Summary: Ever wonder what happened to the Muppets that were around a few years ago, but were never seen again in later productions, like Sam & Friends, Muppets Tonight, and Jim Henson Hour? Well, you're going to find out. WARNING: This story might seem a tad bit dark in some parts.
It happened on January 25 in 1986, just four days after "The Muppets: A Celebration of 30 Years" had aired on television all around the world.
A black hearse car had parked on an old concrete bridge that was so far outside of the city of New York that nobody seemed to notice there was even a bridge there. A man stepped out of the car and went to the back of the hearse, where usually the coffins were put, and pulled out three wooden crates, all somewhat small.
Then, a woman stepped out of the passenger seat. She wore a black suit and had a white eye patch, which covered part of a scar that seemed to be on her eye, but the eye the scar was on was hidden. She also had black hair with white streaks in it that reached just past her shoulders.
She was accompanied by Kermit the frog, who wore a trench coat, hat and scar to hide his identity. He appeared nervous and had a tinge of guilt.
He shook his head at the crates and said, "I don't like doing this. I don't want to do it."
The woman looked down at her with angry eyes and said, "Remember the deal frog; if you want to survive being a Muppet, along with your friends, we have to do this. Or, perhaps I kill off every single Muppet in the world?"
Kermit jumped in fear and reluctantly said, "Alright, you win! Just…let me say goodbye to them."
"How can you say goodbye? They're unconscious," the woman sneered, but Kermit walked up to the crates anyway.
To the first one, he said, "Yorick, you may have had quite an appetite, and you may have tried to eat me a few times, but you're still my friend."
To the second crate, he said, "Harry the hipster. You were the Muppet that inspired the Electric Mayhem to join the Muppets, mostly Dr. Teeth. I'm very glad that you had the chance to meet them a few days ago."
To the last box, Kermit took a deep breath before saying, "Sam, on that day at the swamp, when you asked me if I wanted to join you on your show Sam & Friends, I didn't think it'd get me anywhere to be honest, but it did. And I thank you for getting me into acting and helping me create the other shows like Sesame Street, the Muppet Show, and all our movies. It meant a lot to me. I hope you don't take this personally and you'll understand what I'm going through and why I have to do this."
Kermit then walked back over to the woman, where he watched the man pick up each crate and throw them into the fast-moving river down below. Kermit cringed three times, one per crate that was thrown. The frog stood on the edge of bridge and watched as the boxes flowed away. He was tempted to jump in and retrieve them, but that had dire consequences; one is that the woman had a gun on her and would kill him and all the other Muppets, and two was that the river was moving very fast and if the bullets didn't kill him, drowning certainly would. Even if he was a frog, frogs have their limits on how much they can take.
"Are you ready to go, Frog," the woman asked.
Kermit, still staring at the river, nodded and said, "Yeah, sure Zia." The amphibian celebrity entered the hearse, along with the woman and man, where they drove a U-turn on the bridge and started to head back to the city.
Meanwhile, in the river, the crates had fatefully washed up on a riverbank, where they were unmoving, until one of the crates started to move around, as if someone was trying to break out, and finally, the top of the crate was forced off and a bald Muppet with big ears and eyes wearing a sports jacket emerged from inside and looked around. "Kermit! Where are you?" the man asked, climbing out of the crate. He was Sam, of Sam & Friends.
The last thing he remembered was he, Harry the Hipster and Yorick sitting with the frog at the counter in the canteen, where Kermit offered them drinks and after taking a sip, Sam felt dizzy and passed out. Then, he heard banging from two nearby crates, where he heard Harry and Yorick's voices shouting.
Sam used all of his strength and struggled to open one of the boxes, which eventually part of broke off and a purple skull popped out. He was Yorick, the first Muppet that was known to gobble up everything that was in front of him.
"Yorick, do you think you can eat open that crate?" Sam asked his friend.
Yorick jumped out of his crate and looked at the one that contained Harry the Hipster. After a few moments, he glanced at Sam and nodded. The Muppet started eating at the crate slowly at first, gradually getting faster by the second, until finally, he was nothing but a blur to Sam and within moments, there was nothing left but a black Muppet with white shades sitting on the ground, looking surprised and Yorick picked at his teeth with a toothpick, which he subsequently ate. He was Harry the Hipster, from Sam & Friends.
Harry looked at his surroundings, very confused, and asked, "Hey Sam, where the heck are we?"
Sam looked around again and answered, "I don't know, Harry. I don't know. All I can tell is that we all passed out from that drink Kermit gave us, and woke up in crates, that, judging by the dampness of the wood, was tossed into this nearby river and had luckily beached on this riverbank."
"Sounds like Kermit was trying to kill us for some reason," Harry assumed.
"No, Kermit isn't that sort of person. He's always been the nicest frog around," Sam stated. "Someone had to be forcing him to do it, but who."
"If they did it once, do you think they'll do it again?" Harry asked.
Sam thought to himself for a few seconds before saying, "I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did."
"Should we go find Kermit?" Harry asked. "Or Jim maybe."
"I don't think that's a good idea. Whoever forced our friend to do what he did probably wanted us dead and they might try to kill us if they see us. So I think it'd be better if we hid a while until the public assumes we're dead," Sam said.
Harry and Yorick nodded and looked around until Harry spotted something. It looked like the entrance to a cave, so the Muppet decided to enter and looked around. He ran out, grabbed a piece of dry wood and quickly struck it on the edge of a rock, making it light on fire and become a torch.
"What are you up to, Harry?" Sam asked his friend.
"I fink I found fomefing!" the hipster exclaimed with his mouth muffled by the torch.
"Let me take the torch," Sam said, taking the torch from his friend's mouth.
"I said, 'I think I found something'," Harry repeated.
Sam, Harry and Yorick entered the cave, where Sam looked around to see they were on the ledge of some sort of rock formation. The trio looked around until they found a ramp that led down. Sam felt the wall, trying to keep his balance, until he felt a hole. The Muppet stopped and looked inside, to see it was a small cave that was the perfect size for one room.
As he, Harry, and Yorick went further down into the cave, they found more empty room-like caves, all the same size, until they made it to what appeared to by the bottom of the cave.
Sam looked around, to see there were bigger cave entrances, with bigger rooms. He eventually found a pile of sticks in the center of the room and lit them, which illuminated the entire cave, revealing that there were small and large caves on every floor, almost like a stone apartment building.
"Wow, incredible," Sam gasped in awe.
Then, he heard someone shout with a French accent, "Hey! What's the big idea, lighting all ze lights?" A light gray rat entered the room, wearing a black beret and blazer, sunglasses and a cigarette on a cigarette holder in his mouth.
"Pierre?" Sam said, surprised.
"Sam?" the rat asked, also surprised.
"You know this rat, Sam?" Harry asked his friend.
"Oui, I am Pierre, the French rat. The very first Muppet," the rat named Pierre replied.
"You were the first Muppet, the very first? I thought Sam was," Harry admitted.
"Non, Sam was not first. It was me. I taught Sam everything I knew about performing, which he used to create your show Sam & Friends," Pierre stated.
"Yes, I wanted to tell you about it, but I couldn't find it. It was like you disappeared off the face of the Earth. Nobody knew where you were," Sam explained.
"And now you know where on Earth I am. Happy, oui?" Pierre said.
"Well, sort of, but I'm confused about you ended up here," Sam admitted.
"The same way you and your weird friends ended up here. Knocked unconscious, stuffed in a crate, and thrown into a river to drown, and sometime later, I woke up trapped in the box and broke out. Very sad, it is," Pierre explained.
"But why? Why did that happen to you? Who did it?" Sam had to know.
"Well, I actually went back into the city to find out, and I found out that a woman named Tia offed me while you were rising to fame. I was not popular enough, so she tried to kill me and make the public forget about little Pierre," Pierre explained, sounding sad.
"I would never forget you, Pierre. You inspired me to be who I am today, or who I was back in the late 50s," Sam stated.
"Mercí, Sam, mercí," Pierre said.
Harry then said, putting all the pieces together, "So wait a second, that woman Tia tried to kill us just to make sure everyone forgets about us and…to make the modern Muppets more popular."
"Exactly, my hip Muppet, exactly, except that I don't think that woman that killed you was actually Tia; I saw everything and she was too young. Tia should be dead by now or a very old woman at least. Now, who are you hip person and purple skull guy?" Pierre asked.
"I'm Harry the Hipster, and this guy here is Yorick," Harry stated proudly.
"Bonjour, I hope you like it in the caves. I have plenty of room here and it'll be where we live for possibly the rest of our very lives," Pierre stated. "At least, until we figure out how to get back with the Muppets."
"How long will that take?" Sam asked.
"Until we can confirm this new woman and her offing group's location and alert the media by radio, which might take a long time," Pierre said.
Harry and Sam looked at each other for a few moments before Sam said, "Pierre, nobody listens to the radio that often anymore. They all like television now."
"Really? Well, how about that. Okay, once we get the right equipment, we'll wait to get the information. Until then, we'll wait to see if anyone else gets offed. If there's a lot of characters in your generation, Sam, Tia's daughter or granddaughter might go for them next, and we have to be ready to save them," Pierre stated.
"I'll do it. How about you guys?" Sam asked Harry and Yorick.
"We're with you, Sam," Harry said as Yorick nodded.
"Then let's go," Pierre said.
Well, this is the prologue for my new Muppet story. I hope you liked it. What will occur in the future for the Muppets?
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