, Dr. Ledbetter, to try convince him that he no longer suffers from anger management issues. However, he then sees Monica and Chandler kissing through the window, causing him to angrily yell "Get off my sister!"

"It is said that the person who collects all seven of the legendary WakuWaku balls will have their dearest wish granted. Those who find one of the balls become obsessed with the ruthless desire to obtain the others, who will be victorious in the bitter battle to become the owner of all the balls. Victory or defeat - it all lies in your hand".

On the way home from visiting her parents' grave, Christy crashes her car into a rock. The impact throws Christy to safety, but her older sister, Vanessa, is trapped inside when the car explodes. Vanessa initially survives, though disfigured and completely burnt. Christy is sent to Pine Bluff Psychiatric Care Center for treatment while her sister is treated by her husband Dr. John Locke, at home with the assistance of the nurse Claire Wells (Eliza Norbury), and his rather stern mother, Mrs Locke. When Vanessa has a heart attack and dies, Christy has a breakdown at the funeral service screaming that her sister is alive in the coffin. Christy moves to California for pre-med, but remains haunted by nightmares and weird visions. Six years later, Christy returns to Edgemont for a funeral. Vanessa's husband and mother-in-law regard her coldly, but Amy, Christy's niece who is afraid of "dark things" behind the walls of the house, asks her to stay.

Christy experiences blackouts and strange visions, the most prominent of which features a scarred, burnt woman clawing at a lid. She decides to investigate the death of her sister that she believes had been buried alive. The locals believe she has borderline personality disorder. She befriends a cop, Jeff, and discovers that her sister was treated in the house's basement, which had tunnels connecting it to the rest of the house. She visits the father of Claire Wells, the nurse who treated her sister, who tells her the Lockes are evil and ruined Claire's life, and that Claire broke relations with her family and left the state after Vanessa died. Meanwhile, Christy's premonition that Mrs. Locke will die comes true.

Amy tells Christy about a monster which comes into her room through the wardrobe while she is sleeping and touches her cheek. While in Amy's bedroom, Christy hears noises from the wardrobe. She travels through a tunnel connecting the wardrobe and the basement and has another blackout and when she wakes, she discovers John next to her with scratches on his cheek. He threatens to press charges if she does not leave the house immediately. In the Lockes' boathouse, Christy finds a love letter from John to Claire revealing an affair between them and suggesting that Vanessa's death would be best for everyone. Christy is convinced that John and Claire gave Vanessa medication to induce her heart attack.

Christy shares her findings with Jeff. They visit the hospital staff connected to Vanessa's treatment, and a doctor tells them that Vanessa's treatment had been controlled entirely by John and Claire. He also says Vanessa's murder would be impossible to prove because her body would have decomposed completely by now, making an autopsy impossible. However, Christy points out that the coffin's lid would contain Vanessa's scratch marks, proving she was alive at the time of her burial. No one, including Jeff, believes Christy. Nonetheless, Christy opens Vanessa's coffin herself and is shocked to see it unscathed.

Christy returns to the house and apologizes to John. She is about to leave when she gets a phone call from Jeff and realizes that the woman buried was not her sister but Claire Wells. John attacks Christy but she shoots him with his gun. Christy searches the house again and discovers an underground cellar wherein lies a badly burnt and disfigured woman Vanessa. Vanessa does not recognize Christy and attacks her until she sees the necklace Christy is wearing a present from Vanessa. Vanessa cannot speak, but Christy assures her and promises to take care of her. Christy realizes that her visions were of Vanessa scratching the cellar trap. Vanessa had traveled through the house's tunnels, discovered the affair, and killed Claire. She had also killed Mrs Locke and would visit her daughter through the wardrobe.

Vanessa and Christy share a moment, when Amy suddenly appears. Amy stabs Vanessa, unaware she is her mother, in order to kill "the monster". In the last scene, Christy scatters Vanessa's ashes into a lake. Amy takes a picture and there is a vision of Vanessa prior to her accident, staring at her killer.

The cartoon opens with two castaways adrift on a small raft in the middle of the ocean, underscored with "Asleep in the Deep". Delirious from hunger, they start imagining each other, and even their own limbs, as food. They spot an island in the distance and rush ashore where they meet Bugs Bunny. To his friendly, "What's the good word, strangers?" they answer, "FOOD!" Subsequently, they set up a cooking pot and start chasing after Bugs, as he swings away on a vine.

Chasing Bugs through the jungle, the castaways spy him, semi-disguised as an island native, dancing. He welcomes them, "Ah! White Men! Welcome to Humuhumunukunukuapua'a'a'a Island." He then speaks in Polynesian-accented nonsense, a long stretch of which is subtitled simply, "What's up, Doc?" and a very short segment is subtitled, "Now is the time for every good man to come to the aid of his party."

Bugs then begins a traditional-style dance, punctuated with drumming and chanting. The men join in until the tall, skinny man, seeing Bugs stop and walk away, gives his pal a slap (off-camera, following the Hays Office rules) to make him quit. A page in an information booklet is shown to be headed: Native Customs, and goes on to explain that 'The natives are skilled at diving for coins dropped into the water'. The men drop a coin into the cooking pot's boiling water; Bugs dashes in and steals the entire pot.

While Bugs takes a bath in the hot water, the men set up a dining table; the short, fat one bastes the rabbit. They begin singing, "We're gonna have roast rabbit". Bugs sings too, until he realizes he is the roast rabbit and climbs speedily up into a treehouse. He then tricks the castaways by lowering a skinned chicken into the cooking pot. He taunts them with the chicken, using it as a marionette and giving it a voice, in order to make the two think it is somehow alive. The strings eventually tangle and, as Bugs struggles with it, the chicken is actually manipulated to point up, tipping off the men. They yank Bugs from the treehouse; there is an intense, brief struggle and, in the end Bugs escapes with the meat of the chicken.

As the castaways wail in frustration, they hear a steam whistle from a ship. Once the men leap for joy at the prospect of being saved and trot toward the gangplank, Bugs kisses them goodbye and presents them with leis, then pulls his time-honored switcheroo trick and boards the ship himself. The boat pulls out, leaving the two men on the island, waving goodbye to Bugs. Realizing they have been tricked, the Skinny Man slaps the Fat Man (again, off-camera) for continuing to shout, "Goodbye!" The two at once imagine each other as a hot dog and a hamburger and chase each other into the distance.

Needing to get away from hunters, Bugs digs a tunnel and accidentally winds up in Sing Song Prison (a clear reference to Sing Sing Prison; "No Hanging Around"). As he tries settling himself to his hiding spot, prison guard Yosemite Sam (here called Sam Schultz) beats Bugs with a billy club, telling him, "Trying to pull an escape, 777174, huh?" to which Bugs replies, "I'm not 777174 - I'm only 3½."

Sam believes that, but he does not believe that Bugs is not a prisoner. Thus, Bugs is arrested, attired accordingly, numbered 3½, and sent to the rock pile ("Neh, my mother told me there'd be days like this.") When Sam smugly tells Bugs that he will be locked up in jail for 50 years (though it is not specified why, the crimes committed in ''Rebel Rabbit'', or whatever offense got the unseen #777174 incarcerated are two possible reasons), Bugs quickly comes up with an escape plan. He screams that a prisoner is escaping and points into the distance, allowing himself time to insert his chain ball into a cannon when Sam is not looking.
A few seconds later, Sam fires the cannon to shoot down the "escaping prisoner", sending Bugs over the wall to freedom. However, it does not take long for Sam to get wise; he drives a police car out of the prison and recaptures Bugs.

For his attempted escape, Sam punishes Bugs by ordering him to be confined in his jail cell. When Sam locks Bugs inside, Bugs pulls a switch so that Sam is tricked into locking himself in the cell and freeing Bugs.

Sam breaks out and holds Bugs at gunpoint, threatening Bugs with solitary confinement for 99 years. Bugs quickly pulls another switcheroo by telling Sam that a really tough person would not use his uniform to intimidate another ("Eh, you wouldn't be so tough if you weren't wearing that uniform!") and challenges him to a "fight". Accepting the challenge, Sam takes his uniform off and levels his fists at Bugs, who has taken off his prison outfit. Bugs quickly admits to Sam that he IS tough without his uniform and they redress, with Bugs putting on the police uniform and Sam absentmindedly putting on the prison outfit, after which Bugs blows a whistle and Sam, realizing too late that he has been tricked again, is beaten up by several correction officers for "trying to escape" and thrown into a jail cell.

Inside his cell, Sam throws a tantrum and demands a "habus corpeas". Bugs, who is having too much fun with outsmarting Sam to leave, pretends to be a sympathetic guard and gives Sam a loaf of bread, which is an "Ajax Escape Kit" containing a shovel, pickaxe, jackhammer, and map ("I'm getting ya out of here, see? I haven't forgotten what you've done for Mary an' the kids, see?"). Sam starts digging and comes up in what appears to be a jungle but is really many oversized plants... in the warden's office. The warden scolds Sam for fooling around, gives him a new officer's uniform and dismisses him from his office. ("I won't stand for any more of your nonsense! Now get out! OUT!!") Resuming his pursuit of Bugs, Sam chases him up a ladder to the gallows. As Bugs escapes through the trap door, Sam falls in and accidentally hangs himself (but does not die due to cartoon logic). As Sam angrily rants at this latest failure, he is called upon by the warden, who is Bugs in disguise. The faux warden tricks Sam into sitting on an electric chair and zapping him with electricity, but then Bugs' fake mustache slips off, exposing the ruse. Sam chases Bugs out of the warden's office, around the prison and seemingly right back into the office, where he whacks whom he thinks is Bugs over the head with a billy club, only to find that he has clubbed the REAL warden, who warns Sam that he will be fired if he makes one more mistake. ("I've had all the tomfoolery I'm gonna take from you! ''QUIET!!'' One more slip, you strudel-brained bonehead, and you'll be looking for another job! Now get out! ''OUT!!''")

Having had his fill of Bugs, Sam stops Bugs at gunpoint, opens the prison gate and orders Bugs to leave the grounds. Bugs walks out and Sam celebrates, but the warden ("SCHULTZ! OFFICE!"), outraged by his actions, arrests and imprisons him for allowing a prisoner to escape (which is a false conviction, since Bugs was never a prisoner to begin with). Sam, now in prison garb for real, groans about his predicament at the rock pile and asks "I'd like to know what dirty stool pigeon squealed on me". Nearby, a grinning Bugs (implying that he was the one who ratted out Sam) acts like a pigeon while standing on a stool.

Having read about the U.S. fighting forces pushing the Nazi German troops back during World War II ("A smashing frontal attack on the enemy rear?"), Daffy Duck is in a patriotic mood. However, his mood quickly changes to fear when he gets a phone call that "the little man from the draft board" wants to see him. Hiding in his house, Daffy looks out, eventually seeing the little man, who attempts to hand him a telegram (presumably with Daffy's conscription order). Daffy starts whining, and continues to try to outrun the little man, who seems to be everywhere that Daffy happens to be at the moment. Daffy even goes so far as to plant a bomb near the man. Finally, he locks him in a safe, bricks the safe up, puts up a wall over the bricks (chortling: "So long, Dracula!"), runs to the roof and takes off in a rocket.

However, the rocket soon plunges back to earth, causing Daffy to crash-land in Hell without Daffy actually saying the word. Shrugging off this turn, Daffy spots a demon (seen from the rear) and tells him: "Oh well, anyway, I sure put one over on that dope from the draft board!" The demon takes off his mask to reveal he's the man from the draft board, who then replies with a popular catchphrase of the "Richard Q. Peavey" character from ''The Great Gildersleeve'': "Well, now, I wouldn’t say that" (same as what Bugs Bunny says at the end of ''The Old Grey Hare'' and which he said over and over again) and proceeds to chase Daffy into the distance, letter still in hand, at iris out.

The story takes place on an ocean liner, the RMS ''Atlantic'', en route to New York. Monty Bodkin hopes to win back his fiancée Gertrude Butterwick, an England international hockey player travelling to a tournament, who has just ended their engagement without explanation. Their fellow-travellers include Gertrude's cousin Ambrose Tennyson who has accepted a job as a writer for the Superba-Llewellyn film corporation, and Ambrose's younger brother Reggie Tennyson who is being forced by his family to take up an office job in Canada. Also on board are Ambrose's fiancée, Lottie Blossom (a film actress for the Superba-Llewellyn), as well as the movie mogul Ivor Llewellyn (the corporation's president) and Llewellyn's sister-in-law Mabel Spence. Numerous comic misunderstandings occur throughout the novel, many inadvertently due to the well-intentioned ship's steward Albert Peasemarch.

Mabel informs Llewellyn that his wife Grayce, currently in Paris, has sent a message telling him that he is to smuggle her new pearl necklace through US customs to avoid paying duty. Too afraid of his wife to refuse, Llewellyn frets about the risks for several days, his concern heightened by the erroneous belief that Monty is a spy working for the customs authorities. He tries to bribe Monty by offering him an acting job, but Monty hates acting and refuses.

Gertrude explains that she broke off her engagement after seeing a photograph of Monty in swimming costume, believing his "Sue" chest tattoo to be recent. After Monty explains that he unwisely got the tattoo more than three years ago during a previous brief entanglement, Gertrude renews the engagement. Monty buys Gertrude a Mickey Mouse toy which opens to reveal chocolates inside. She develops an intense romantic attachment to it.

Llewellyn had hired Ambrose Tennyson as a writer under the mistaken belief that he was the famous poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. When he is told of his error he immediately fires Ambrose. Now lacking a job, Ambrose no longer feels able to marry Lottie as he does not want to rely on her money. Lottie is desperate and takes Gertrude's Mickey Mouse, threatening to tell Gertrude that Monty gave it to her if Monty does not accept Llewellyn's offer and insist that Ambrose be re-hired. Gertrude, growing increasingly suspicious of Monty's relationship with Lottie, calls off the engagement again. Ambrose convinces Lottie to return the toy to Monty, though Monty believes that he has lost Gertrude for good anyway.

Reggie and Mabel have grown close during the voyage, and become engaged. Reggie decides to ignore the Canadian office job, and to go with Mabel to California. However, like his brother he is unwilling to rely on his fiancée's money, and he needs a job. Llewellyn agrees to hire Reggie in return for him smuggling the necklace through customs.

On arrival in New York, everyone makes it past customs. Reggie privately tells Llewellyn he had hidden the necklace in the Mickey Mouse, but Monty (despite not knowing what it contains) is unwilling to hand it over. Llewellyn agrees to give jobs to both Monty and Ambrose in return for the toy. With Mabel's help, contracts are signed and Llewellyn grabs the toy and leaves.

Lottie confesses to Gertrude her attempted blackmail of Monty, and explains that she never had any romantic interest in him, being engaged herself. Gertrude reconciles with Monty once more. Both Monty and Ambrose now have jobs and are free to resume their respective engagements.

The steward Peasemarch comes to see Monty and explains that he had found and confiscated the necklace, and the Mickey Mouse is actually empty. However, Peasemarch had held onto the necklace as he did not want Monty to get in trouble, and he reveals that he brought it through customs himself, in his pocket. Monty is delighted to learn from Lottie that prohibition has been repealed, and calls his hotel's room service to order champagne.

After his university professor father remarries, eleven-year-old David Stanley must make a series of new adjustments: first to his new stepmother, then to the strange old house in the country to which the family relocates, and finally to his new stepsister, twelve-year-old Amanda. Amanda is upset about her mother's divorce and remarriage, and about being forced to move away from the city and her best friend there. Amanda claims to be a practicing witch, and arrives at the Stanley home in a ceremonial costume, bringing books on the supernatural and a caged crow that she claims is her familiar. She offers to share her occult knowledge with David and his younger siblings Janie, Tesser, and Blair. David, while skeptical, goes along with the idea in order to get along with Amanda and protect his younger siblings. In contrast to Amanda's possibly staged "witchcraft", the Stanley children, particularly David and Blair, seem to have some actual psychic gifts, but do not talk about them.

The Stanleys' old house has an alleged past history of being inhabited by a destructive poltergeist, who caused rocks to fly through the house and beheaded a wooden cupid that is carved into the stairs. When David's father is away, the poltergeist suddenly becomes active and again begins to wreak havoc in the house. David suspects Amanda of causing the events, and he and Blair eventually catch her in the act. However, one night a box of rocks, along with the long-lost cupid's head, suddenly falls down the stairs, in an incident not caused by Amanda. A shaken Amanda confesses to having faked the previous poltergeist events and her other supposed occult encounters, and gives up her witchcraft. As David glues the cupid's head back on, he learns that four-year-old Blair dropped the box down the stairs. According to Blair, a ghost girl told him where to find the box containing the rocks and cupid's head, but he tripped carrying the heavy box and spilled out its contents. Blair does not remember anything else about the encounter, leaving David to wonder whether supernatural beings may be living in the Stanley home.

Slicker Smith and Herbie Brown are sidewalk peddlers who hawk neckties out of a suitcase. Chased by a cop, they duck into a movie theater, not realizing that it is now being used as an Army enlistment center. Believing that they are signing up for theater prizes, they accidentally enlist.

Meanwhile, spoiled playboy Randolph Parker and his long-suffering valet, Bob Martin, also report to the theater. Randolph expects his influential father to pull some strings so he can avoid military service. Bob, on the other hand, takes his military obligations in stride. Tensions between the two men escalate further with the introduction of Judy Gray, a camp hostess and a friend of Bob's upon whom Randolph sets his sights.

At boot camp, Slicker and Herbie are mortified to discover that Collins, the policeman who chased them, is now their sergeant. Randolph, meanwhile, learns that his father will not use his influence on his behalf, believing that a year in the Army will do Randolph some good. For all the difficulties, camp life isn't so bad, since The Andrews Sisters appear at regular intervals to sing sentimental or patriotic tunes (including "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy") and Herbie continues to foul up with little consequence.

Although he is an expert marksman, Randolph skips an army shooting match in order to spend the afternoon with Judy. The company loses the match and all the money they had bet on him, causing them to resent him even more. However, during a war game exercise, Randolph redeems himself by saving Bob and coming up with a ruse to win the sham battle for his company. He is finally accepted by his unit and wins Bob's and Judy's admiration in the process. When he learns that he's been accepted to Officer Training School, he initially refuses, believing that his father's political influence was responsible. However, his commanding officer assures him that his training record and recommendations from his superiors factored in the decision. Bob has also been offered an appointment to OTS, and Judy announces that she will be joining them there as a hostess. Meanwhile, Smitty and Herbie accept Collins' invitation to shoot dice, but Herbie ends up (literally) losing his pants.

Jim "Lucky" Moore, an insurance salesman, devises a novel policy for his friend, Steve: a 'love insurance policy', that will pay out $1-million if Steve does not marry his fiancée, Cynthia. Encouraged by Jim's argument that Jim has never had to pay out on a policy so that the marriage is a sure thing, Steve accepts. The upcoming marriage is jeopardized by Steve's ex-girlfriend, Mickey, and Cynthia's disapproving Aunt Kitty. The policy is underwritten by a nightclub owner, Roscoe, who sends two enforcers to ensure that the wedding occurs as planned. Everyone involved in the situation winds up sailing or flying to San Marcos (a fictional South American country), where another complication develops, when Lucky becomes enamored of Cynthia. Lucky eventually marries Cynthia, but Roscoe does not have to pay the $1-million because Steve marries Mickey.

Former big-game hunter Sir Buckstone Abbott, finding himself hard up, takes in paying guests at his pile, Walsingford Hall, while hoping to sell the place to a wealthy Princess. Soon, many schemes, plots and romantic entanglements are going on.

In London, Pongo Twistleton is having money troubles, and his wealthy friend Horace Pendlebury-Davenport is in trouble with his fiancée, Pongo's sister Valerie, for hiring Claude "Mustard" Pott to trail her during the Drones Club weekend at Le Touquet. Horace having refused to loan him money, Pongo resolves to call on his Uncle Fred, 5th Earl of Ickenham, for assistance.

Meanwhile, at Blandings, Horace's uncle Alaric, Duke of Dunstable, as well as demanding eggs to throw at whistling gardeners, has taken it into his head that the Empress needs some fitness training, and Lord Emsworth needs help. In the absence of his trusty brother Galahad, Emsworth calls on Gally's old friend Uncle Fred for assistance in stopping the Duke from taking his prized pig.

Horace, having fallen out with his cousin Ricky Gilpin over Gilpin's fiancée Polly Pott, daughter of Mustard, inadvertently makes trouble for Pongo by being dressed as a Zulu rather than a Boy Scout during a round of the "Clothes Stakes", run by Pott at the Drones. Pongo’s mistaken bet loses all his money, adding to his already large debt. Uncle Fred ponders how to get Polly into Blandings to court her prospective uncle-in-law; Fred thinks the Duke will like her and ignore her background if they meet in a neutral situation. Emsworth creates an opening by insulting Sir Roderick Glossop by calling him a name from their school days, Pimples; Glossop then refuses to come to Blandings to analyse the increasingly loopy Duke of Dunstable, as Emsworth’s sister Connie has requested.

Fred heads to Blandings posing as Glossop, with Pongo playing the role of his secretary and nephew, and Polly his daughter Gwendoline. They unexpectedly meet Glossop on the train, who had later been persuaded by Connie to come despite the insult. Fred tells Glossop the Duke is on the train and Glossop can save time by talking with him, and then heading back to London. Fred is not aware that the stranger is Rupert Baxter, now working for the Duke. Arriving at Blandings, they are met by Lord Bosham, who was conned out of his wallet by Uncle Fred the previous day.

The Duke sacks Baxter, because he was seen at a ball in London by Horace, but is taken on again when Uncle Fred persuades Horace, and the Duke, that Horace is suffering delusions. Horace heads off for a rest-cure, and Baxter is left unable to reveal that he has seen through Fred's disguise, having met the real Glossop before. Baxter is put on his guard, and informs Lady Constance; she in turn wants to hire a detective to deal with these imposters. Bosham remembers Mustard Pott, and calls him to Blandings.

Dunstable's scheme to acquire the pig continues apace, and he calls in his strapping nephew to help. When Gilpin asks for funds to buy an onion soup bar, thus enabling him to marry Polly, the two row and part. Dunstable ropes in Baxter instead. Uncle Fred, meeting Pott just after he has taken £250 from Lord Bosham at "Persian Monarchs", takes the money off him, insisting it will help Polly marry wealthy Horace. Pott, meeting Gilpin at The Emsworth Arms, tells him about Polly being engaged to Horace, and the enraged poet chases a fearful Horace back to the Castle. Fred gives the money to Pongo to pass on to Polly for Gilpin's benefit, but she is spurned by him, and Pongo then uses the cash to pay off his debts.

When Fred has reunited the couple, more money is required. Pott is persuaded to take it from Dunstable at "Persian Monarchs", but the wily peer wins himself £300. Both Fred and Pott try to get it back, but Dunstable has the pig, captured earlier by Baxter, hidden in his bathroom, and is keeping his room under lock and key. Having knocked out the vigilant Baxter with a Mickey Finn, Fred finally gains access to the room shortly after Pott has done the same, Pongo having lured Dunstable away with a rendition of "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond". Fred is caught by a shotgun-bearing Bosham, just as Pott, having discovered the Empress in the bathroom, drinks a second Mickey destined for Dunstable. Bosham locks Fred in a cupboard.

Valerie arrives, reunited with her man and hot for vengeance on the uncle that made Horace think himself insane, and confirms Fred's identity; Fred convinces all that Emsworth has become infatuated with Polly, and that he is there to put a stop to it. He takes Dunstable's roll of cash under the pretext of paying Polly off—insisting that his visit remain a secret from Lady Ickenham to maintain the Threepwood dignity—and heads back to London with not only the money for Gilpin's soup bar, but an extra fifty quid for himself to blow on a few joyous weeks in the city.

Middle school student Roy A. Eberhardt (Logan Lerman) and his parents (Neil Flynn and Kiersten Warren) have just moved to Coconut Cove, Florida from Montana. Roy is mercilessly teased and bullied at his new school by Dana Matherson (Eric Phillips), until he accidentally breaks Matherson's nose while getting harassed on the school bus and struggling to get free. As a result, Roy gets suspended from riding the school bus for three days and must write Dana an apology letter as a punishment. Roy slowly becomes friends with Beatrice "The Bear" Leep (Brie Larson), and her stepbrother "Mullet Fingers" (Cody Linley).

Meanwhile, an unknown person is found to be responsible for sabotaging a local construction site where a "Mother Paula's Pancake House" restaurant, overseen by corrupt regional manager Chuck Muckle (Clark Gregg), is about to be built. In order to catch the trespassers and prevent further vandalism, Officer David Delinko (Luke Wilson) has parked his police car on the building site. Delinko falls asleep and an unknown prankster vandalizes the car by spray-painting its windows black. The next day at breakfast, Roy and his parents read about the spray-painted police car. The police chief then gives Delinko a small police scooter to replace the vandalized car.

Soon, Roy learns that in order to build the pancake house, they must first kill the burrowing owls living on site. Mullet Fingers has been covertly pulling pranks to stop construction (including the tagging of Delinko's car), but Beatrice must take Roy into their confidence when he is badly bitten by guard dogs. Roy joins their crusade to save the endangered owls. Leroy "Curly" Branitt (Tim Blake Nelson), the beleaguered construction foreman, is trying to keep the construction schedule going, despite the presence of the owls, because of daily abuse from Muckle over the phone, and later in person.

The trio reveals to Delinko and the rest of the town that there are burrowing owls on the lot. They then manage to get everyone to be quiet long enough for the owls to emerge, and Delinko places Muckle in handcuffs. Kimberly (Jessica Cauffiel), the actress who plays Mother Paula, offers Coconut Cove the site as an owl preserve in the interest of damage control and publicly fires Muckle.

Roy's parents decide to stay in Florida. Officer Delinko finally gets promoted to detective and gets an unmarked patrol car (until he accidentally backs it off a fishing pier). Dana is sent off to military school, where he gets bullied by the drill sergeants. Muckle does community service for 90 days (then, after he is hit in the head and knocked unconscious by a falling coconut, the judge extends his sentence to 30 more days for lying down on the job). The land is donated and turned into an animal sanctuary so the owls can continue to live there. Curly and Kimberly leave Mother Paula's Pancake House to raise dogs, and Roy continues to be friends with Beatrice and Mullet Fingers.

Continuing where the last game ended, the forces of C.A.N.Y. have been demolished by the Strikers, but a faction known as the F.G.R. now has the C.A.N.Y. technology and plans to initiate global warfare with massive mecha technology. Once again, the Strikers are called into action to save the world.

Taking place soon after ''Thunder Force'', the ORN Empire creates a powerful new battleship, the ''Plealos'' (a.k.a. ''Preareos''). Using this battleship, ORN once again attacks the Galaxy Federation. The outcome of the attacks result in the destruction of the Galaxy Federation affiliated planet of Reda, and heavy destruction on the planet Nepura (a.k.a. Nebula), which ORN eventually captures from the Galaxy Federation.

Eventually, the Galaxy Federation learns that ORN houses ''Plealos'' deep below Nebula's surface when not in use and takes the opportunity to plan an operation to take it down. They send the next iteration of their Fire Leo series of fighter craft, the FIRE LEO-02 ''Exceliza'', to destroy ORN bases on Nepura and eventually find and destroy ''Plealos''. The player controls the ''Exceliza'' and travels through a variety of stages to accomplish this goal. The cover image for the Thunder Force II Sega/MD/G package by Illustrator Marc Ericksen describes the attack of the advanced FIRE LEO-02s on Nepura utilizing its forward and rear firing ordinance (above right).

''Thunder Force III'' takes place about 100 years after ''Thunder Force'' and directly after ''Thunder Force II''. Despite their successes, the Galaxy Federation has not been faring well in their battle against the ORN Empire. ORN has installed cloaking devices on five major planets in their space territory that conceal their main base, making it difficult for the Galaxy Federation to locate and attack their headquarters. Also, ORN has built a remote defense system to protect itself named ''Cerberus'', which is especially efficient at neutralizing large ships and fleets. Knowing this, the Galaxy Federation creates the FIRE LEO-03 ''Styx''; a craft small enough to avoid detection by Cerberus, yet equipped with the firepower of a large starfighter. The Galaxy Federation deploys ''Styx'' (which is controlled by the player) on a mission to destroy the five cloaking devices, infiltrate the Empire's headquarters, and destroy ORN emperor, the bio-computer "Cha Os".

On April 1st, Commissioner Gordon informs Batman that the patients of Arkham Asylum, led by the Joker, have taken over the facility, threatening to murder the staff unless Batman agrees to meet with them. Among the hostages are Dr. Charles Cavendish, Arkham's administrator, and Dr. Ruth Adams, a therapist. At the asylum, Batman discovers that Two-Face's mental condition has deteriorated as a result of Adams' therapy; she replaced Two-Face's trademark coin with a six-sided die, then a tarot deck, increasing the number of choices he has in the hope that he will eventually not leave any of his choices up to chance. Instead, the treatment renders him incapable of making even the simplest decisions, such as going to the bathroom.

The Joker forces Batman into a game of hide and seek, giving him one hour to escape Arkham before his adversaries are sent to hunt him down. Through the asylum, Batman encounters Clayface, Doctor Destiny, Scarecrow, Mad Hatter, Maxie Zeus, and Killer Croc. He reaches a secret room in the towers, where he finds Cavendish holding Adams hostage. It is revealed that Cavendish orchestrated the riots, and has Batman read the diary of the asylum's founder, Amadeus Arkham, when questioned why.

In flashbacks, it is shown that Arkham's mentally ill mother, Elizabeth, suffered delusions of being tormented by a supernatural entity. After believing to have seen the creature himself (a bat), Arkham killed her to end her suffering. He blocked out the memory, only to have it return after an inmate, Martin "Mad Dog" Hawkins, raped and murdered Arkham's wife and daughter. Traumatized, Arkham vowed to bind the evil spirit of "The Bat" with sorcery. He killed Hawkins during a shock therapy session and continued his mission even after he was incarcerated in his own asylum, up until his death.

Cavendish came to believe that he was destined to continue Arkham's work. On April Fools' Day (the date Arkham's family was murdered), Cavendish released the patients and lured Batman to the asylum, believing him to be the bat Arkham spoke of. He accuses Batman of feeding the evil of the asylum by bringing it more insane souls and they fight, which ends when Adams slashes Cavendish's throat to save Batman.

Batman breaks down the front door of the asylum, proclaiming that the inmates are now free. He returns Two-Face's coin to him, stating that it should be up to him to decide his fate at the hands of the inmates. Two-Face declares that they will kill Batman if the coin lands scratched side up and let him go if the unscarred side lands. He flips the coin and declares Batman free. As the Joker bids Batman goodbye and the police arrives to retake the asylum, Two-Face looks at the coin and it is revealed that it actually landed scratched side up, implying he decided to ignore it. He turns to the stack of tarot cards and knocks them over, reciting a passage from ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'': "Who cares for you? You're nothing but a pack of cards".

Mrs and Mr Steptoe, from Los Angeles, live in Claines Hall, near Loose Chippings, Sussex. Over the fireplace hangs a portrait by artist Jocelyn "Joss" Weatherby of Mrs Beatrice Chavender, widow of Mrs Steptoe's brother, with a haughty expression. The rich, socially ambitious Mrs Steptoe, who gives her poor relation Sally tasks to earn her keep, tells Sally to go to London to find a valet who can make her reluctant husband dress respectably for high society. Mrs Chavendar finds the breakfast ham uneatable. Since it is a Paramount Ham, a product sold by Duff and Trotter, she decides to complain to her former fiancé James Duff, managing director of the firm, because he used to bore her about ham. George, second Baron Holbeton, worries this will upset Duff. Duff is the trustee of his inheritance (since George's father was Duff's business partner) and George wants the money. George's fiancée Sally volunteers to talk to Duff.

Joss Weatherby, advertising artist for Duff and Trotter, sees Mrs Chavendar at Duff's office. Duff has stepped out to avoid her. Mrs Chavender thinks Duff has become a grouch because he is not married and asks if Joss is married. Joss has not married but is eager to marry someday, and tells Mrs Chavender that she will see quick service as soon as the right girl comes along. Later, Duff thinks of using Joss's portrait of Mrs Chavender for a Paramount Ham advertising poster (with her looking at a non-Paramount ham with haughty disapproval), but Mrs Steptoe refuses to sell the painting for fear of offending Mrs Chavender, since she might someday inherit Mrs Chavender's wealth. Duff fires Joss for eating company fruit. Sally appears, and Joss quickly falls in love with her. She needs a valet, and Joss takes the job to be near her. Duff makes a deal with Sally that George can get his money if he steals the portrait, claiming he wants the painting because he still loves Mrs Chavender.

At Claines Hall, Joss befriends the butler Chibnall and blackmails Mr Steptoe, who tried to win money off the cook in a game of craps, into dressing correctly for high society. He gives Mr Steptoe advice on playing craps, and Steptoe confides in Joss that he wants to be an actor in Hollywood but lacks money for transportation. Duff doubts George will steal the painting and offers to buy it from Mr Steptoe, who recruits Joss to steal it. George tries to steal it but fails. Joss also makes a failed attempt, and Chibnall, influenced by his fiancée Vera who reads crime novels, is now suspicious of Joss. Mrs Chavender tells Joss she wants a share of Duff's payment for the painting, since she actually lost her money in a stock crash. She has kept this secret from Mrs Steptoe, who is not generous with her poor relations. She also informs Joss about Sally's engagement to George. Duff tells Sally about Joss's feelings for her.

Both Joss and Sally hope to steal the painting during Mrs Steptoe's garden party, but the party is ruined by rain. Mr Steptoe has lost badly at craps and needs money, so Joss takes a chance and steals the painting. He also tells Sally he wants to marry her and impulsively kisses her. George sees this and ends their engagement, since he no longer wants to marry her anyway. Joss apologizes, but Sally reveals she wants to marry Joss. Mrs Steptoe finds Joss smoking in her room and fires him. Duff changes his mind about George and gives him his money, and inadvertently proposes to Mrs Chavender, who accepts, having heard he still loves her. Joss and Duff plan to retrieve the painting from Joss's room; Vera eavesdrops and warns Chibnall. Chibnall finds the painting, apprehends Joss and Duff, and brings Joss to Mrs Steptoe. Joss tries to take the blame for stealing the painting, and so does Mrs Chavender, who admits she needs the money. Mr Steptoe, impressed with Joss for not revealing his involvement, becomes more assertive and defends Joss. He declares he will sell Duff the painting and convinces Mrs Steptoe to come with him to Hollywood where there is less rain. At Mrs Chavender's insistence, Duff rehires and promotes Joss, and bribes Chibnall to keep quiet about Duff's misadventures, allowing Chibnall and Vera to buy a pub. Duff is uncertain about marrying Mrs Chavender, until he realises they are soulmates when she suggests using her portrait in a ham advertisement.

The plot concerns the Welsh iron-making communities of Blaenavon and Nantyglo in the 19th century. The action is seen through the eyes of young Iestyn Mortymer who grows up in times of growing tensions between ironmasters and trade unionists. In 1826, when the book starts, Iestyn is eight years old and already beginning work at the Garndyrus furnaces near Blaenavon. His sister Morfydd has strong feelings about women and children working in mines and ironworks. She sympathises with the Chartist movement and condemns the action of the militant Scotch Cattle groups. In this she is in opposition to Hywel Mortymer, their conservative father who later begins to question his own loyalty to the ironmaster.