Sorry, Wrong Channel!

A Crossover fanfic by A J

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters, but the plot is all mine.

Prequel Chapter 3

Just after Season Two:

The mysterious wave of energy crashed over Heatherfield like a tsunami, washing away all that was before.

Taranee

The sound of glass breaking woke Taranee from a beautiful dream. She'd dreamt of being in Hawaii, doing up-close research at Mauna Loa volcano as only the Fire Guardian could. The subtle shift of obsidian underfoot and the roaring heat of fresh hot lava had been dislodged by a shattering sound and her brother cursing in a screechy, squeaky voice.

"Puckernuts," she groaned, borrowing a phrase from her favorite comic book. 'Hey, if elves think they're bad enough to swear by, then they're bad enough for me,' she giggled, still half-awake. Her brother's renewed screeching brought her the rest of the way out of her sleep-fog, and she leapt out of bed to see what was wrong. He sounded like someone had lopped off a limb; boys usually didn't hit those high notes after puberty.

"What is it? What's wrong?" she cried, careening around the corner into his room. Taranee noticed even her voice sounded squeakier, and wondered if someone has broken open a Helium balloon or a Nitrous Oxide capsule in the house.

Peter Cook was thrashing around in his bedcovers, completely wrapped up, and screeching and cursing while trying to fight his way out. He finally managed to get one arm out, and Taranee uttered an "Eeeep!" of alarm. His arm was as hairy as Blunk's, just not green.

'Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod, please tell me my brother isn't a werewolf,' she whined to herself; her life was plenty weird enough already. Then Peter's free arm snaked to the top, and wrested the sheet the rest of the way off of him. The two siblings looked at each other in blank shock for a moment, then both screamed.

"AAAAHHHH!! YOU"RE A MONNNNKEEEEY!!" they both cried, pointing hairy fingers at each other. As if that wasn't enough, extra details started jumping into focus to both of them.

"You've got a pig's nose!" Taranee told Peter. He reached up and found she was telling the plain, awful truth.

"Well, you're the Rainbow Brite of Wild Kingdom," he responded, pointing to her shoulders and her feet.

"What else?" she gasped, turning in place and trying to look at the rest of herself. She was just cataloguing the fact that she now had prehensile toes to match her hands when Peter gasped behind her. "What?" she asked, spinning back around. "For God's sake Peter, what?"

"Your tail …" he managed to utter.

"Yeah, I have a tail. So do you," she responded, acidly. She was soooo gonna read the Oracle the riot act for this surprise. "It's what makes monkeys monkeys, Peter. What about it?"

"T'ree, your tail … is on FIRE." He sounded like he was telling her she had cancer.

"Of course it's on fire," her father said from the hallway. He came into the room, and the two teens screamed again. "WHAT?!" Lionel Cook cried, thinking something else was wrong, and the kids, both on the bed now and hopping around in terror, couldn't do more than point vaguely in his direction and whimper.

"Oh for Entei's sake," he grumbled, swinging Peter's door nearly closed and giving himself a once-over in the mirror on the back. No fresh bruises, no blood or broken anything visible, no scorchmarks or other energy scars … just perfect grey skin, with his striations showing to perfection up his muscular arms. A thin white hand pushed through the gap left and pushed the door back open, and his mate Theresa came in, her thin purple limbs all shaking in agitation.

"What's wrong with the kids, Lionel?" The two teens screamed again, grabbing hold of each other for safety's sake in terror. Their mother was a monkey too, apparently; a purple one with three tails, and at the end of each tail, a hand?! Peter and Taranee shared a scared look, then did the only thing their brains would let them at this point. They both fainted.

"Oh, what now?" Lionel grumped, rolling Taranee back over and patting out the scorchmark her flaring tail had left in Peter's favorite new red sheets before it could spark into worse.

"Give her here. Her sheets are fireproofed," Theresa replied and took hold of Taranee, her middle tail securing her daughter's flaming appendage to keep it from endangering anything else. While she took their daughter back to her own room, Lionel tugged Peter's sheets straight and tucked his son back in. Meeting back up in the hall outside Peter's door, the two worried parents went back to their den to worry together. "What could have scared them both that bad?" Theresa asked, holding onto one of Lionel's hands with almost all seven of hers. "It was like they didn't recognize us."

"I just don't know, Vespiqueen of mine. I just don't know."