~All righty, we're back! Things are really gonna start turning around by the end of this cha - ah, never mind. I'll just letcha read it. ;)~

"Okay, go ahead and say it," Curly said to Lefty. "I've got a hero complex. I'm too trusting. I want to help everyone. I miss things that are right under my nose!"

Curly dropped her face to her knees, cringing away from the bars of the filthy cage. The smell of the thing was pure Cog, oil and exhaust – and despair.

"Uh, yeah, all the stuff you said," Lefty said. "Except you already said it. Really no point in me saying it again."

That was Lefty for I-forgive-you-'cuz-you're-hurting-bad-enough-already.

Everything was falling into place now. The Toon Effects ray, the teleport holes she'd seen in Cog Nation, the Chairman somehow knowing that there weren't any tasks for Field Offices. It all made SENSE.

Even the fact that Dr. D was their guard. No Toon would have any ammo that could take him out. The stickiest of cream pies would only Toon him up.

It had been a good fifteen minutes now, and Curly was still too stunned to be angry with him.

Lefty wasn't. She flung an arm around Curly and pulled her into a tight huddle. "Curly, it's not your fault that some cute li'l blue Toon turned out to be a Backstabber in disguise!" Her voice had its claws out, slashing at Dr. D.

Curly's head bobbed weakly on her limp neck. The VP, Dr. D – she knew they weren't her fault. But the idea that they could be plunging headfirst into stories that couldn't have happy endings made her feel like she was staring down a row of Big Wigs with her gag bag hanging empty at her side.

Dr. D didn't seem to notice. He just stayed bent over some doodaddy control panel, his shoulders tensed toward each other as if he were some strange half-Cog-half-Toon creature.

Cog. Toon. What did those even MEAN anymore?

When Dr. D finally said something, his voice was so low Curly wouldn't have even recognized it – if it hadn't been for the familiar choke in it. "You think you two are the only ones who wish it hadn't worked out this way? I tried to warn you, Curly, truly I did. And yet you insisted on poking into matters that are none of your concern!"

He said it all lofty, the way the Chief Justice would've, and that was what wound up bringing Curly's hackles to life. "So – what? A fake betrayal wasn't enough; you had to pitch me a real one, too?"

Dr. D swiveled his wheeled stool around to not-quite-meet Curly's eyes with his miserable ones. "It was never anything personal," he said. "I was merely doing my job."

A Cog with feelings. I'm talking to a Cog with feelings.

Curly didn't have any answers. She only had her next question. "What about the VP being reprogrammed? Did you help with THAT?" she demanded.

Dr. D's ears flapped from side to side. "Absolutely not. I had nothing to do with that." He turned back to the control panel and fiddled with one of the less important-looking dials. "This got way out of control," he added in a mumble, probably more to himself than to Curly.

Uh, haven't you always wanted to talk to a Cog with feelings?

Curly stuffed the rage back into her belly to let it explode later. "Then why?" she asked. "Why would you join the Cogs in the first place? Did they threaten you? Tickle you until you broke?"

Lefty hissed under her breath, as if to say, I wouldn't give him that much credit.

Sure enough, the ears flapped again. "No," Dr. D said. The words were coming out in choppy bursts he didn't seem to have much control over. "No, I was never coerced."

Whatever that meant.

"They…they appreciated me," Dr. D said at last.

"We appreciate you!" Curly's howl was going so shrill, even a bunny's fur would have fluffed out at the sound of it.

"You do!" Dr. D hurled back. He started to smack his heel against the panel's leg, the way a 15-Laffer would kick a Cog building when they couldn't do anything to remove its ugliness. "No one else does."

Dyslexia popped into Curly's brain, quickly joined by, You're the only one who's ever been nice to me.

She leaned forward and for a second didn't even care about her gloves smudging as she pressed the palms to the cage floor. "Tell me."

Dr. D's forehead seized up. Curly knew pain when she saw it. "No Toons ever recognized my genius!" he wailed. "I knew I was smart, and I would have done great things for them, if only they would have let me."

Curly could feel Lefty holding back the cookoo sign.

"Everything I ever invented, they said they 'had no use for,' or they blew it off because I hadn't worked all the bugs out." Dr. D lifted his lip in a pinched sneer he must have picked up from an Ambulance Chaser. "I was the one who thought up teleport holes. I was the one who built the prototype. But do you think anyone saw their potential?"

"Guessing not?" Curly squeaked.

"You guess correctly!" The wheels gave a metal-on-metal shriek as Dr. D spun the stool back in their direction, finger stabbing the air. "They said I was a quack scientist and a mad fool, even though the holes were perfectly functional – simply because when you used them, you landed upside-down on the ceiling of your destination."

Curly gasped. Of course. The Cog Nation holes. On the ceiling.

Those hadn't been stolen and handed over. Dr. D had invented them himself.

Dr. D sniffed – Curly had a feeling it was supposed to be Chief-Justice-style, but it was more the pre-tears type. "And everyone who had ever teased me said, 'What did you expect? He's the guy who can't spell his own name, when it's three letters and a period!' Yet when that fool Gyro Gearloose –"

"Do NOT call Gyro a fool!" Curly burst out. Even her sympathy only went so far.

Dr. D startled, his backside coming halfway off the seat. As he scooted himself back into place, Curly watched him play with his belt like any other Toon would in an awkward spot. It sent a pang right through her – a pang that only got bigger when he said, "Yes. Well. When Gyro came out with his teleport hole, it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. No one could shut up about what a genius he was – how BRILLIANT his idea was – how SMASHING a success it was going to be! No one remembered that I! Did! It! First!"

With each syllable, he chopped a foot down. Probably woulda been more dramatic if they hadn't been several shrimpy inches off the ground.

Terrifying – but pitiful.

When Curly looked at him, she remembered all the VP's glares with his vulnerable cross-eyes peeking through. She was torn between smacking Dr. D up the side of the head and going into coaxing-a-scared-Doodle mode.

Lefty knelt down, like she was giving her backside a rest from pressing the bars. "Is this the part of the story where the bad guy reveals his evil plot?" she called.

Dr. D. sniffed, closer to the Chief Justice this time. "No," he said, in what Curly could only describe as a pout. "I am not revealing any more of the Cogs' plan. And call them the 'bad guys' if you will, but at least they could see me for what I was."

Don't say "a traitor," Lefty! Please don't say it.

"They weren't all, 'Oh, no, come back to us when your ideas are perfect!' I approached that first Flunky, showed him my blueprints, and asked for a job – he nearly fainted with joy."

Or whatever the Cogs felt.

"They saw me as their single most powerful ally." Dr. D spit out a noise that was too high-pitched to be a Cog's weird metal "laugh," but it didn't have any Toon-warmth to it. "A spy. It took a while to ease the Chairman's suspicion, but he took me on soon enough. He snapped up all my inventions and was more than willing to use them."

And to use YOU, too.

It was the most desperate, stupid thing, and Curly wasn't sure she could stand to be in the room with it anymore. She hadn't checked her meter recently, but she was pretty sure she was closer to crying than Laffing.

That was when it hit her.

"Of course!" Curly cried. She pointed through the bars at Dr. D, who looked like it took everything in him not to shrink away. "I just realized what's weird about you!"

"Really? Just now? And only one thing?" Dr. D said – in a hard bark that still couldn't pull off Cog-flat.

Okay, he has SOME sense of humor left. We can work with that, right?

"Your Laff meter." Curly shifted her point. "It's full, but it's not closed up. There are still teeth showing. Like you're missing some."

Dr. D bugged the browns at her. Now that, that was the puppy dog she'd helped out of Lawbot Headquarters before he could la-la-la-la himself right into a Spin Doctor.

"You're not happy," Curly finished softly.

Because something in her felt tender. She needed to grab that before anger took over.

Dr. D jerked his neck away from her, his arms stiffening into a fold. He seemed as completely lost as the rest of the Chairman's. . . well, his flunkies. Mad got put on hold for a sec.

Curly squatted down on her ankles and reached her hand toward Dr. D, a gazillion feet below her. "Do you know what the Chairman's planning to do to the Toons?"

This was the point in cartoons where the bad guy always gave away his evil plan. And it ached so bad in Curly that she'd just accepted Dr. D's role as a "bad guy."

Dr. D did a half-turn to shoot them a smug glare that didn't rest on their faces. "Sentence them to eternal sadness."

Now the bark was cold, steely without actual steel. Curly backed up a few hopefully-not-too-noticeable steps and shivered when her short sleeve brushed a bar.

"Okay, SEE?" she said – screamed – leaping away from it before it could rot her, too. "That's pretty intense!"

"And you're okay with that?" Lefty added.

Curly had the instant, ugly image of some kind of blah-gray Cog contract dangling under Dr. D's nose. Of the Chairman speaking to Dr. D low and soft, with his own polluted remix of the salesman-smile he'd passed on to the VP. Of Dr. D giving in and signing away – probably in proper cursive – everything he was, everything he ever could have been, right into the Chairman's slimy little hands.

Make that HUGE hands.

"They deserve it," Dr. D. said. His voice warped, as if big ol' honkin' sobs wouldn't be far behind.

Only that twist kept Curly from busting out of the cage and beaning him over the head. "What about me?" she fired back. "Do I deserve it?"

That was a risky question, but Curly saw Dr. D's entire backbone flinch from behind. "No," he muttered. "You – you were kind to me, Curly. This is no way to pay you back." He straightened his bony shoulders. "I'll ask the Chairman to grant you immunity."

Curly didn't even know how to RESPOND to that.

Lefty did. "Uh, hello?" she hissed. "Since when does the Chairman give anyone favors?"

Dr. D sagged until Curly thought he might have gone sad himself. "I can try," he whispered, sounding like he was mostly talking to himself again.

It nailed Curly right between the eyes like a well-aimed pie: how that grasping, last-chance try felt when it was the only weapon you had left. She shook the bars. "And it's not just me, Dr. D! I have friends! I have people I love! They have other friends! There are soooooo many good Toons out there, Dr. D, and you're gonna let them be miserable forever just because some stinkheads were awful to you?"

A storm gathered in Dr. D's clenched-arm pose. "You don't know what they can be like."

"Oh, I don't, huh?"

Curly was surprised at how sharply her temper snapped across the tower. She thought, strangely, that no one would recognize these growling pooches as the sweet friends they'd been three hours ago.

"You?" Dr. D raised a disbelieving eyebrow, one that didn't look half as smooth as he must have been counting on.

Don't go off on the guy. Curly tried to talk louder than the roaring in her head. Things are nasty enough already, but. . . ERRGH!

Lefty piped up while Curly was still gulping back her no-holds-barred side. "Uh, yeah, her. Trying to make peace with the Cogs doesn't always sit well with some Toons. Especially not the ones who….ya know…love the fight."

Pangs attacked Curly from every direction. She would rather do just about anything than bring these back up and poke them until they popped.

Make that anything EXCEPT sitting in this cage while the Cogs conquered Toontown and the real VP slipped away from her forever.

"They thought I was betraying them." Curly worked her lips so she wouldn't spit the next part. "Used to follow me around, poking at me with their Rakes and Fire Hoses, calling me 'Cog-lover.' Immature much?"

If her sarcasm sounded pathetic, it was because she was splintering inside. But if she could reason with this guy, the jailer who'd already admitted he didn't want to be doing this…maybe she could still find a way to help save everyone.

Dr. D gave an I-hear-ya snort. This whole thing was surreal.

"But, ya know, Gags don't hurt a Toon. They didn't really bother me until the leader got old enough to CJ," Curly continued.

Dr. D smiled half a smile. "He hates being called 'the CJ,' you know."

"Yeah, I figured. Anyway, this guy came back to bug me, and then he remembered he had a Summons." Curly's throat thickened. "That he could do whatever he wanted with."

The sudden jerk of Dr. D's body told Curly he was starting to piece the story together. "Surely he didn't….?"

"Yeah," Curly said, her voice as wooden as any emotional Toon could make theirs. "He summoned a Cog and made me watch while he destroyed it."

She'd never forgotten. The whir of about-to-pop machinery, the way the Pencil Pusher dusted himself off like he had to be the boss of one last thing, his eyes glancing helplessly at Curly for the rescue she couldn't give him.

Curly sat back and hugged her knees. No Cog attack had ever wiped her out so bad.

Dr. D whined, his mouth quivering. "And you could do nothing." He sounded ready to break into tears if he'd said one more letter. Not exactly Mr. Tough Crust.

"No, I couldn't," Curly said. "They don't exactly make Gags that can help Toons help Cogs. Besides – it was all over so fast – I froze up."

"Despicable," Dr. D muttered. Kinda ironic coming from him, but Curly couldn't SAY that to the blue face crumbling right in front of her.

Lefty's whiskers were so bristly you could have used them for paintbrushes. "Yeah, now look what you did!" she lobbed at Dr. D. "She hates telling that story."

"Understandably so." For an instant, everything on Dr. D seemed to soften, before he smoothed his bitter self back into place and turned toward Curly. "And can you honestly say you don't want him to be sentenced to eternal sadness?"

Curly's own back froze even as Lefty was stroking it. It had NEVER been more tempting to lie.

Except she was too brittle right now to throw together anything fake.

"Part of me does," Curly said. "Not a little part, either."

Dr. D jerked back, but when Curly waited for the "Gotcha" – that evil gleam Cogs got when they knew one more good hit would take you out – to glimmer its way into his eyes, it never showed up. They stayed round beneath folding fur.

It sent another thunderstorm through Curly – that it wasn't some foreign, metal-skinned enemy stealing her joy. It was another Toon, another bouncy critter with bright colors and zany clothes, who should have been training for his fourth Gag track instead of building stuff for the Chairman.

"But here's the thing," Curly said out loud, because she would freak if she let her thoughts go any farther. "I told Flippy about that guy, and he got in major trouble. We're talkin' the Toon Council took away all his Summons and made it so he couldn't CJ again until he'd attended Professor Pete's eight-week How To Play Well With Others class. Dr. D – they'd do the same thing for you if you'd let 'em. They can get you justice!"

"I'm getting my own justice," Dr. D said without peeling his gaze from a button that didn't need to be looked at that closely.

"No, that's revenge."

"Justice. Revenge." Dr. D shrugged again. "Same thing."

Curly snorted to cover the feeling that she'd just been Paradigm-Shifted. "You've definitely spent too much time with the Lawbots," she said.

Dr. D showed his big white teeth – you couldn't call it a grin, not with the I-am-so-over-this behind it, even if it looked to Curly like he was fighting to get it there. "You can't fault them for their interior decorating skills."

"Huh?" Lefty blurted, sounding more like the VP than the VP himself had for about two weeks.

Bur Curly had known – or THOUGHT she'd known – Dr. D long enough to translate. "DA Offices are pretty," she explained to Lefty.

"Ohhhhhh." Lefty chopped her arms into a fold over her belly button. Curly knew it was just frying her from the inside that she couldn't argue with that.

The pictures of neatly terrifying Lawbot HQ weren't helping Curly keep a cool head, either. The fancy marbled floors. The lights brighter than any other place where Cogs spent their time. The sanded-wood bookcases that could trap you, the only bookcases Curly had ever disliked in her life.

And the giant, red-with-rust Goon lying deactivated in a random corner, probably just to make Toons shake in their shorts.

How could any Toon – traitor or not – feel at home in there?

Curly rattled the bars again with a coulda-been-deafening clang. "Listen to me, Dr. D!" she yelled, in the same sheer desperation she'd seen in the VP at the edge of the cliff. "Because I know how Toons can be mean! Believe me, I understand."

"You do n –" Dr. D seemed to forget his next line partway through it and thumbed a switch six or seven times, blinking the bulbs above the cage on and off, on and off.

"Yeah, I do! And you know who else can be mean?"

Dr. D lifted his shoulders again. It was so exaggerated it would have felt sarcastic coming from anyone else.

"Cogs."

Both Lefty and Dr. D spun around to gape at Curly. She would have been gaping at herself if she hadn't already started her next sentence as fast as it was appearing in her brain. "Do you know why I know so much about the VP? I'm a geek."

Dr. D's fingers stopped in midair. "Beg pardon?" he managed to gasp.

Lefty gave Curly a shove that landed her back on her bohunkus. "Lemme tell this one."

"Go ahead," Curly said. It'd be too much of a brag coming from me, anyway.

Lefty rearranged her legs anything-but-daintily inside her flowered skirt and plopped them out in front of her, adding a couple dramatic ahems. "During the first VP battle, Curly flipped out. She was running back and forth and throwing pies at everything that moved. Had NO idea what she was doing – not that the rest of us did, either," she continued after a stinkeye from Curly.

Dr. D simply watched. If he'd so much as twitched an eyebrow, Curly might have just chucked a Bamboo Cane at him.

"But when we were done and went back to report to the Toon Council, Curly remembered the battle better than anybody. All the details – the name of the uber who went sad, how much damage each of the VP's attacks did, what order he used them in." Lefty's voice was sprinkled with pride, and it did Curly's heart good. "Flippy and them realized how important it was to have all that info, so they asked Curly to be their official note-taker on the Bosses. Well, ya know, all one of him back then."

"Ahhhh." Dr. D nodded almost wisely. "So it became your job to record all those details."

"Exactly." Curly decided to go ahead and answer, since the question had been aimed at her and not Lefty. Dr. D hadn't even made eye contact with the kitty yet. "I learned to tell when he was getting ready to swipe or to squish or to jump. Still got hit plenty, but when I taught the signs to some other people, they were able to plan some strategies around it."

"And then, of course, there was the Gear Shower." If Curly hadn't known better, she would have thought Lefty was enjoying this.

"Right! The Gear Shower!" Curly said. "I noticed that whenever the VP did that, his eyes got all big and wild, like he was as scared as any of us. And he always did it when he came out of a stun, sometimes twice if it were a really nasty stun. I started to think he didn't have control over it, that it just HAPPENED to him because we were gumming up his works." She felt heat rise to her cheeks – it all seemed like personal business, just like a Toon getting sick.

"Turned out she was right," Lefty said, and the heat flared hotter. "Saved a lot of stunners a lot of Laff."

"That changed things." Dr. D's voice didn't poke at Curly and tease her.

Weird. I might thank him for that later – after I drag his sorry tail down to the Resistance.

That image didn't comfort Curly. As strong as the urge to wallop Dr. D was right now, she wasn't drooling for his punishment. She had no idea whether that meant she was actually nice, or if she just couldn't accept the fact that she maybe possibly couldn't reform EVERYone she met.

Which brought her straight back to the VP. "It did change things," Curly said. "Once you look into someone's eyes and understand something about them, it feels wrong to be throwing them off a cliff."

Could be why Dr. D wasn't looking at them.

"I . . . it was still my job to observe him, and I didn't mind that a bit." Curly examined a soot-smear on the sole of her foot. "And the more I observed, the more I noticed one thing over and over and over again."

"Something good?" Dr. D asked. He was already waggling around in a perfect Confused emotion.

"Something very good." Curly put one hand to her chest, not quite getting whether the ache in it was from being too full or too empty. "I saw that the VP might have hated OUR guts pretty bad – but he was good to his Cogs. He loved promoting them, and if you looked at him right when one of them was biting the dust?"

Eager silence.

"I don't know if Cogs have hearts or what, but something was breaking in him."

Dr. D made a low, just-slipped-out noise. Curly took that as permission to finish.

"He was never nice to me before I went to him with the truce idea. But I saw that he was nice to somebody – that he could be nice – and I knew we could work with that." Curly could guess before the next sentence came out that her words would be watering. "I knew, Dr. D."

"The point?" Dr. D said, his voice loaded with impatience. "I seem to have missed it?"

Yeah. So had Curly. Everything was swimming – the only detail that pushed through were Lefty's eyeteeth, bared at Dr. D. "She has feelings," Lefty said, "you little Cog – "

As much as Dr. D deserved that and more, Curly put up her hand. The last time this guy had gotten mad, he'd gone and sold himself to the Chairman. She was no scientist, and that was NOT an idea she wanted to experiment with.

"The point is," Curly said, fingers crossed that she was sounding braver and steadier than the wobbly Jell-O she was inside, "I know Toons can be mean. So can Cogs, blah-blah-blah. But I learned something from studying the VP all this time: If there's even a scrap of good in even one of them, they're worth fighting for."

"I wish I could share that optimism," Dr. D finally said.

Curly sighed, feeling like her bones were about a thousand years old. If this was how Lil Oldman felt every day, it was no wonder he made all the younger Toons run back and forth for his toads and his caviar. "I wish you could, too."

Another seriously-how-long-can-this-last pause. It gave Curly just long enough to cook up another desperate-hope plan.

"Okay, maybe you can't. But you have a choice," she told the stiff little figure that cringed at a hug. "Let us go. You can still do the right thing!"

Dr. D scoffed. "Why? The VP did, and look where it got him!"

Ow.

Actually, it was the most painful thing he could have possibly said. Curly released her grip on the bars and was about to fold into a sad ball when Toon-spirit took over for her. "At least the VP didn't choose to turn into what he is now!" she cried. "Is this what you want to be remembered for?"

"It's better than not being remembered at all!" Dr. D shot back.

"Is it?"

Curly caught herself heading for a growl and clamped her lips tighter. As cheesy as it had been coming from the VP's teeth, "wrath" was coming closer and closer to describing it. But she was saving that up for the Chairman. The leader whose schemes made everyone in Toontown unsafe, even a worker as loyally nasty as the CEO.

She thought of that Chinese Checkerboard at Acorn Acres. She never had puzzled out exactly how to play, but she thought there were pieces that did their duty and then got discarded.

One of those pieces was watching her with a smirk he couldn't quite convince her was real. "The VP's trying to fight it!" Curly said.

Lefty perked up, more than Curly would have thought that news would perk her. "You really think so?"

"Yeah." Curly's head didn't bend toward her toes at all, even with the huge chunk out of her Laff meter. This was one area where she was an expert. "I saw him. He wanted to be nice to his Cogs – he wanted to tell them they'd done a good job. He just…couldn't."

Lefty rubbed her chin. "He did seem a little more like the VP when he thought I was calling him fat. And he misses...himself. Gosh, this is weird!" Ideas flipped through her green eyes like the pages in a Schticker Book. "Maybe if you can combine those two things, you could draw him out."

Curly flung her arms up toward the smoggy sky. "Yeah! When he comes back to dump us off the cliff or whatever, I'll just say, 'Hey, Chubbo! I know you're still in there somewhere!' That'll work!"

"Well…." Lefty's giggle was sheepish. "…maybe not."

She didn't even have it all the way out before Curly was yelling, "Dr D!" again. "The Chairman doesn't give a rip about you!" she added. "Not to be mean, but he doesn't! All he cares about is that he gets to rule Toontown, and everyone else is just in the way! The VP knows that, and that's why he was trying to break away from him!"

A muscle might have twitched in Dr. D's face. Maybe.

Curly dropped down to her gravest, most gut-punching pitch. "He figured that out all by himself. Do you really want to go down in history as the Toon who wasn't smarter than the VP?"

It was a two-for-one low blow, Curly knew, but Dr. D's indignant drawing-up was pretty much what she'd been counting on. He spun around, mouth already poised to shoot back a reply that wasn't coming to him. Nonsense choppy things that could have passed for a jammed Cog propeller sputtered out of him instead.

"Look, we can make it look like you didn't let us go!" Curly had flown past desperate by now, straight into can't-fail-can't-fail-can't-fail. "Tell them I overpowered you!" It was the last sentence she could throw at him.

Dr. D's snort was juicier this time, and it echoed. "As if you could overpower me."

"No, she couldn't. But I can."

All three Toon heads jerked toward the metallic voice clicking from the doorway. It was the carbon copy of the creepy posters hanging outside the Field Offices, right down to the curlicue mustache.

The Mover & Shaker crossed the room in no-nonsense strides, skinny arms pumping at his sides. As soon as he was in the shadow of the cage – without so much as a, "Watch out, Toon, you're on shaky ground" – he began to stomp the floor with all his smallish-but-still-metal might.

Lefty jumped. Curly forgot to, but they were so high up that they were way out of his range. Dr. D, on the other hand, belly-flopped onto Cog-floor – that had to hurt.

It did. Red numbers that the speed boost in Curly's head couldn't take in flashed above him.

The unhappy-full Laff meter started to plummet.

The Mover & Shaker kept pounding, longer and harder than battle programming would let him go in a single turn. The very second Dr. D's Laff meter turned green and stuck its tongue out, the 'Shaker flipped the lights on with a loud drone that covered the Sad song.

Dr. D's shoulders and neck all pulled in toward his chest. Lower lip trembling, he shrunk forlornly out of sight.

The Mover & Shaker gave a professional sniff and grasped the lever that had been yanked firmly up to the top and practically Duck-taped there. Curly guessed it controlled the cage.

Ya know, especially now that he's pulling the thing down, and the cage goes with it.

The cage hit the ground with a thump that even Curly barely heard. Unless the VP's reprogramming had given him bat sonar or something, he wouldn't have a clue that the impossible had just occurred.

"What the HECK just happened?" Lefty shouted – in a whisper.

But Curly was able to talk normally for the first time in hours. "You're breaking us out?" she asked as the cage door squeaked open as if to answer her.

The Mover & Shaker nodded, short and to the point.

"Why?"

"Because I've heard of your work, Miss Megaquack," he said, not even budging the Sellbot smile. "And I believe you want the real VP back as much as I do."

~Dr. D is a blue dog wronged-mad-scientist-bent-on-revenge. My other main obsession is Kim Possible. You do the math. :P

*gives out virtual jellybeans to everyone who reviewed*~