MY BEST FRIEND IS A SECRET AGENT, Book 2: How C.H.I.P. Took a Dive to Dash...

Chapter 29: "Plan B"

There was one more thing I wanted C.H.I.P. to save today . . . and that was Dr. Eelstrom himself!

I figured Eelstrom's evil sprung from deep-seated feelings of rejection as a child. Actually, his school experiences probably weren't that different from my own—being teased for being too smart, for looking different, for being different. So, I thought, maybe if I could get the doctor to come to terms with his past, he'd stop being evil altogether!

So I turned C.H.I.P. into a psychologist. I know, kind of a weird choice for C.H.I.P., but I felt we could take some chances here, what with Vortville already saved and all.

C.H.I.P. the psychologist sat down across from Dr. Eelstrom, still trapped in his chair, and pulled out a pad of paper. Stroking his pointy little beard, C.H.I.P. said, "So, Lars, tell me about your childhood filled with rejection and alienation. How did it feel when your classmates laughed at your ideas of a world under the sea?"

Dr. Eelstrom stopped trying to break free from his twisted throne, and he started sobbing! Letting it all out, he blubbered, "Nobody ever understood me! Everybody thought I was mad to want to build an underwater world!"

I couldn't believe it. This was a major breakthrough for Dr. Eelstrom! I thought, hey, maybe psychologist C.H.I.P. could even turn Eelstrom from a wacky bad guy into a dedicated, productive member of society.

Or maybe not. In no time, the doctor's painful childhood memory brought him right back to wacky town. "But I'll show them! The world will pay for its ignorance! The future is UNDER THE SEA!"

Okay, so Dr. Eelstrom probably needed a few more sessions on the couch. But I wasn't giving up yet. Thinking fast, I had Stella fly the Ladybug Drone right up to the doctor's face, and, using my phone, I spoke to him myself. "Can't you see we're trying to help you, Dr. Eelstrom?" I pleaded. "If you give up on your wacky schemes, maybe everybody will like you!"

But Dr. Eelstrom didn't listen to me. Maybe it was because he was staring at a talking ladybug. And since he was, you know, really paranoid to start with . . . well, it all went downhill from there.

"I'm being spied on!" screamed the doctor. "My enemies are all around me, even in my own secret, evil lair!"

And with that, Dr. Eelstrom struggled with all his might to reach a hatch in the floor with his foot. While C.H.I.P. the psychologist was distracted taking notes, Eelstrom flipped open the hatch, revealing a flashing red button. And, stretching out his foot as far as he could, he pushed it.

WOOONK! WOOONK! WOOONK! A deafening siren went off, and, suddenly, Eelstrom's entire hideout dislodged itself from the bottom of the lake!

C.H.I.P. was thrown across the room, slipping all over the place in his fancy dress shoes.

Meanwhile, the shaking building caused Eelstrom's chair to fall apart, setting him free! Then the doctor pushed another big red button, and a submarine cockpit console rose up out of the floor. He jumped into the pilot's seat and started operating a whole bunch of controls.

Dr. Eelstrom's underwater hideout had just become a submarine!

"Time for Plan B!" he cackled. "Nobody can stop me from fulfilling my vision of a new world under the sea!" Then he flipped a big switch which made a huge battering ram come out of the sub, and he aimed it right at the dam!

SLAM! Dr. Eelstrom's hideout submarine smashed into the hard, concrete dam. The whole dam shook like crazy—and so did I since I was still on top of it!

Stella radioed me: "What was that?!" She was still operating the Ladybug Drone, but it was a lot harder to fly the little thing around a moving sub. And that meant I could barely see what was going on down there. All I could make out was C.H.I.P. the psychologist still slipping around in his fancy dress shoes.

As I tried to keep my balance atop the shaking dam, I wondered for a moment if this was all my fault. Did my attempt to save Dr. Eelstrom drive him to this one last gasp of evilness? And why wasn't I satisfied with just stopping a wacky bad guy from destroying the town?

I made what I feared would be my final mental note: Once a wacky bad guy, always a wacky bad guy!

Fortunately, while I was wasting time overthinking things, C.H.I.P. was taking action by turning himself into a . . . fisherman? I thought that was a weird choice, but I was really curious what he was going to do with it. And C.H.I.P. didn't disappoint. He cast his line right at Dr. Eelstrom and hooked him on the first try! Just as Eelstrom was trying to get the battering ram ready for another dam-busting, C.H.I.P. reeled him in, flapping and flailing like a fish.

But this time, it was the octopus's chance for revenge. It slithered up onto Eelstrom's submarine controls and flipped a big switch. That caused this glass tube to shoot down from the ceiling, trapping C.H.I.P.! Then it sucked him up like a vacuum and ejected him right out of the sub like a torpedo!

I couldn't see C.H.I.P. on camera anymore, so I sped off onto the water in the C.H.I.P.-mobile. I peered through the glass bottom and finally spotted him through all the murky water. C.H.I.P. the fisherman was caught in his fishing line, unable to swim to the surface!

If he didn't get air fast, he could drown!

Meanwhile, inside the sub, the evil doctor sped up to smash into the dam again and destroy it once and for all.

And there was nothing C.H.I.P. or I could do.

Was Vortville doomed to become Dr. Eelstrom's underwater "utopia" after all?