DANGER MOUSE:
PROBLEM, REACTION, SOLUTION
WRITTEN BY ZARIUS
Author's Note: I found "Dark Dawn" a mine of creative opportunities, so how much luck can I have with Dawn Crumhorn's very first appearance? Read on and judge for yourself.
Squawk usually had all the time in the world for compliments, but today not so much.
She had to disregard Danger Mouse's complimentary comments regarding her newly developed jet boots to remind him not to cause too much of a mess in her lab this afternoon. They had company.
Almost as soon as she made her intentions to keep the lab in pristine shape clear to him, the lab doors opened and in came their guest.
It was a young girl, with star struck eyes and a spark of feverish enthusiasm about her. She held her teddy bear up and instructed it to look upon the contents of the room too. The way she went about this indicated she was almost daring herself to do something naughty right off the cuff.
"Look, Mr. Snuggles, sweets" she said, and jumped at the chance to take some orange droplets from a container orb, which sent Squawk spiralling into a panic, and after permitting herself an anguished howl, she dashed over to prevent the girl from swallowing them.
"They're not sweets, they're miniature partial fusion bombs" she said.
The girl, eventually identified by the Professor as Dawn, looked at Squawk with a saddened expression, keen on learning something new, but a little disappointed in her eagerness to indulge her taste buds at the expense of her personal health.
Why was I always like that? She wondered
Why is it the first thing I do is get everyone off on the wrong foot?
And it did not improve from there.
Upon deciding to make up for her first mistake with a show of social etiquette, Dawn approached Danger Mouse with a hearty handshake.
As she gripped his hand, her eyes glanced upwards at his warm and welcoming facial expression; it seemed he was at ease, prepared, not hesitant or hysterical despite the trouble she had just caused. He seemed all too eager to give her a second chance.
It's unfortunate for her that he failed to make a decent first impression.
"Hello Mr. Big Mouse" she said, complimenting his tall stature...it wouldn't be much else.
She pulled her beloved plush bear up to his face and paraded it in front of him.
"You have to shake Mr. Snuggles hand too" she instructed.
Danger Mouse's reaction was to do so, to humour her, to make things that belonged to her feel just as necessary a component of the function as she was.
If only he were good at remembering names.
"Ah, hello Mr. Snuggly" he said.
Dawn snapped and corrected him with an incensed and sharp fury in her voice.
"Snuggles!" she said.
Squawk brought up the fact that she had won a competition to spend the day at the lab with them; Dawn seized the opportunity to brag of her father's considerate efforts to ensure she did win by buying up as many raffle tickets as possible. Opening up about her family could lead to a deeper bond between her and her new playmates.
Make no mistake, she was here to play. The lab was a doll house to her; she was of the age to see the lab's utilities as her amusement.
She suggested a tea party, but almost drank sulphuric acid, again causing a panic from Squawkencluck.
Failing to learn anything from this, almost out of a self destructive whim to cause social embarrassment to herself, she danced too-and-fro across a table, lost her balance and tripped onto a lever which opened a rift in the fabric of time and space.
After all of that was resolved, she stumbled on a lavish pool of pink and purple liquid, the colour, the scent intoxicated her, urging her to dive in.
Squawk found herself once again panicking, Danger Mouse stepped in using the Professor's rocket boots to charge towards Dawn at ludicrous speed just as she was about to dive head first into it, but in doing so, her tiara and Mr. Snuggles fell into the tub.
Danger Mouse hovered over the tub cradling Dawn in his arms, Dawn's common sense kicked in as she came to grips with just why she had been wrenched away from the pool as Snuggles began to sink into the liquid.
Once again, she had gambled with her life, and now her life may change forever.
Should anything happen to Snuggles, she would never forgive herself.
She wasn't so much concerned about her tiara, after all, it was her father's ideal vision for her to remain an infant diamond in his eyes that he could marvel at every day of his life, and making sure she was never old enough to walk directly out of his life. The micro technology stored within the tiara inhibited her aging process, but it also caused her more childish and self-centred behavioural patterns to exceed the realms of normalcy.
The tiara didn't need recovering, she felt in that moment clutched in the big mouse's grip, that perhaps it was time to face adult consequences.
As soon as Snuggles was back in her possession, recovered from the liquid by Danger Mouse, that feeling dissipated.
Noone seemed angry with her, they were putting on a front almost to spite themselves, and it caused Dawn to act even worse towards them.
She would start to now physically assault them, kicking Penfold and Squawk in the shins, though she chose not to attack Danger Mouse as he had earned his fur in her eyes for salvaging Snuggles and her tiara.
Finally, the Professor modestly told her their time together was over.
This set Dawn off, she had been promised a whole day of play, she was keen to learn of the ins and out of a world famous spy organisation, to see science at work, it was being denied not just entertainment, but education, for hers was a vastly growing and advancing mind. That didn't change just because a tiara kept her from ageing.
She took Snuggles and the tiara in her hands and wandered towards the door, she glanced back at Squawk with a repellent and condemning gaze.
She had spent many years on this earth, up until today she had made a pledge to playtime, to surrender to her father's whims.
Now, the tiara was off, she was thinking clearly, she was making adult decisions.
Perhaps the day could have been better if she weren't so impulsive and self seeking, or more to the point, self destructive, but that required tolerance, understanding, and almost none of them had shown they were capable of grasping that.
The Professor was far too concerned with preserving the state of her lab.
The hamster didn't do much of note.
Outside of one little slip-up, the mouse had been the best of all three she had met. He had potentially saved her life, and had gone to bat for Mr. Snuggles, an inanimate object, just to keep her happy.
She would keep note of that.
She had made a pledge to her father, but never in her life had she made a vow.
The Professor's coldly logical behaviour towards her, reacting to her as if she were a problem and not an overly curious innocent, and solving the problem by placing her beyond sight and mind, was all she needed to inform what kind of vow it would be.
One free of logic.
One of revenge.