Search and Rescue

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Search and Rescue
Chapter43 of 127 (list of chapters)
PublishedOctober 2, 2008 (2008-10-02)
Page count28
Major charactersMike, Lucy, Paulo, David, Tess, Sue, Zachary, Lily, Yashy
Minor charactersAlec McCain, Amaya, Blur, Chirpy, Catherine
LocationsSilvershore Islands
Collected inVolume One, Omnibus 1
Chapter navigation
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A tropical hike goes very wrong when a rock bridge crumbles under Mike and Lucy. He throws her to safety and drops alone into the river below, leaving his friends hunting for a body and Lucy quietly falling to pieces.

Synopsis

The chapter opens at night in the boys' hotel room, where Paulo and Mike pack their bags and Mike wears bandages on his head and waist. Paulo's verdict on the day is blunt: "Today really SUCKED."[1] From there the story rewinds to that morning and the start of what Tess insists is a "nature stroll", definitely not a hike.[2]

The trail winds up the tropical mountainside until the group reaches a natural rock bridge, spanning the valley high enough to sit level with the clouds.[3][4] Mike peeks over the edge, sees the river far below, and freezes. To keep Lucy from spotting the water she fears, he bets her he can "last the longest without looking down", and Lucy takes the bait at top volume.[4]

Out on the span, Paulo and David entertain themselves with "KAPOW!!", their chest-slamming game.[5] The fun lasts until David's back-slam landing cracks the rock, and the bridge crumbles right out from under Mike and Lucy.[6] Mike catches the ledge one-handed and swings the dangling Lucy up to grip his waist.[7] Then McCain tactlessly observes that the fall is a bigger threat than the water, and Lucy looks down anyway and promptly faints.[8]

Silhouetted against the sky, Mike springboards off the underside of the broken bridge and catches the unconscious Lucy in mid-air.
Just a cool thing Mike did, okay.

As Lucy slips backward off him, Mike grabs the ledge with both hands and springboards off the underside of the bridge. He catches her in mid-air, flips her to face the sky, and hurls her up to the others. Then he plummets alone toward the river, marked at the last only by his scarf.[9]

Up top, grief takes over fast. Lily has nearly talked everyone into composure when Yashy wails "JESUS CHRIST WE KILLED HIM!!" and restarts the crying wholesale.[10] Lily sends Blur and Chirpy to find help while the group hunts for a way down.[11][12] When Lucy comes to and asks where Mike is, McCain answers with two blunt words, "He fell." She crumples on the spot, clinging to a kneeling Paulo.[13] On the trail afterward she insists flatly that Mike drowned, then slides into a giggling, sobbing breakdown that has Lily admitting she's worse off than feared.[14][15]

Help arrives in the shape of Zachary, hauled up the mountain by Blur and Chirpy, and his news is a mixed bag. A perfectly safe rope bridge crosses the valley nearby, so the group braved the crumbling rock formation for nothing. As for their missing friend, he blurts out "Well he's probably dead." before hastily offering to help find the body.[15] He leads the way toward the stream until something white-eyed and drooling rustles in the bushes, and the stampede that follows piles everyone off a cliff edge.[16][17] Everyone survives the drop, and the river is suddenly dead ahead.[18] On the bank, Lucy admits she can't swim, and Zachary's clumsy pep talk knocks her out cold all over again.[19]

Then David dives in after a large-eyebrowed fish and grabs its tail just as it bites a baited hook. The fisherman who reels him ashore is Mike, bruised and entirely alive, who has been calmly fishing while he waited to be found.[20] Sue hurls herself onto him in tears. The relief lasts right up until Paulo presents the still-unconscious Lucy with the announcement, "Hey guys? We lost another one."[21]

A silent, near-black page of Lucy asleep on dark water carries the group back to town.[22] She wakes at a large campfire, with Catherine now in attendance, and her first sight is Mike wavering ghost-like through the flames.[23] Sue declares the drama over and starts Truth or Dare, which Paulo eventually hijacks to demand his stereo back from David after three years.[24][25] When Lucy quietly excuses herself for the bathroom, Mike stands up with an "I'll walk you."[26] Zachary heads for the same restroom a little later and hears crying. Through the window he sees Lucy sobbing into Mike's chest while Mike holds her and looks away in resentment.[27]

Critical moments

  • At the rock bridge, Mike glimpses the river far below and invents a contest about not looking down, purely so Lucy never sees the water.[4]
  • David's "KAPOW!!" landing cracks the narrow span, and the bridge gives way under Mike and Lucy.[6]
  • While Mike hangs from the ledge with Lucy gripping his waist, McCain points out that the fall is deadlier than the water. Lucy looks down and faints from sheer terror.[8]
  • Mike springboards off the underside of the bridge, catches the falling Lucy in mid-air, and throws her to safety before dropping alone into the river.[9]
  • Lucy wakes to the news that Mike fell. She collapses into Paulo's arms, and later breaks down completely, insisting he drowned.[13][14]
  • Diving the river in search of a body, David is reeled in on a fishing line held by a bruised, very alive Mike.[20]
  • In the wordless final pages, Zachary peers out the restroom window and sees Lucy crying into Mike's chest while Mike stares away in resentment.[27]

Character dynamics

Seen through the restroom window, Lucy clings to Mike's waist and cries into his chest while Mike looks off to the side.
Lucy finally gets her reunion. Mike's face says how much he's enjoying it.
  • Mike and Lucy: Their bond usually runs on competition, and the bridge shows the protective streak underneath it — the no-looking-down "game" exists only so Lucy never sees the water.[4] Back in Troubled Waters, Mike promised her he never wanted her risking herself for him again, and falling alone is that promise kept to the letter.[28][9] Believing him drowned breaks Lucy so thoroughly that Lily sums the whole spectacle up for a baffled Zachary as "Oh, young love~".[19] By nightfall Mike walks her to the bathroom and lets her cry into his chest, but the look on his face leaves the two of them closer and more strained at once.[26][27]
  • Sue and Mike: Sue takes his apparent death harder than almost anyone, sobbing at the bridge and throwing herself onto him at the riverbank. Nothing changes between them, but the chapter shows just how much the friendship weighs.[10][21]
  • Zachary and the group: He only met these kids the previous chapter.[29] Here the birds recruit him as a rescuer, and he repays being branded "Pedo" and "Creep" by guiding the search anyway.[15][18] He ends the night at the campfire with Catherine, and as the only witness to how the day really ended.[23][27]

Trivia & observations

  • Mike's scarf is missing in the opening hotel scene. Veronica's canonical explanation is that he took it off while getting ready for bed, though she admits she still missed the error while revising the Omnibus.[1]
  • Mike and Lucy literally break through the panel borders as they fall. Oliver notes the Summer Vacation arc is when Veronica began experimenting with panel layouts for narrative effect, and that straightening those unruled lines in later production was "a nightmare".[6]
  • Veronica calls the mid-air rescue one of the toughest pages she'd made, and answered complaints about its physics with "THIS IS JUST A COOL THING MIKE DID, OKAY. BADASS!!!!!"[9]
  • The beast in the bushes is never identified and never appears again. Veronica's commentary wonders whether it was a bear before concluding "THE LESS WE KNOW, THE BETTER."[16]
  • After the cliff tumble, all the cats land neatly on their feet, while David and McCain, the group's two dogs, land flat on their backs.[18]

Related chapters

  • Intervention: The next chapter opens on this exact alley scene, with Lucy sobbing that she didn't want Mike to die trying and Zachary still watching from the window. The rest of the night unpacks what he saw.[30]
  • Arrival: The previous chapter brings the group to the Silvershore Islands and introduces both Zachary and Catherine. It also sets up Lucy's fear of the water with her panic in the surf.[29][31]
  • Troubled Waters: This is the chapter Mike remembers when he refuses David's rescue offer at the ledge, since David's last heroic leap cost Mike his handhold and nearly drowned everyone involved. It's also where Mike made the promise about Lucy never risking herself for him that the bridge fall makes good on.[32][28]
  • Return: The arc's closing chapter, where Zachary carries what he learned into a beach-side talk confronting Lucy about her attachment to Mike.[33]
  • Another Rescue (side story): An alternate-timeline replay of this chapter's bridge collapse, right down to the KAPOW game and the spreading crack. This time it's Paulo, not Mike, who falls.[34]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 1
  2. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 2
  3. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 3
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 4
  5. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 5
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 7
  7. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 8
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 9
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 10
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 11
  11. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 12
  12. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 13
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 14
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 15
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 16
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 17
  17. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 18
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 19
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 20
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 21
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 22
  22. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 23
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 24
  24. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 25
  25. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 27
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 26
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 27.2 27.3 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 28
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 Chapter 30: Troubled Waters, page 11
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 Chapter 42: Arrival, page 18
  30. ↑ Chapter 44: Intervention, page 1
  31. ↑ Chapter 42: Arrival, page 26
  32. ↑ Chapter 30: Troubled Waters, page 5
  33. ↑ Chapter 45: Return, page 2
  34. ↑
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