Home To Roost A Not-So-Tiny Toons Tale by Simon Barber 11

Chapter Seven

On the side of Acme Acres nearest the airport, mid-morning Winter sun shone through a hotel room window and cast long beams of light over standard hotel corporate furniture where a green mallard was showing his daughters the delights of modern culture.

"Now, kiddies, I know you liked it back out in the wilds," Plucky Duck addressed his small, solemn daughters "sure, it was kinda good sometimes – when we had nice weather and enough to eat. But we're back in the civilised world now. See? There's all sorts of real civilised things we can do here we couldn't in our hut." He fitted action to words, and on the Numbmindo console's screen a second-generation ballistic missile roared clear of the 1950's style launch pad as he introduced his daughters to playing 'Retro Rocket Rumble'. "Whoo-hoo-hooo! We're tracking… roll control is good, that bird's heading downrange right on course! Now let's launch another." On the screen a distant location marker labelled 'Target:Evil Empire Euro-Dingey' lit up. There was the sound of chunky analogue switches being turned, and glass-panel indicator lights lit first showing 'onboard battery power' and moving to 'doors open', 'engines fire' then 'missile away'. On the screen, a 1950's ICBM rose from its silo in a billow of fire.

"It's just moving dots on glass, daddy," Brandi complained. "It's not real."

Plucky chuckled, patting Brandi's head-feathers. "Oh, sweetie. You don't worry about that sort of thing. All these were real. They were the most amazing things Toons had ever built, back then. Hundreds of them sat patiently in sort of concrete burrows, ready to fly, always awake and ready for days and months and years. This is showing how awesome they might have been."

"Did they ever get to fly?" Candi asked, looking up soberly. "Birds ought to fly." She imagined the big silver birds must have had interesting metal manitous she could have talked to. Candi wondered if there were any still around Acme Acres. There were a lot of concrete-lined holes in the ground nearby; she had heard some of her father's friends lived in one.

Plucky shook his head, a far-away look in his eyes. "Nobody ever let them, not the way they were meant to. They never got given the chance. They sat there waiting faithfully for years and years, then one day other people came out, hauled them up to break them, cut them up and took them away, and filled in their burrows. It was such a waste. But we play this and remember how awesome they were."

"That's so sad." Brandi said. She looked at her sister, exchanging mental notes. "Shouldn't fill up people's burrows."

"Somebody should have helped them fly," Candi volunteered.

"Heh. That's so cute. Look, this is another kind of retro rocket," Plucky changed the game mode, selecting 'TITAN 1'. "There's more modern sorts you can fly in the game but they're too automatic for me, not so stylish. This is about the newest model I ever go for. Look, it's all being made ready for us. See? There's Toons in stylish extra-special chemical-proof suits feeding it really cool extra-special fuels through hose-pipes! It's all so… iconic!"

His daughters looked at each other.

If we find one, let's help it fly, Brandi suggested.

Let's, her twin sister mentally affirmed.

"Just time for two more games and we'll see if your gramps and grandma are up yet. Then later on we're meeting Margot in town for lunch. A busy day, kiddies!" Plucky grabbed the games controller, and prepared to rain white-hot AVCO Mk. 4 re-entry vehicles on a certain faux castle in Florida. Oh yes, he told himself contentedly as he unleashed multi-MegaToons of artistic criticism on his studio's arch-rival - we're really back in civilisation now.

Despite a very energetic night, Margot was up and away if not for an early breakfast, then at least for early brunch to meet Rhubella in Acme Acres. She noted her favourite restaurant was still in business; not everywhere sold FoulPlay coffee – and she had still not caught up on four years' worth of that.

"You look like the cat that's eaten the canary," Rhubella commented, walking in and seeing her friend relaxed with a fragrant cup of exclusive Foulplay Indonesian Luwak civet coffee. *

Margot stretched, leaning back lazily. "Canary? Say a brace of ducks and you'd be nearer the mark. Not quite a roast duck supper, but they were pretty hot."

"You and… Gladys and Gracie?" Rhubella's tail twitched.

"A nicely matched pair. They may be purebred avian, biology-wise, but they made the most of what their model sheet's got to offer." She cast a knowing glance at Rhubella. "So did I. I demonstrated a few things for them they'd never tried before. Milk?" Margot offered the milk jug to Rhubella, who shook her head – her Foulplay 'Not-just-skinny-but-borderline-anorexic' latte arrived, and already had plenty.

Rhubella rolled her eyes. "I thought you said you were staying exclusive to Plucky?"

"Ohh… my dear drake approves. I'll say he does." Margot winked, tossing back her riot of long purple head-feathers. "Yesterday, when the chicks were having their nap in the other room before heading across town, I told him exactly what I had in mind for the evening. I'd thought about it and told him years ago, and he liked the idea then. I never thought I'd get the chance."

(The Foulplay Organisation's poster on the wall boasted 'we catch the jungle civet peasants that eat the coffee fruits and beat the living… beans, out of them!').

"And what was his reaction to that?" Rhubella asked, intrigued.

Margot held her feather-hands a certain impressive distance apart, and grinned. "Like that. Shirley must have been telling the truth about not caring much about material things. Or she'd never have left him to me." She paused, reflecting briefly. She had never been ashamed about being a very material girl. "Then I put my feet up and relaxed awhile, while he took the chicks off to see their grandparents for the night. When G and G came home I offered to see if some of my… good luck might rub off on them."

"Right," Rhubella said dryly. She remembered sitting in class with Margot for their first Ethics lesson at Perfecto – as every new class learned, it had been on 'The end justifies the means. Any end. Any means.'

Margot raised an eyebrow. "They were very keen to try. Judging by the way that stork pushed the sound barrier getting here, my luck's rubbed off very nicely. Or my meme, or something. Who cares? The storks don't. A matching pair of very welcome stork feathers arrived for them this morning."

Rhubella's eyes widened – then she started calculating the scene. Plucky might technically have been halfway across town at the time, but there were certain possibilities. "And if their eggs hatch out looking like a certain green mallard?"

Margot shrugged. "That doesn't mean much; Gracie's feathers are greenish too. Anyway, it's a stork delivery. Nobody goes fussing about chromoplasm tests where storks are blundering around the skies. Besides, everyone got what they wanted."

"The Christmas gift that just keeps on giving," Rhubella mused, unconsciously touching her own stork feather. "You and Gladys and Gracie – well, Fifi's done as much for me. Their eggs could just as well hatch out as purple mallards like you, after that. I'm the living proof that kind of thing happens."

"Now, that would be a first, for me!" Margot's eyes went wide in delight. "Nice idea! If they want, I can at least sign up as godmother to their eggs." She paused, a speculative expression on her bill. "Not exactly a fairy godmother – we're not Disney."

"A scary godmother, maybe." Rhubella sipped her Foulplay anorexia-chic latte; not something she would drink in front of Fifi. "I must buy shares in local firms making diapers and strollers. That meme really is coming to town."

"Good plan," Margot grinned. "Plucky always wanted a good serious film role like Marlon Branduck in 'The Godfeather'. If he signs up as their Godfather… that should cover all the bases. We can offer. It's up to them."

Rhubella sipped her coffee. "Well, you did give them something they wanted, that money can't buy."

"I'm meeting them for their lunch break, down the road," Margot said. "It's just a little diner – the sort we used to all go down from Perfecto in the limo and go slumming in. That's starting to seem a long time ago."

"It's four and a half years for you. Only this April, for me," Rhubella reminisced. "Before our Spring Break and that card game I lost, I was still with Roderick and you were with Danforth." A curious expression came to her face. "I never found out just what happened to Danforth. I heard you did it, though."

Margot chuckled at a happy memory. "Well, you know, only one of us could graduate – there wasn't room at the top of the course for us both."

"That's the Perfecto way", Rhubella agreed. "I'd heard you were… pretty decisive."

"He was all ready to make his move and clean my assets out – but I beat him to the draw." Margot gave a nostalgic sigh. "I think of my last sight of him whenever I go past the shops this time of year and see a piñata hanging up – that's just the way I left him."

"Bare-feathered, dangling from the ceiling by his… beak, I imagine," Rhubella looked at her comrade through half-closed eyes. "Though, knowing you…"

"Something like that. Nothing a Toon wouldn't recover from. I'd found out he had his own plans that way for me, more or less" Margot said brightly. "Of course, his being eventually rescued by the pack of snap-happy tabloid journalists 'someone' just happened to have anonymously tipped off, was the cherry on the icing on the cake." She sighed, reminiscing happily. "Professor Hatta Mari gave me top marks in the whole year for that. She mentioned she was planning to add it to her Ethics course class materials."

"Does Plucky really know just who he's marrying?" Rhubella wondered aloud.

Margot laughed. "I tell my dear mate everything! He rather liked the story. Especially as it's true. Besides – when you've stood at someone's side fighting off a charging direwolf, little stuff like Perfecto pranks doesn't have as much impact anymore."

Rhubella nodded. "You seem to have come through it all in one piece, more or less." She glanced down at Margot's round belly. "More, in your case."

"Oh, yes." Margot said. "We had a lot of free time, out in the wilds. Like the old two-tone Toons always say, before you had radio and TV, you had to make your own entertainment."

Half an hour later, Margot bade Rhubella farewell and strolled downtown. She was due to meet Plucky and their children at four, but before that she had another meeting. According to the old saying, it was efficient to kill two birds with one stone, but she knew she had better things to do with a certain brace of birds.

The coffee here might be standard commercial grade rather than high-quality Foulplay, Margot mused as she stirred her cup in the Formica tabled diner a mile down the road, but a month ago it would have been very welcome. Her bill twisted slightly. The morning she had unexpectedly left her home timeline for the wilderness, she had left behind the life-raft she had been camping out in by the lake – which included a comprehensive survival kit as standard. She had spent four years wishing she had carried those supplies with her that day, particularly the matches and the knife – and the big jar of instant coffee she had bought just the day before. She had never even got the chance to open it.

"Margot!" Gladys spotted her from the doorway, and waved. She and Gracie wore the plain and simple, but somehow deeply unattractive corporate uniform of the burger chain they currently worked for. "You found the place."

"I'm never lost with my T-pad – anywhere civilised. Thinking about places," Margot looked at Gladys and Gracie as they sat down opposite her; the pair were holding feather-hands and staring in amazed delight at each other's stork feathers they wore on necklaces for all to see. "It's the season of giving, this time of year. That's what I want to talk to you about. You'll need to start thinking about a proper nest for your eggs, come Springtime."

Gladys blushed. "There's no choice about that. It'll just have to be another reed hut in the swamp, I'm afraid. That's all we can afford. Especially as we've got eggs on the way. One of us will have to quit work to look after them." Her eyes went wide. "We might have to live in the swamp all year round now. We can only just afford the winter apartment as it is."

Gracie looked up at the clock on the wall. "Margot, we can't stay long. We have to get back to work in ten minutes, cleaning the kitchens at HateBurger. There's Number Four grease-sifter needs stripping down again. That's an awful job. I don't know which is worse, that or the soot-sifter."

"Mmm. I said it's the time for giving." Margot took a deep breath. "How would you like a place of your own? The Crowninshield mansion we bought has a separate staff bungalow, twice the size of the apartment you're in. We don't need it. I can call my lawyers right now if you like and gift it to you, no strings."

The two ducks stared at her in amazement.

"Thank you!" Gracie burst out. Then she hesitated. "But – it's miles out of town, and there's no bus. That part of Acme Forest is cut off for a week, some Winters."

"We couldn't get in to work," Gladys sighed. "We'll just have to say no. We don't want to, but…"

"That depends where you work." Margot looked at them levelly. "You said it; the place is a long way out. We'd have just as much trouble getting anyone to come out and help us every day. It's a big place, needs a lot of looking after – and it's going to be home to at least one expanding family. Work for us, and we'll pay you five times what you're getting now as a regular salary, hours and everything to suit you. What do you say? The house is yours if you want it, regardless."

Margot supressed a chuckle as Gladys and Gracie looked at each other open-beaked in amazement.

"We get regular holidays and everything like a real job?" Gladys asked in awe. "We've never had one like that."

Margot nodded. "I can put you in touch with my lawyers today and they'll sort the details – Plucky and I really want you on this. Ask for the lot, you'll get it. Whatever clothing you want, included."

Gracie looked at her partner, who nodded vigorously. "We'll take it! Thank you!" She hesitated. "Whatever clothing? For work, you mean? We hate these," she tapped the drab corporate jacket.

"Of course." Margot looked on, amused. "If you take our offer, you can wear whatever you want to work in. My tab."

Gladys and Gracie looked at each other. "Like we always thought of. You'd look so amazing like that," Gracie said, her eyes wide.

Gladys nodded. "So would you. And we can start today?" She looked up at Margot, eyes wide.

Margot smiled. "You can tell Hateburger what to do with their grease sifter, and don't worry about getting your final pay there. As for clothes - there's a place I've heard of in Acme Mega-Mall that does everything." She paused, speculatively. "I'm intrigued to know what you've got in mind."

An hour later, amongst the other hundreds of arrivals, Plucky Duck led his daughters into what Shirley had often called 'the like totally evil mega-temple of greed.'

"Whoo-hoo! Is this an amazing place or what?" Plucky's eyes shone as he beheld the crowded elevators, moving stairways and bright window display of a thousand corporate franchises on six main floors, with restaurants and bars on the top floors looking down over the great hollow centre of the complex. "Just look at all the people, kiddies!"

Candi looked around at the thousands of shoppers swarming through the mall. She turned to her sister, and they nodded in sync.

"There's too many of them, Daddy," Brandi said levelly, her small form composed and certain as she made her mind up. "They'll all have to go."

"Yes. And all this stuff too." Candi looked around the building, taking it all in. "Should be all forest here."

Plucky chuckled. "That's awful cute. Why, when I was your age Mom fed me so much cabbage I wanted it to just – vanish from the world."

Brandi nodded seriously. "Okay, Daddy. That goes too."

Plucky shook his head, smiling, patting her head-feathers indulgently. "Sure, sweetie. But first we're going to meet Margot, when she's finished shopping. Way up there!" He pointed to a distant terrace of plastic palms on the top floor, a restaurant themed as a plastic tropical island. "You can have ice-cream and sodas."

"Look, fish!" Candi pointed down at an ornamental pond where large golden carp were swimming. "We can eat those?"

"No, kiddies. They're not for eating. Now – we take a ride in the elevator!" Plucky led his chicks to one of the big glass elevator that went up and down in transparent tubes for shoppers to see and be seen.

The chicks looked up at the elevator, scanning it from the circuitry of the electric motors on the roof to the emergency buffer stops down in the second sub-basement. True, the cables looked thick and strong, but they imagined reaching out with mental shearing planes of force that would cut those in an instant, and send it crashing to the bottom. It would be so easy.

"Daddy? Don't want to go in the elevator," Candi said firmly.

Plucky smiled, a far-away look in his eyes. "You'll love it! Hey, I was scared of them at first when I was little. But you get to press the buttons and everything. It's great fun!"

"Don't go in the elevator Daddy," Brandi said, a determined feature on her small face.

We could make it go fall. So anybody could. Candi transmitted.

Yes. But they won't when Daddy's in it. Brandi agreed. We stop them.

"Come on, kiddies! Elevator goes up!" Plucky stepped into the opening doors, pulling his chicks inside.

His daughters looked at each other and nodded in sync. The lights dimmed perceptibly through the mall, and there was a bright flash reflected from the cracks around the door, from something in the lift shaft beneath.

"Hey! This thing doesn't go!" Plucky pressed the buttons angrily for a minute before giving up. The control panel had a red light glaringly labelled 'fault' suddenly flashing. He looked down at the small, serious faces of his daughters, and shrugged. "Looks like it's stairs for us today, kiddies. Hope you don't mind."

"Okay, Daddy." Brandi and Candi followed after him dutifully.

The duck family waddled towards the little-used staircases, which were going to become rather better used that day. Passing them on the way were the mall's maintenance engineers, who were to be quite puzzled as to how all the mall's lifts had suddenly become welded immovably solid onto their guide rails.

Several miles away, the lift engineers were not the only ones to get a sudden callout.

"There's another high-yield manna flash, somewhere central Acme Acres," Colonel Fenix snapped. "It feels like the one that took that truck apart. Lieutenants Shirley, Calgari, Angelina, Tlalocopa – you take the North side, sweep in and try to track it. Sergeant Gander, Pvs Lewis, Sergeant Macree – you're with me." The buzzards were no use on anything involving psychic sensitivity, having the psionic potential of wet concrete. Four of them sprang to the controls of Pvs. Lewis's casket, and got it mobile on its tractor unit.

"Like, we're totally on it," Shirley nodded as they raced for the portable holes. She had felt the energy burst herself; it had a very distinctive 'sound' to it, almost as if there was a slight echo – that or two totally matched but separate sources firing at almost the same instant.

They stepped out of the other end of the hole on the top floor of a multi-storey car park, with a good view over the town centre. By unspoken agreement the four split up, one at each corner, and cast their senses wide open. It was like looking for where a fire had been by spotting the thermals rising from the hot spot – just a faint and fading shimmering of the air.

"This side!" Calgari called.

Shirley hurried over – the one thing she could not complain about the raven was his competence; in fact she had an unpleasant feeling that all the three Addams Academy graduates had more raw power than her. They were certainly more unfettered about using it.

"There." Calgari pointed a wingtip, and pulled out an electronic telescope. He scanned the buildings opposite. "I'm looking at a big clothing store in the mall complex… the bit with the yellow hording on top. I can see Toons inside through the windows, shopping – no sign of any panic anywhere. I don't see anyone I know."

Shirley looked with her mortal and astral senses where the raven was pointing. The hording was a standard advertisement exhorting the unwary buyer to 'Eat Teegmee's special isotopic food! Bonus neutrons in every atom at no extra charge!' She shuddered, recognising trendy Martian cuisine.

Calgari passed her the telescope. "Your turn. Can't say we're unfair on this side of the Farce. My Master always draws up perfectly honest contracts."

Shirley scanned the faces visible through the plate glass, then gasped in shock at who was in evidently the work-wear department. "Margot Mallard! And those two featherbrains Gracie and Gladys!"

"Ooh, gimme. I want to see." Angelina elbowed her playfully, grabbing the telescope.

Shirley stood frozen, open-beaked in shock. Of any three people in Acme Acres she did not want to see, Margot topped the list, and Gladys and Gracie were well up on it.

"Nice! She's buying them maid outfits," Calgari nodded. "Really, really… short ones. Not that it makes any difference, looks like they usually walk around as bare-tailed as you anyway. They look like she's made them willing servants."

"Very nice ones. The way those two were looking at each other – if one's the upstairs maid and one's the downstairs, where they meet half-way on the stairs… those are going to be some pretty well-polished stairs," Angelina said appreciatively.

It's true. What Margot had in mind all the time. Her ruling a roost like some Dark Queen – She's started already. Shirley's aura turned pale in shock.

"Way bogus." Shirley's eyes bulged, recalling that vision. When she had tried to use the Mirror of Nicrotis to see Margot's evil plans, that one had been the least of them – some huge force had then thrown her out of Margot's mind as unceremoniously as a gorilla bouncer hurling a gate-crasher out of an exclusive party by the window. "She must have got totally dark power from somewhere. And she's like, starting to use it on other Toons, fer sure."

She's got to be stopped, her aura agreed. That prophecy! It's like all totally making sense now. If the chicks pick up that dark power and put it on top of what they inherited from me... the idea of what that might make her chicks chilled Shirley to the construction lines.

In an instant, Angelina was at Shirley's side. "We want to help," the magpie whispered seductively, her black eyes glittering. She pressed a hand-blown glass phial into Shirley's feather-hand. "We're all on your side, Shirley. And this present for your righteous use is totally eco-friendly and holistic, too."

Shirley's aura scanned the contents of the phial and recoiled in shock as if touching a hot stovetop. Binary homeopathic Dip toxin! You could erase a Toon like she'd never been drawn!

"Yes, Colonel Fenix made me hand over all I'd got last month. He must have forgotten to make me promise not to make any more", Angelina nodded. "It's self-limiting to one target. As it evaporates it gets more concentrated – so the homeopathic effect just naturally fades away. And there's no trace!"

"Or if you don't like that idea… you know I was working on that hopped-up, stepped-down, hot-rodded, jacked-up Egyptian Curse? I've made a few refinements." Calgari said smoothly, stepping up on Shirley's other flank and offering her a glowing papyrus scroll. "Just… don't miss and hit the ground with it. The continental crust is thin around here."

"Ooh. There goes the neighbourhood, or what?" Angelina said, her eyes bright. "That's the curse you said got used eight thousand years ago on a target in the Sahara Jungle?"

"It was. And I've supercharged it quite a bit. Don't lose this scroll. The Careless Bruins would just love to get their adorable paws on something like that." Calgari smiled. He recalled the recent trip to the Lost Warehouse, spotting an artefact seized from the cute and cuddlesome planet-wreckers - a seemingly innocuous lava-lamp. This one had a one percent chance every time it was switched on, of becoming a permanent portal to the Elemental Plane of Magma.

"I have a Level 11Block 9 Extended range Misfortune cookie I give you," Tlalocopa patted the webbing pouches at her waist. "Trick Margot into opening that and... just too bad. Make Pandora's Box look like cheap ACME whoopee cushion."

Shirley stared down at the scene below. Her mood ring was already glowing a dull, threatening red, and moved up into the orange wavelengths. She began to fume visibly; her feather-tips stood out bristling as if building up a massive static charge.

"You know you want it," Angelina whispered seductively in her ear-hole. "You know it's the right thing to do. The only thing."

"Si. Es Bueno. Before she see you. Do it! Do it!" Tlalocopa urged.

Shirley's mood-ring glowed white, then blue-white. The ceramic plates of Calgari's anti-stab vest began to fluoresce with ultra-violet, and soon everyone's construction lines showed faintly through their outlines as the rooftop was scorched with enough X-rays to see by. Three Addams Academy graduates looked at each other in undisguised glee.

Suddenly Shirley stood bolt upright. "Like, no way!" She snapped. Shirley closed her eyes, calling her aura to her and thrusting the deadly homeopathic vial back into Angelina's feather-hand. The two loons merged, and crackling bursts of pent-up orgone energy earthed in spectacular showers of sparks. Her mood ring cooled back down through the spectrum as the earthly and astral twins centred themselves.

"Darn it," Calgari clucked his beak, the raven seeming no more than mildly annoyed. "We nearly had her. Oh well, next time."

Just then came the sound of the door up to the rooftop opening again. They all turned, and spotted someone Shirley had only seen before in old films and photographs.

"Well, well," Angelina whispered appreciatively. "I wondered how a general of a top-secret unit walks around in public in full uniform without being recognised."

"Hide in plain sight, like us with our film teams," Calgari agreed. "Wear a totally over-the-top fancy dress General's uniform. Everyone thinks he's on the way to a fancy-dress party." True, the dress uniform looked very little like a regular 21st century outfit, but that was presumably the point.

Shirley had heard of General Snafu back at Acme Loo; studying there she had even seen some of his misadventures as a humble private in World War 2. He had scarcely aged, except decades of being an accidental lifelong conscript had soured his once cheerful nature.

"Unit Four Plus Two? I recognise those park ranger caps," the human snapped. "I want to see your Colonel. Where is he?"

Calgari saluted respectfully. "Sir! He's with the other group tracing this unlicensed mage. We're expecting them shortly." He sent a mental summons to Colonel Fenix.

General Snafu gave a short nod. "You're new to the unit, Lieutenant? I've not seen you before."

"Yessir! Recent recruits, all of us. Third Lieutenants Calgari, Angelique, Tlalocopa reporting for duty. Top graduates of Addams Academy ROTC class." The raven waved a wingtip to his comrades.

That's mondo untrue, Shirley broadcast indignantly. I've seen your grody records.You were in no such thing!

"And that is Lieutenant Shirley McLoon, Sir," Angelina saluted, a keen expression on her sharp beak. "Colonel Fenix recruited her from Acme Looniversity as an expendable comic relief. She's a pathological liar, and she'd deny even that, given the chance, just for the sake of it."

"I am so not!" Shirley gave an outraged squalk, her feathers bristling in shock.

"You see what I mean, sir?" Angelina shook her head pityingly. "Though she's not even much use as comic relief. She has no sense of humour at all."

"That is so totally untrue!" Shirley snapped. "I graduated third in the year at Acme Looniversity."

Angelina ignored her. "Why, just the other night we were all laughing our beaks off at a comedy disc – and she couldn't even bear to watch it."

"Comedy? Like, it was 'America's funniest fatal industrial accidents.' That is mondo sick," Shirley said, her feathers bristling.

Angelica smiled pityingly at her. "She couldn't even raise a grin for the footage of that stupid kid who used to sing the annoying hot-dog advertising jingle visiting their factory. Oh, priceless comedy moment! If that wasn't ironic humour, I don't know what is."

"I wish I was an Oscar Meyer wiener…. That is what I really want to be…" Calgari quietly hummed in the background, strumming his air guitar.

"And probably impossible to ever repeat. I'm sure they've tightened up on safety precautions on the giant mincing machine since then," Angelina said brightly. "Pity, really."

Shirley's feathers turned greenish in nausea. Just then Colonel Fenix stepped out of the portable hole behind them.

"Sir!" The tall phoenix saluted.

General Snafu glowered up at him. "Colonel! We're getting more incursions than we can handle. While you've been tracking the elevator mage on the coast and the Acme Acres events, there's another four like it in this state alone. Any clues here?"

Hal Fenix nodded. "There may be a link, Sir. In the mall there, I've just been looking at an elevator that's been knocked out by a major-league psychic surge. I think there's only one mage or group of them we're chasing." True, Hal mused, there had been no trace of any pentagrams or similar left in the Mall lifts – but it was surely too much of a coincidence not to be related.

"Let's hope so. And catch them, quick. We've got the Other, Other Agency trying to muscle in. There's only so much unlimited Black Budget to go around." With that, the General was gone.

"Like, them again?" Shirley's beak wrinkled, remembering her last encounter with the Other, Other Agency. "I saw one of those dudes on TV last night."

"Hmm. Possibly. Or he could be from the Other Agency. It's a confusing trade, this. Agencies often disguise themselves as each other. Even take over each other's HQ." Colonel Fenix sighed. "Still. We've got a clue. Let's get into that mall and start scanning, people. I think whoever did this is still in there."

Shirley blinked. Colonel Fenix knew her feelings about Perfecto Prep and its inhabitants. Just telling him her suspicions of Margot would sound like sour grapes rather than a proper investigation. Still – she needed hard evidence, and knew just where to start looking.

"Like, yes sir or junk," She saluted, though the motion still felt strange. "It's lunch break for all those shoppers – let's go make sure nobody summons something totally dire and disturbs their digestion!"

Not surprisingly, it was also lunch break that minute as Mortimer Bernard Bunny sat down at the table in Acme Looniversity's cafeteria. He blinked at the sight at the next table. "Now, that's something you don't see every day. Around here, I mean."

He and Gene Ericson tried not to stare at their new classmate eating. Shelley's muscular 'foot' that comprised most of her exposed body, was grasping a large coconut. What looked like a thick hosepipe extended from under her shell and was pressed against it, naturally tipped with a rough fine-toothed end like a wood rasp or a hollow drill bit. It twisted to and fro, making a loud grinding noise.

"That's her radula," Lucretia, the glowering emo mouse, sat at Shelley's table looking on keenly. "Isn't she cool? She can drill through giant sea-shells as thick as the front plate of a tank, and eat her victims from inside out. I bet it works great with skulls too. You learn so much neat stuff at Acme Loo."

Mortimer shivered slightly as Shelley made short work of the coconut, drilling into it in seconds and noisily rasping out the contents, evidently to her great delight. "Umm… Shelley – what was it like studying at a Japanese school? I've heard they're really high-pressure places."

Oh, well, a sanity-warping mental image was protected onto the young buck's mind of Shelley in a rather customised Anime sailor-suit nothing I wasn't used to. Back home in the Marianas Trench we live at what you'd call… there was a brief calculation Mortimer saw as a dance of pirouetting equations about six tonnes per square inch.

"I'm surprised you came here, not to MiskaToonic. Don't they usually take the… umm, more exotic students?" Mortimer asked. He had heard that Shelley was not only exotic but technically an older student – by a matter of a few centuries. She had heard some loud bangs 'a little while ago' by her account and headed up to investigate – apparently those had been the 1950's Pacific Ocean nuclear tests, but a gastropod took a while to travel any great distance.

There was a telepathic giggle. This sounded more fun! Anyway, they already had some street urchin from my neighbourhood in their class this year.

Mortimer scratched his head-fur. "What's wrong with being a street-urchin? We get some really poor students in here, on scholarships. My sister's friend Furrball lived in a cardboard box in an alleyway, most of the time he studied at the Loo."

Oh, no. Not like that. A real street-urchin. From my kind of streets. The mental image broadcast was something like a four-foot diameter sea urchin sitting, or at least being, in class, bristling all over with two-foot long needle-sharp calcite spikes.

"Real gothic," Lucretia nodded appreciatively. "I'll bet all the hedgehog and porcupine chicks go wild about him."

He's lucky. There was a mental sigh that somehow conveyed romantic overtones. I've heard a lot about vertebrates. You have the weirdest, most… interesting biology!

Lucretia grinned. "You should date Mortimer and find out all about it. He's a rabbit. They've got a real reputation even with the rest of us vertebrates."

"Eep!" Mortimer's ears went rigid in shock as he saw the cup-like rims of what served as Shelley's eyelids roll wider in interest and Shelley's eye stalks swivel towards him. The rest of her anatomy was something out of a Lovecraftian nightmare, but it appeared the eye moves were universal.

Really? Two large eyes swivelled in Mortimer's direction. I tried dating Anime human vertebrate guys, but they all ran away too fast. Such long legs!

"I think she has a rather loose interpretation of 'dating'", Gene Ericson murmured.

"Rabbits are pretty fast too. You have to outsmart them, which in Mortimer's case shouldn't take much," Lucretia said. She gave a mock sigh. "Oh dear. Did I say that out loud? My bad. Oh well, too late, common knowledge now."

Mortimer glowered at Lucretia, but kept silent. The lesson right after lunch was double slapstick, and he made a mental note to see just how resilient that mouse was to anvil impacts.

Four hours later after a busy day at Acme Looniversity, Mortimer could have really used a relaxing evening to wind down and start on his next homework assignment. Living where he did, that was never going to happen.

"So, how's your girlfriend, Mortimer?" Katy Belle Bunny nudged her brother insinuatingly as he stepped off the main passenger lift into the burrow. "Tell us all about her."

"She is not my girlfriend!" Mortimer said hotly. He hesitated. "She's plain dangerous. Bubba, our class bully, found that out when he poured salt on her tail like she was a slug. It served him right, what happened to him."

"I bet Shelley didn't like that," Bonnie Clarisse Bunny murmured, keeping a cautious eye on her older sister. "I've been reading up on cone shells. From your description she sounds like she's related."

Mortimer shivered. "I didn't know any sea shells had poison stings! She sort of harpooned Bubba with one, pure instant reflex. Enough venom to kill a hundred tonne predator right there on the spot, the school nurse said." He paused. "It's a good thing Bubba isn't one. He should be out of the hospital tomorrow; they say his skin should change back from being green, and most of his hair should re-grow someday." Professor Tweety had seen the whole thing and cleared Shelley of any wrongdoing; evidently there was some unwelcome tradition about putting salt on birds' tails too, and their professor sympathised. *

Katy giggled. "That's a girl who really knows how to say 'No'! Invite her round, Morty! We'd all love to meet her. It'll be easier than you going home with her to meet her parents – as I'm sure you will, someday soon."

"That must be like cornering the market," her littermate Jenny mused. "Being the cutest, sexiest gastropod in the whole school… no competition around here, really. Probably that's the real reason why she didn't go to MiskaToonic."

"At the bottom of the Marianas trench she could really have a crush on a guy. There'd be thirty thousand feet of water on top of you," Bonnie mused, her big round glasses gleaming. "That's a crush."

"So, let's all meet our future sister-in-law. Babs was the one in the family with the big thing about only dating her own species," Katy grinned. "We're not prejudiced that way. You bring this mollusc maid over; we'll be having fun with a skunk-hunk ourselves soon enough. Henri arrives tomorrow."

Although Bonnie's face betrayed no emotion, the special-effect metallic 'Shinngggg!'sound of a samurai sword being drawn, echoed through the burrow. Mortimer mentally applauded the effect; that would have scored high marks in some of his classes. Although the oldest buck of his siblings by four minutes, he had long since learned to keep well clear of his sisters' infighting.

*( Professor Wile-E Coyote was not the only member of the faculty to embrace technology (generally of a painfully misbehaving ACME design, in his case.) Professor Tweety often stayed and lectured from home on stormy days. He Tweeted his notes in, naturally.)

"I'll be ready to meet him myself." Jenny's gaze bored into her littermate Katy; both of them ignoring Bonnie's reaction (unwisely, Mortimer told himself.). "And I'm not going to be wearing fake rabbit ears. Or tail. I think he'll like the genuine article just fine."

"It's part of the classic costume, whether I need it or not," Katy sniffed. "It's called being authentic."

"Looks phony to me," Jenny offered. "Just like…" she crooned a few lines from a They Might Be Giants track they all knew since Babs had rehearsed it long and loud for a (sadly cancelled) class video some years before:

"If I were a carpenter, I'd hammer on my billet, I'd collect the seven dollars

And I'd buy a big prosthetic forehead and wear it on my real head!
Everybody wants prosthetic Foreheads on their real heads
Everybody wants prosthetic Foreheads on their real heads!"

"I always thought that song was about Klingon fans," Mortimer mused. "Anyway, it's ears and tail you've got."

Katy cast him a grateful look.

"But it honestly does look pretty phony," Mortimer added, truthfully if rather unwisely.

The sound of a large Shojo Mallet being drawn from Hammerspace and swung to Toon-flattening impact rang throughout the burrow, as Mortimer discovered a big prosthetic forehead would have been a useful choice of clothing accessory after all.

Hearing the sound, Mrs Bathsheba Zoe Bunny stuck her head out into the corridor from where she had been busy in the kitchen. She shook her head, smiling slightly as she took in the scene. Raising a big Toon family like hers – whatever you could say about it, it was unlikely to ever get dull.

A few miles away on the slopes of Mount Acme, having a quiet moment, Angelina Angelique had retired to her trailer and invited her friends in. Shirley had for some strange reason declined to join them.

The magpie relaxed comfortably on her all-black leatherette military spec chaise longue (Mil. Ref. CSM 1167Alpha, Block B) and pulled out the amulet she had picked up on their last trip to the secret warehouse. "I've been testing this bad boy out," she said, her eyes shining with unholy glee. "It's a booster. Doesn't do much on its own, but when you combine it with the right other artefacts – things get interesting."

"Such as?" Calgari looked on with interest as Angelina lovingly traced the sinister carvings on the ancient brass amulet.

The magpie snickered. She raised her left feather-hand, the one that was invisibly encased in the skinned and magically preserved clawed "glove" she had found on her first visit. "We're getting along very well. He provides my claws…"

"Very useful ones, too," Calgari nodded. "They can cut even astral planar beings."

"Yes. Pretty good fun, that. And with the power we're sharing from it… he's recovering, to an extent," Angelina said. "Being defeated, killed and made into a glove… well, they've cloned species back from DNA or chromoplasm before. In his case, he was astrally tied to what was left of him. That way he could lend the use of some of his powers like the claws."

"There was a fraction of his consciousness left?" Calgari asked, intrigued.

"Sure!" Angelina nodded. "and with the amulet, I'm managing to grow it back a little."

"Very interesting," Calgari said, looking on as one of the magpie's feather-hands stroked the other. "You can't keep a good toon down. Even a vampire reduced to bones can come back, with the right tender loving care."

"Si. We've all done that," Tlalocopa reminisced, recalling her favourite lessons. Addams Academy prided themselves on not being Lifeist.

Angelina pressed the amulet to her clawed feather-hand, and invoked the activation runes on it. The greasy, jet-black fur they had first seen in the box in the warehouse months ago somehow appeared like a surfacing submarine, welling up through her flesh and feathers; for the first time since she wore it, it detached from her body.

"Interesting, interesting," Calgari mused, extending his psychic senses as the flat thing that had been an arm and hand hunched caterpillar-like across the table. "I'm not picking up any life energies. It's as empty to my senses as any other fur glove."

"Si! Stealthy, or what?" Tlalocopa said, the chupocabra's impossible-to-describe features * showing a wicked glee. "He can go anywhere, see anything, nobody knows."

"Stealthy enough, yes. Shame about the lack of eyes and such," Calgari noted, materialising his air guitar and strumming a sad tune.

"Doesn't need them." Angelina grinned. "Not sure how, but his senses work like that loopy loon's astral form – only even less conspicuous."

"Shirley. Yes." Calgari picked at his guitar idly for a minute. "You know, it's a shame she won't convert and join us. I pray one day she'll see the Dark."

Editor's note; despite the fact that nobody can say what a chupocabra really looks like, even people who have seen them, Tlalocopa was famous for her looks. Although as Shirley said "She's some totally grody mammal – or bird – or reptile – or some junk." Cryptids like her often find employment in undercover police work and Incredibly Special forces units where staying unidentified helps.

Angelina's beady black eyes glittered in glee. "Blasting that rival girl down in the mall would have done it, no question. But there's more than one way to skin a cat – or pluck a loon."

"You have plan?" Tlalocopa queried.

The magpie relaxed, stroking the crawling patch of black fur as it sat like a deflated cushion in her lap. "Oh, you'd better believe it. I have plan."

"It's sad, we keep given such prejudiced people and missions to work with," Calgari reflected. "This mission to find the missing Theory of Everything. Why don't they look for a Theory of Nothing? After all, Nothing was there first. Everything else is just secondary." He strummed his guitar, singing a fragment of an old Robyn Hitchcock song;

"Put your faith in God? He won't expect you - put your faith in Death, because it's free

If you believe in Nothing, honey, It believes in You - for God's sake don't put any faith on me…"

Angelina gave a happy sigh, the magpie looking around at the tastefully decorated trailer with its elegant décor of screaming skulls. "So, things are progressing nicely. We even made a good impression with the General, I think."

"How he get to be general?" Tlalocopa asked, puzzled. "He no like the job, and he famous for make real big mistakes."

"That's what I wondered," Calgari mused. "I asked Sergeant Gander – our dear Colonel is too tight-beaked about all the good stuff. He didn't tell me the full story but putting two and two together… well. Imagine, you're thinking of promoting someone. The Toon ranked just underneath you, if they're too good they might take your job off you someday. You want to have Toons next to you who can't challenge you."

"I get it," Angelina nodded. "You look two ranks lower, and pick somebody safely incompetent. Like that Acme student Concorde Condor's going to make a perfect vice-president someday – any President feels safe with a replacement who'd be impossibly bad."

"Until you get near the very top, that works," Calgari said. "Then – imagine there's a new General's job opens up – looking after our line of work. Something nobody wants to touch with a milspec bargepole. Who gets picked for that one?"

"It's you, Snafu!" Angelina and Tlalocopa chorused, grinning.

"So true, he's blue." Calgari gave a mock sigh. "Still. We should have a go at impressing him some more. I just wonder where that theory ended up?"

Back in Akron Ohio and only a few hundred yards from the Institute Calamity and Marcia had visited recently, was another medical establishment. Saint Munchhausen's Hospital had the most specialist medical staff and the most specific patients on the planet.

Inside one of the brightly painted wards, a worried-looking canine was talking with his fellow patient. "I'm just happy to be where they take me seriously for once," he was saying. "For years and years ordinary doctors have been telling me I'm perfectly healthy! Just because I've got symptoms unknown to Science."

Just off-camera, his neighbour nodded sympathetically. "They said I was insane, next door," he commented. "Really I'm sane – just having delusions of insanity."

"We get that a lot in here," the canine sighed. "I was diagnosed as delusional too… at last there's someone who believes in me!"

The door opened and a doctor strolled in, a mink with a somehow unnervingly keen expression. When he saw patients, he rubbed his paws together in glee. "And how are we all today?"

"Oh, Doctor, I'm most amazingly unwell. I have that new fashionable Stealth Sickness everyone's talking about," the canine had his hand up first. "The symptoms vanish in the presence of instruments trying to measure them."

"Good. Good. Jolly good." The doctor beamed. "I've thought of some amazing new treatments, previously unknown to medical science. And they said I wasn't a real doctor. The fools!" He threw his head back and laughed. "Mad, they all are! Mad! Calling me, not a real doctor!"

"He's brilliant, you know," the canine whispered to his neighbour. "No matter what you've got, he can think of a treatment. Probably something really radical you just couldn't get elsewhere."

Patient X nodded. In a previous career he had heard Saint Munchhausen's was notorious for being simultaneously an open prison for convicted bogus doctors and Hypochondria sufferers – no matter what you claimed to have, the staff were keen to believe you. Quite possibly there would be severe side-effects of their treatment, but that was expected in real medicine anyway and surely proved they were real doctors – besides, any Hypochondriac who became really ill was at least cured of their Hypochondria. It was the last place on earth anyone would look for an escaped patient.

Patient X sneaked a look at his notebook with the only working copy of a much-annotated equation. He was certain there was a flaw in the Theory of Everything – but the logic around it was impeccable. It was starting to look as if the flaw was actually in the Universe, and he had found it.

He grinned. Of course he wasn't going to recite the whole thing and when it failed, Explode the theory – considering just what it was linked to. "Oh no," he said out loud, drawing no attention to himself in that place "I'd have to be mad to do a thing like that!"

End Chapter Seven