Reuben was busy, in the kitchen, slicing a tomato. Like a surgeon at work, he was being extremely cautious not to slice it too thick or thin. He spent nearly five minutes in deep metal preparation before finally bringing the blade down and cutting through the red fruit. Taking a ruler, he measured the thickness and smiled contentedly.

“Precisely six millimeters thick. The perfect thickness to go along with the rest of the sandwich,” he stated as he placed it carefully atop the lettuce on his sandwich which also contained a few slices of ham, some mustard, and a few pickle slices cut longways. He finished it by placing the top slice of ciabatta bread on top and marveled at his creation. “Another sandwich perfectly crafted. Now, come to papa.” Gripping his lunch tightly in both paws, he lifted it to his maw, eager to take the first wonderful bite. Nothing could ruin such a sacred moment as this, nothing save for the timely interruption of an explosion from Jumba’s workshop followed by a thick, black cloud of smoke creeping along the ceiling and triggering the smoke alarms.

“Oh, crud!” Reuben cried as he looked up and saw the sprinklers go off, drenching the house along with him and his once perfect sandwich in water. All his sandwich-making ingredients still on the counter suffered too, getting drenched by the onslaught of H2O. “Yeah, we’re safe from fires, but my sandwich time has to suffer.”

“Icka patooka,” grumbled Stitch as he walked into the kitchen shortly after the sprinklers died down. Like Reuben he was drenched to the bone and didn’t look the least bit happy about it.

“Easy with the language,” Reuben told him as he grabbed a towel to start drying himself off. “I’m no fan of these unscheduled downpours, but what’s done is done. Just grab and towel and dry yourself off.”

“Eh,” agreed Stitch, but rather than using a towel, he shook himself like a dog, making the water on his body fly all over, including drenching Reuben once more. After a minute or so of doing that, he stopped, dry once more and his fur freshly fluffed up on top of that.

“I’ve gotta stop sitting in the splash zone,” sighed the short, chubby alien as he dried himself off once again. “Hey, cuz, I’m gonna see what Jumba was working on before it blew up. If you don’t mind a moist sandwich you can have this.” Returning his sandwich to the counter, Reuben made his way to Jumba’s room. He had only just left when his blue, alien cousin quickly grabbed up his sandwich, stuffed it in his maw and munched it up quickly before swallowing.

“Soggy, but still delicious,” smiled Stitch as he patted his gut.


“Hey, doc, what incredible scientific breakthrough ruined my sandwich, this time?” asked Reuben as walked into Jumba’s lab finding it ironically dry in spite of being source of the smoke.

“Oh, please accept my apology,” Jumba told him. He was a very large and round alien creature with two sets of eyes. He was dressed in a white lab coat with his typical hawaiian shirt and black pants on underneath. “Apparently, there are quite a few kinks to work out in my liquid temperature stabilizers.” He held out a set of pyramid-shaped ice cubes in his palm to show him.

“Uh, you’re inventing ice?” questioned Reuben. “I hate to break it to ya, but I think that’s been around since… well, the dawn of time would be my best guess.”

“Ah, but mine are a far more sophisticated than frozen H2O,” he boasted. “Mine are designed to maintain liquids at a constant temperature indefinitely and don’t risk watering down the beverage. They are also capable of keeping hot drinks hot, and preventing carbonated beverages from losing their fizz. Plus mine come in far more stylish pyramid shapes so they are superior to primite cubes of ice in every way shape or form.”

“Save for the fact that they don’t work,” Reuben pointed out.

Eh, I just need to tweak the carbonation matrix and it should work perfectly,” Jumba said confidently. “But for now, I think I’ll focus on one of my other projects.”

“Let me get my raincoat,” snarked Reuben as he turned to leave, but Jumba pulled him back in.

“I guarantee you this one only has about a ten percent chance of exploding… maybe twelve,” he told him.

“And what does this invention do?” wondered Reuben as he watched Jumba walk to the gadget in question. It was a bizarre looking device, even compared to a lot of the stuff Jumba had. It didn’t have a any buttons on it, just a single lever and rather than a sleek design it was quite large and bulky. It even had a lot of unnecessary lights on it that were clearly purely cosmetic as was it’s gold-plate casing and colorful images on a series of roulette wheels. However, the oddest thing about it was that it had a coin slot too. “Uh, is that a slot machine?”

“Heheh, I’m glad you recognize a device that has absolute evil affinity,” he cackled villainously. “Countless devices like this have managed to bleed entire solar systems of their wealth and leave the poverty stricken populace with just a smile on their face from the expensive fun they experienced.”

“And you plan to unleash such evil on the Earth?” questioned Reuben. “Again, too little too late on that.”

“A pity, yes, but, no, this is actually a warping machine I have been working on,” he explained. “It is designed to teleport things not just anywhere in this realm, but also other realms.”

“Kind of like how our friend Kent does so with that ‘Mysterious Force’ of his?” noted 625.

“And every bit as random,” laughed Jumba in a manner that a madman would, which was quite appropriate as only such a person would find that tidbit of information as humorous. “So, shall we give it a try and see where we end up?”

“While the thought of helping advance whatever this counts as in the realm of science thrills me to no end, I’d much rather avoid potentially being lost in some sandwichless dimension for all eternity.”

“I might be an evil scientist, but I am not a mad one,” Jumba assured him. “I have also set up a means of returning us back here so no matter where we end up we can find our way back home.”

“Well, if you’re sure it’ll work and we can get home,” replied Reuben with extra emphasis on the last part. “Then let’s go. Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to end up at a deli. I need to pick up some more pastrami.”

“Then you should keep your fingers crossed,” chuckled Jumba as he reached into his hawaiian shirt and plucked out a quarter. Dropping it into his invention’s coin slot, the lights flashed excitedly and some exhilarating music played as one would expect from any slot machine. “Hahahah! Oh, this is so exciting. I can’t wait to see where we end up.”

“Hey, I just had a thought,” commented Reuben. “Couldn’t you have made the device, I don’t know, not random?”

“And ruin the slot machine motif?” questioned Jumba. “That would take all the fun out of all this good evil.”

“You sure you aren’t a mad scientist?” remarked Reuben.

“Eh, maybe a bit,” he admitted before pulling the level and making the roulettes spin and cause the images on them turn to a blurr. The two aliens watched in awe at what would come out, their hearts racing just as quickly. Then in quick succession, the roulettes stopped, landing on a Bell, a Cherry, and finally a Lemon. The slot machine sounded and the two tensed up for something to happen, but nothing did after a few seconds, then a minute, and then a couple minutes, at which point the two were certain nothing was going to happen at all.”

“Uh, does it only work if you win?” questioned Reuben.

“Slot machine motif just for decoration,” he stated again. “Win or lose it should still take us somewhere.”

“Reality would suggest otherwise, but, at least this one didn’t end up ruining a sandwich,” Reuben said.

“But I don’t understand,” replied Jumba. “It didn’t explode so it had to have worked.”
“It either works or explodes?” wondered Reuben.

“That is how evil science works,” explained Jumba as he rubbed his chin curiously. “I didn’t write the book on it. But if my invention did work, then why did nothing happen?”


“What in the…” cried Kent the chubby, floppy-eared Womble as he suddenly found himself in some strange wet marshes. “Bearmon? Are you here? Don’t tell me we got separated!”

Earlier that day, Kent had met up with his friend, Teddy, the Bearmon, and, just as they were getting caught up, the Mysterious Force had whisked the two off on another misadventure into a dark cave. However, it didn’t end there as the Mysterious Force randomly sent Kent away again. This time he found himself in a far more unusual place, a swampland full of large, slimy green plants as well as white ones with a strip of purple on the sides. There was even some yellowish brown substance that burnt his sinuses as he smelled it and on either side of him was a crusty-looking trench.

“I don’t see my bear cub friend anywhere,” worried the Womble as he looked in every direction around him and kept calling out. “The Mysterious Force must’ve just taken me this time and left him behind, meaning I left him in some strange place and he just can’t expect to be randomly sent somewhere else. I have to find some way to get back there and soon.” Taking in a deep breath, Kent wasn’t attempting to calm himself, but prepare to shout. “MYSTERIOUS FORCE!!! Send me back to Bearmon this instant! ...I’m certain you can maybe hear me so do it! ...Do it now!!! ...If you can hear me, say something!!!”

Coughing and wheezing from shouting too much, Kent dropped to his knees as he attempted to catch his breath. The tailless, dog-like creature felt completely powerless in the face of something he couldn’t see, but constantly interfered with his life. Just thinking back to the numerous times it brought him right into the middle of dangerous situations it had become so commonplace that he had learned to accept them as a mundane inconvenience. However, to have it now affect his friend in such a manner was a new low for it, one he refused to tolerate. Weakly slumping onto the moist ground, Kent stared up at the sky and thought about the one question that had been in the back mind for so long.

“Just what is the Mysterious Force?” he pondered. “Where did it come from and why did it choose me? If I could just understand this then maybe I could finally be at peace with it, but I can’t even get an answer if it won’t speak to me… if it can even speak at all.”

“Oh, hello there,” bellowed a large, booming voice.

“The Mysterious Force?!?” gasped Kent as he got up and looked around. “You- You actually can talk. Please, say something else!”

“Mmm, you sure look good.”

“Uh, thanks… I think,” blushed Kent, not sure if he should feel flattered by something that irked him so much.

“Good enough for me to eat!”

“And of course you want to eat me too!” snapped Kent as he looked around, not sure where he should be shouting. “Just like everyone… else… oh… crud…” As he turned, he saw a massive cream-colored belly and looking up, he saw it was attached to a Snorlax, one that looked as big as a mountain, at least that’s how he felt at his size, but quickly the Womble figured out it was the other way around. The Snorlax wasn’t giant, he was tiny and the marsh he was standing in was, in truth, a hoagie and, even more horrifyingly, it was the subject of the ginormous Pokemon’s hunger.

“Come to hungry,” the gluttonous Pokemon drooled as he picked up the long sandwich with Kent in it and brought it to his muzzle. Opening his maw, Kent could see the all too familiar image of doom, the pearly white gates of teeth and darkness in the back of his throat.

Seeing his tongue wet his lips, Kent knew he only had a few meager moments before the eating could commence. With no other choice and the Mysterious Force rarely willing to help him out when it’d be helpful, Kent turned and ran towards the other end of the sandwich, trudging over lettuce, and onions, while his body got covered over in dressing and mustard. He ignored this as he quickly became more concerned as the Snorlax took his first big bite of his hoagie that consisted of the area Kent had previously been at and then some. His chomp upon the sandwich felt like an earthquake to the miniscule Womble and the struggled to keep from losing his balance and tumbling about, knowing he had no time at all to flounder about before the next chunk of sandwich was eaten. Quickly the hungry mon munched it up and swallowed the sandwich he had eaten and then drooled with delight before taking his next bite, narrowly missing Kent as he hastily ran to the other side.

Panting and wheezing by the time he made it to the end of the yard long sandwich, Kent was relieved to have made it as far as he did, but he knew all his efforts were merely delay tactics. Looking at the Snorlax, he was nearly done swallowing his current mouthful of food and the chunk of hoagie Kent was on was all that remained. Seeing the maw close in and envelope the sandwich, the tiny Womble took a leap off the sandwich just before his massive mouth chomped down on it.

Looking down, he could see the far fall before him, but in the blink of an eye, Kent suddenly found everything changed. The dropped had become much shorter and below him he saw the yawning maw of a pelican he was headed straight for. “MYSTERIOUS FORCE!!!” he raged before slam dunking into the beak pouch of one of his natural predators (basically anything with a maw big enough to fit him in).

“I heard about heavy breathing, but this is ridiculous,” commented the Pelican Man as he pressed play on his tape player and sitcom laughter erupted from the speaker. “But seriously, what was that just now?”

“Where did I end up this time?” groaned Kent as he peeked out of the pelican’s maw to look around.

“You ended up in my mouth,” answered the anthropomorphic pelican who looked quite pleased at what he saw. “And lucky me, I get to snack on a Womble. I haven’t had the chance since my last scheme was thwarted by… wait a minute, it was you! You were the Womble who bested my massive monster pelican pet.”

“Oh, yeah,” recalled Kent. “That was ages ago. And you were that lame comedian guy.”

“I’m not lame!” he snapped angrily at the Womble in his maw.

“Dude, you use a laugh track when you tell jokes,” Kent pointed out. “That’s lame.”

“Well, I’ll have the last laugh this time because you are in my maw and there’s no way for you to-” Once more the Mysterious Force spirited Kent away like he was never there to begin with. “Escape?” Sighing, the Pelican Man waddled over to the phone, sad that his meal got away. “Guess I’m ordering Chinese again.”


“Where am I now?” wondered Kent, finding him in some place that seemed like another pelican’s maw with how it was shaped, albeit one that was much smaller and a lot colder. Braving the unknown, Kent opened up the top half of the beak to get a look around and found himself in a small cubical of some sort. Upon seeing a roll of toilet paper and the sound of nearby flushing he instantly knew where he was.

“Did I serious end up in a bathroom… in a toilet!” he internally screamed in frustration.

Then the door to the stall opened and a Gaomon walked in to see the sight of Kent’s head sticking out of the toilet. There was an awkward silence as neither knew how to react in such a weird situation.

“Uh, hey… you,” G the Gaomon said as he broke the silence.

“H-Hi,” Kent answered back. “Um, think you can give me five more-”

“Actually, I don’t have to go that badly,” the blue dog Digimon said as he closed the stall door and quickly left.

“Can today get any worse?” grumbled Kent as he tempted fate and disappeared once more to who-knows-where.


“Where am I now?” wondered Kent as he suddenly found himself in an art studio. Looking around, he marveled at a number of paintings of Pokemon done in a surreal style that he couldn’t help admire. “Well, this place is rather nice. A big step up from the last two places I ended up.”

“Is someone there?” came a voice from the other side of the room. Turning to see, Kent saw the biggest, fattest Smeargle he had ever seen. He looked to be as easily as big as the Snorlax he had seen prior, though being normal-sized made him far less intimidating to be around. “How did you get into my private art studio, you… uh, I’m afraid I’m don’t recall what region you hail from.”

“Region?” questioned Kent as he scratched his head. “Oh, no, you’re mistaken. I’m not a Pokemon. I’m a Womble. My name’s Kent and as for getting in here, well, I didn’t come willingly. If it’s a problem I’ll leave right away.”

“It’s no problem at all,” the Smeargle replied. “I was just surprised, but since you are here, how about if I paint your portrait?”

“You want to paint me?” replied Kent quite surprised as he looked up at the obese Pokemon blushing a bit at the thought of being the subject of a painting.

“Why wouldn’t I?” he smiled and poked Kent’s pudgy belly. “You have such a unique shape and are unlike any creature I’ve ever seen. Plus, I like a subject with a lot of meat on their bones.” He then gave Kent’s cheeks a pinch making him blush more. “And you’re just so cute too, so please let me paint you! Pretty, pretty please!”

“Okay, okay,” agreed Kent, unable to refuse him after being so friendly practically on his hands and knees begging. “You can paint me. Just let me have my cheeks back.”

“Heheh, here ya go,” smiled the Smeargle as he loosened his grip. “Nice to meet you Kent, I’m Marko. Just stand right there and make a pose then I can paint you.”

“Nice to make your acquaintance, Marko,” spoke the Womble as he rubbed his chin and pondered. “What would be a good pose to use?”

“How about this,” the fatty Smeargle suggested as he gave Kent a chair to sit in and crossed one of his legs while the other remained straight. “Now just stay like that.”

“Oh, The Thinker pose,” figured Kent with a little chuckle as he tried his best to remain still.

“Not quite,” he replied as he hurried out of the room and soon returned with a piece of chocolate cake. Placing it in Kent’s hand that was on his chin, he helped maneuver it so he was in the midst of stuffing the cake into his maw. “I will call this, ‘The Eater.’ Clever, right?”

“Mmhmm,” mumbled Kent, his voice muffled by the tasty cake. “Uh, how long is this going to take? I’m not used to savoring food in my maw this long.”

“It’ll only take me a few minutes,” he assured his muse. “Just sit tight and it’ll all be over soon.”

Grabbing his tail, Marko then began to paint, his appendage changing color to whatever he needed when he needed it. Kent sat still as a statue, even as his maw overflowed with drool from his desire to eat the cake. It didn’t help that he was already so hungry and it was so very tempting.

“Annnnnnnnd… done!” announced Marko a little over ten minutes later. “Tell me, what do you think?” Turning the canvas around, he gave Kent his first look at the painting and was instantly amazed at how wonderful it captured him in the middle of eating his slice of cake.

“It’s incredible!” he exclaimed. “I can’t believe you did that so quickly!”

“When I’m properly motivated I can be quite fast,” he bragged as he approached Kent. “And I was really yearning to paint. Your timing couldn’t be any better.”

“No prob, but, uh, can I eat this cake now?” he asked.

“Go right ahead,” he chuckled. “I am surprised you haven’t by now.”

Happily, Kent stuffed the cake in his maw and munched it up, quelling the hunger in his gut, at least a bit. As he did so, Marko lifted him up off the ground. “Uh, why did you pick me up?”

“Now that I have immortalized you in my art, I must do to you what I have to all my previous muses,” he explained, giving Kent the all too familiar sense that he was about to be eaten and seeing the overweight Pokemon lick the Womble’s muzzle and salivate. “Besides, you didn’t think I would make art for you for free. Consider it the commission cost.” Opening his maw, his mouth looked big enough to fit half Kent’s plumpness into it. Judging by the number of paintings in the room, many with some rather larger Pokemon, it wouldn’t be much of a challenge for him to swallow him in just a few gulps.

“Ah! Come on! Come on! Come on!” pleaded Kent as he begged for the Mysterious Force to send him away again. As he waited, he could only watch as his head was brought to the Pokemon’s maw and shoved inside. “Argh! This is the end! Goodbye cruel world! Goodb-”

“Blargh!” barfed Drag, spitting Kent out of his maw. “Wh-What in the- Kent? Where did you come from and why did you have your head in my mouth?”

“Oh, Drag, it’s been a hectic day,” cried the poor Womble. “First I was at the Bunny Burrow again, and then I was in a dark, scary cave, and then almost eaten in a sandwich, then I was in a pelican’s maw that turned into a toilet, and I just about got eaten by a Smeargle before I got here and-”

“Wait,” Drag paused him. “You’re talking a mile a minute. Just try to calm down.”

“Sorry,” he panted. “It’s just that the Mysterious Force has really been working me over good today. It’s already sent me to a whole bunch of random places and who knows where it’ll send me next. Probably to be nearly eaten by someone else.”

“Just what is this Mysterious Force you keep going on about?” asked Drag as he petted his friend with the hopes of comforting him. “You go on about it a lot, but I’ve never really understood exactly what it is.”

“No more than I know,” admitted Kent. “It just started to happen to me one day and I went from just getting regular lost to impossibly lost. I mean, how does one manage to travel to different dimensions instantaneously like that? Sometimes it’s alright, when I meet new friends, but a lot of the time it just puts me in the middle of some kind of danger.”

“At least you’re safe now,” Drag told him, attempting to help him relax, but he could see it was only making him more upset and stressful over his predicament. “How about getting a bite to eat or taking a nap or something?”

“That would be fine,” Kent managed to crack a little smile. “So long as I can enjoy it before-”

“You disappear,” finished Drag as Kent was gone just as quickly as he appeared. With his friend gone and nothing he could do to help him, Drag just sat there and looked up at the sky in wonderment at where he’d end up next.


“So many places,” groaned Kent quite a while later. He had gone to a number of different areas, meeting Pokemon like Polo the Chespin, Zaguri the Zigzagoon and many others, most of who were eager to find out how fatty Womble tasted. Kent didn’t know if he should have been grateful to the Mysterious Force for sending him away to spare him from getting eaten or upset to be put through the same trauma all over again. “When will it stop? When will it end?”

“It seems my new friend has been have a very unpleasant day,” came a rather runty voice that distracted the poor Womble from his gloom.

“Your friend?” asked Kent looking around the room. He found that, this time, he had managed to wind up on some sort of space station. “Where did I end up this time?”

“In my base of operations,” answered the voice again as a white furred rodent with a long tail and ears approached Kent. He had beady red eyes and a cape wrapped around his neck with the letter ‘H’ on it. “Welcome aboard.”

“Hey, you’re that evil hamster villain,” realized Kent as he kept his guard up against him. “What do you want with me? You don’t plan on eating me, do you?”

“Eat you?” chuckled Hamsterviel at the very notion. “Ohohohoh, why you are larger than I am. How would I be able to eat you?”

“That is true,” he acknowledged. “I’d be more likely to eat you then the other way around. Does… does that mean I should eat you?”

“Eat wha- no! You are my friend and guest here,” Hamsterveil told him. “You should just relax and enjoy my hospitality.”

“Relaxing does sound good,” agreed Kent, though a more concerned look appeared on his face. “But how long till I end up warping somewhere else? There’s no way I can relax while I’m worried about that.”

“That has already been fixed by me,” Hamsterveil assured him. “You see I detected a strange power pingponging itself through space and time so I drew you towards my location with my impressive space station fortress. I even have an anti-warpy barrier in place to ensure you will no longer be pingonging yourself to and fro anywhere. So, now, you are free to stay here for as long as you like.”

“Then… the Mysterious Force can’t get me here?” hoped Kent, looking like he might cry tears of joy. “No more literally being dropped into the jaws of doom?”

“Not so long as you are within the barrier,” he nodded. “However, there should be a way I can give you a more… permanent solution to this Mysterious Force phenomenon you keep experiencing. Just come with me and I’ll take good care of you.”

“Hmm… I’m sensing some red flags in some of the stuff you just said,” commented Kent with a bit of worry.

“I have snacks,” he added with a grin and got instant approval from Kent’s stomach.

“Hunger beats out red flags any time,” replied Kent as he licked his chops and followed the pint-sized villain.


“What could be wrong?” pondered Jumba as he kept trying to feed coins into his teleportation invention and pull the level. “Why is it not working anymore?”

“Anymore?” questioned Reuben, munching on a new sandwich he had made. “It hasn’t worked at all. You pulled that level over a dozen times and we haven’t left this room, let alone this dimension.”

“It is something I am trying to figure out,” Jumba explained as he turned to his computer. “I have been logging all the coordinates for the supposed warps and for a while I was collecting data, but now I am not getting any results. If my machine is working properly-”

“Which is a pretty big if in my opinion,” Reuben chimed in.

“Ahem, if my machine is working properly then it can only mean that something has just started to block the signal from my device. There are not many who would even know how to do that let alone do that intentionally. If I had to be taking a guess it would undoubtedly have to be Hamsterviel.”

“For any of you kids at home who haven’t guessed it yet, that’d make him the villain of this story,” Reuben comentated as he broke the fourth wall.

“But this is quite interesting,” added Jumba as he looked through all the logs again. “If the last recorded destination is indeed Hamsterviel’s current location and we know he is currently in our dimension then that begs the question of where exactly the warping first transpired. The coordinates certainly don’t appear to be from our own dimension… so where could they… oh, now I think I might know what is going on here.”

“Care to exposit for the rest of the class, professor?” asked Reuben.

“Well, if my theory is correct then our old friend, Kent is in danger,” he explained. “I based my research on how Kent is able to warp around randomly, but I was never quite certain how a creature with such simple and flabby genetic material could be capable of such physics-defying power. But if my hunch is correct, it might actually be my fault that he is able to do what he does. Way back during our first encounter with him, I actually used the prototype of my teleporter gun on him. I thought it was a perfect test run. Every atom of his being was taken apart and reassembled properly. From what I could observe, nothing was amiss… however, perhaps that was not the case. In fact, his most radical cases of getting inexplicably lost have occurred after that incident which leads me to believe that perhaps his canine-like body had somehow absorbed the energy from the teleporter gun and somehow merged together with his biology.”

“And what the deus ex machina does all that mean?” Reuben questioned as he scratched his head. “I’m sure this is all very plot relevant, but think you can give us more meat and a lot less lettuce in our sandwich?”

“Basically, his Mysterious Force is a result of teleportation particles infused in his body,” cliff noted Jumba. “It draws on energy from Kent and when it gathers enough energy it teleports him at random. And it seems that my new teleportation device was somehow also linked up to him through those very same particles and was likely the one who ended up warping to and fro in our stead. Unfortunately, it seems Hamsterviel caught on to all this and decided to capture Kent for his own diabolical use. I could use the return feature to bring him back to us, but if he is no longer warping it can only mean that he is currently unable to warp. Hamsterviel has undoubtedly put up a barrier to prevent him from being able to get away via warping. The only course of action available to us now is to infiltrate Hamsterviel’s stronghold and rescue him instead.”

“So a rescue mission, huh,” mumbled 625 as he munched on his sandwich. “Sounds good. I’ll get a team together and we’ll be off.”

“Glad we could pontificate all this as quickly as possible,” commented Jumba as he shut the screen down on his computer.

“Eh, more or less,” replied Reuben.