DANGER MOUSE:
SOMEBODY ELSE
WRITTEN BY ZARIUS
(contains spoilers for "We Are Not Family")
Sidneyland.
Fun for all the family.
Only Dawn Crumhorn didn't have one to speak of. Her father was off-world, and she had felt quite adrift without him. She could ill afford small pleasures.
She was here on business, trying to attain the helmet of ultimate power, and wield its ferocious abilities to lay mastery of the entire universe.
It stood there, in the middle of the strictly ballroom, inside a glistening glass container, its elegance mesmerising her. If its physical appearance could give her Goosebumps, she could only dream of what its great power could do to unnerve everyone else.
There was, however, a catch. Everyone had to participate in a ballroom dance off; the most mesmerising couple to grace the dance floor would come away with the prize.
She had reluctantly selected her partner for the event, a narcissistic showbiz obsessed dimwit called Duckula.
He insisted the whole time she keep her eyes trained on him as they danced, but he was in actuality referring to the small pocket mirror he had attached to the front of her dress so he could make direct eye contact with himself and not her for as long as they participated in the contest.
Perhaps it was to take his attention off of his dance partner and all the gossip surrounding her? Perhaps there was only so much divisive publicity he could take and he needed to win so he could control what people said or did through the use of the helmet.
Not that she would allow him. The helmet would have been hers.
Maybe she was giving herself too much credit, and who could blame her? She had been made to feel quite special over the last month or so by another person much older than her.
That person was in the room right now, and he had cheated her out of her grand prize. He had posed as a simple holiday tourist and given a performance that rivalled even the waltz they had shared under the northern lights.
With somebody else.
That's what hurt the most.
Somebody else.
Not just anybody, but the prickly hen that had thrown Dawn out of the Danger Agency crime labs when she first met this individual some years back.
What was Danger Mouse doing here with Professor Squawkencluck?
Her mind turned back to the helmet of ultimate power, it was obviously something the Danger Agency had to secure, and so they had posed as a couple to get closer to it.
That had to be it.
Had to be.
Dawn was no idiot; she knew Danger Mouse under normal circumstance could not have moved on so swiftly from what they had shared over in the arctic all those months ago. She was still coming to grips with it herself.
Shortly after winning, DM blew his cover, and in the ensuing mayhem, Greenback had gotten his hands on the helmet, using it to transform into a hulking abomination that would haunt Dawn's tender dreams for perhaps the rest of her days, until the graceful touch of Greenback's own daughter removed the helmet from his grip and returned him to normal.
Delilah would tell him she just wanted her normal dad back, not something changed by the power he craved.
Dawn reflected on just what she would have done to the world if her dad had been there, would he do the same for her as Greenback's daughter had just done for him? Would he crave normalcy from her? Would she from him?
She stayed out of the way as the villains all scrambled for control of the helmet, with Danger Mouse using his combat skills to take care of each and every one of them. Before long, the simple ballroom had become host to a sizeable brawl, and Dawn knew the time had come to depart.
Squawkencluck had taken notice of Dawn just as the brawl had begun, and she waited until the fight was well past to inform DM of who she had in her sights.
As Penfold gripped DM and Squawk and insisted they treat each other like a family despite their insistence they were not, DM opted to excuse himself so he could talk to Dawn some more.
"Professor? May I?" asked DM.
"Go, I'll put Penfold to bed" said Squawk.
DM approached Dawn anxiously.
"We really have to stop meeting like this" he joked.
Dawn shrugged.
"I'll always be glad we started" she said.
And in the talk that followed, all traces of business dissipated and the vacation became something altogether more pleasurable.
In that conversation, they all became somebody else entirely.