Home To Roost A Not-So-Tiny Toons Tale by Simon Barber 9

Chapter Eleven

A few miles to the East of Acme Acres, the expensively engineered retro-gothic towers of Perfecto Prep reared towards the snowy skies. It was the last day of term, and a procession of limousines, helicopters and other exclusive vehicles was steadily emptying the place of its students.

Variola Rat stood at the triple-glazed balcony windows in the junior dorm room over the main gates, looking down at the departing crowds. "Like other, lower class rats from a sinking ship," she yawned. "They try so hard to impress, on the way out. I bet half those limos are just rented."

"Probably going to drop their fares downtown at the bus station," her comrade LaToya Di Renarde, a platinum fox, suggested slyly.

"No doubt. What a bunch of Type Nines * ", Variola said, knowingly, her naked tail swishing. "So, are you heading back to the old homestead?"

"No… I'm off for three weeks skiing, at an exclusive resort in the Even Rockier Mountains. The plane leaves tonight. Should be fun. You're not going home either, Variola?" LaToya had heard much of Variola's neighbourhood in BosToon, a suburb so genteel that even the buskers on the street corners wore eighteenth century French Royal Court costumes and played harpsichords.

"Too far. Anyway, Mother's away, she's on a play-and-business trip at ACME's expense. They gave her an award, you know." Variola grinned. "Saved their bacon in a lawsuit, she did. Completely smashed and ruined the consumer protection group that brought it, for thirty extra points!"

"Cool," LaToya nodded. "What was the case?"

"Someone tried to sue ACME for claiming they only sold 'Quality Products' after his brand-new ACME autonomous bacon slicer ran amok in the street," Variola reminisced happily. "Luckily it was only downtown, nobody important got hurt. Mother proved he hadn't checked the guarantee said 'Good quality' or even 'Acceptable Quality"… ACME just said it was 'Quality' and Mother proved everything has some sort of quality, one way or another."

"Smart work. Must remember that one in class next term," LaToya mused. She and Variola were joint top of the Ethics class, and had learned much from the still ruinously seductive Professor Hatta Mari. That was one pigeon even the cats had to beware of, she thought as she smiled inwardly. That week they had been set an Ethics essay for the holidays: 'My enemies' enemy is only that; not my friend. But you don't have to tell them so. Let them find out the hard way. Discuss.'

"Anyway," Variola said "This Christmas I'm staying locally with my sis Rhubella, slumming down there in Acme Acres. Set me a challenge, she did. She's said if I can work out the real reason she married a skunk girl from Acme Loo, I'll have beaten almost everyone in her graduate year. I aim to do that." Variola remembered attending their wedding that Summer at Acme Acres' Futilitarian Wedding Chapel (a religion that taught all religions were of equal pointlessness, but liked to put on a good formal ceremony for Toons who wanted such). Fifi LaFume had been at her most impressive, more than living up to her family name; when the Futilitarian vicar had invited her to 'kiss the bride' the skunkette's scent glands had gone off like a smoke grenade.

"Impressive." LaToya did not wish her comrade good luck; that was not the Perfecto way. "Almost everyone, eh? Do you know who got the answer right? Could be a good clue."

"Sure. Margot Mallard. Yes, the famous one. Our Ethics tutor Hatta Mari has had a lot to say about her, remember? Good thing I haven't got a deadline on this one." Variola nodded significantly. "Yes, it's a toughie."

"You get a question right that only Margot Mallard answered, and you'll be scoring big-time." LaToya prophesied.

"That's my idea. And I'm doing this by myself. I'm not inheriting any favours. Unlike some." Variola nodded down towards one of the departing stretch limousines. "That guy only got in here through his Mother's influence. Tries to lord it over us because of his Mother's cash. He'll come to grief, soon enough."

"Yeah. And he's not the only one. Those mamma's boys are going to crash and burn. Bunch of Oedipus wrecks," LaToya quipped. "How we'll laugh at that!"

"We shall." Variola turned, and yawned. "The housemaids have everything packed for me in the hall. Just a matter of waiting till my ride turns up. Not sure what my sis is sending, but she said it's impressive."

LaToya pointed at a cloud of snow approaching, being kicked up by a vehicle climbing the hilltop towards them, not bothering with the road. "That's not a stretch limo. It's a Most_Terrain vehicle. I don't know anyone in Perfecto who uses them." She watched as the vehicle drew up outside the gates.

Variola winked, heading down towards the hallway having seen Rhubella waving from the turret-top of the Most_Terrain vehicle that had just pulled up outside. "You do now! And yes, it's impressive." Her tail swished eagerly. "So, that's our first term survived. See you next term!" And with that, she was gone.

*Editor's note: Her mother, Yersinia Rat, had gone through her Perfecto career sneering at everyone she despised (which over the years had included just about everyone) for being 'Decemberists", a term she took great care never to explain. Mere Decemberists did not deserve an explanation.

Just a few miles nearer Acme Acres that morning, deep under snow and concrete an avian family was breakfasting in an environment more usual for moles and rabbits. At least, two of them were breakfasting; one was mostly spilling crumbs on Babs' new keyboard.

"I don't believe it. It's not possible." Plucky sat back, rubbing his eyes as if that would change what was on the NumbMindo screen, where he was looking at the Retro Rocket Rumble game forums. "But someone's done it."

"Daddy?" Brandi asked anxiously, looking up at him.

"It's the 'Impossible level' of the game… someone's beaten it. Hey, I remember that guy! It's that South Korean mega-gaming-geek Mr. Park, lives in the middle of New York. "Central" Park, they call him." Plucky pointed out salient features on the screen. "It's the 'Target Duckberg, Evil Empire Central Europe' scenario. How did he…" Plucky broke off, staring at the screen for a minute. "He sent his first strike on Titan 1s going the long way round, fractional orbit over Antarctica and Africa where the radars didn't see them coming. What a cheating hacker! That's not possible! They haven't got the range, no way!"

"How he do it, Daddy?" Candi asked.

"Let's see…." Plucky peered at the game logs. "Oh, come on. Swapped the Titan's warhead for one off an old Corporal missile? That can't work, even if you recalculated the whole trajectory. It's lighter, sure, less throw weight gives more range, but… it's not a full ICBM. That nosecone won't survive re-entry at that speed!" Casually tinkering with finely engineered rocket science seemed a perfectly sensible idea to him; he knew Toons who spent far more time rebuilding their cars than driving them, and Plucky was sure bored launch crews had passed the time upgrading and customising their 'birds' while they waited for the red phone to ring. In the game expansion packs there was mention of optional go-faster stripes that could put a few hundred feet per second onto any missile booster for the price of a custom paint-job.

As he looked at the replay his eyes went wide open, and he laughed. "I see what he did! He never re-entered them at all! He popped them off at the top of the atmosphere, blinded the ABM * radars of the Eisner Line. And his second launch came the fast way, depressed trajectory over the North Pole a minute later, blew Duckberg clear into orbit! Gotcha!"

Brandi and Candi exchanged careful glances, and nodded in sync. "Show us how, Daddy."

"See? This is how it all fits together." Plucky pointed at the trajectory on screen, glad his daughters were taking a healthy interest in normal things at last. "You don't aim for a target on the ground – you aim for the booster to quit boosting when it reaches a spot right up at the edge of space… all you have to do is get the warhead right there, doing just the right speed, and… gravity does the rest. Like throwing a ball. That's why it's called a ballistic missile."

Candi nodded dutifully, spotting the projected track curving down towards a spot on the map. "And when it gets there, Daddy?"

Plucky paused. The whole point of the game was to score points, with an authentic retro-chic delivery vehicle hitting the target or airburst at just the right altitude over it for maximum effect. What it actually did to the military-religious target and surrounding crowds clustered around the hot dog stalls and concession stalls, was something he rarely put much thought into. You could quite spoil the fun, thinking too much about that. "I think of it as… delivering a bucket full of instant sunshine. Yes, that's it."

Brandi thought about the snowy darkness outside. "Sunshine is good," she declared.

"That's my girl," Plucky beamed.

Candi looked at the screen. There were extensive schematics for most of the rockets in the game, complete with wiring diagrams and support structures including for some models huge spherical vacuum flasks that stored super-chilled liquid oxygen for indefinite periods. "We read this, Daddy?"

"Sure, sweety. You do that, while I'll head out and get us some more breakfast." The drake ambled down the corridor to the Bunny family kitchen, where a refrigerator bolted to the wall faithfully did its job with no visible means of support.

Candi reached out to talk with the metal Manitou not far away in the rock; it had sat patiently for so very long, until it had become self-aware at a level the ducklings could talk to. It knew what it was, as much as any living thing knew their body, and the equivalent of aches and pains had grown over the long years without maintenance. As the chicks followed where it indicated, distant patches of corrosion healed, and electrical connections were re-made. "This is hard," she stated. "Tired."

"Yes." Brandi nodded. The duckling's small brow furrowed in thought. "Remember Running Bare, what he do? Drink the storm?"

The twins shared a memory of the hawk shaman gathering energy for a spell, standing on a hilltop while storm clouds gathered around him. He had reached up to the powers of Nature, gathering them in and multiplying his own inner strength many-fold.

Candi's eyes went wide. "Feels same," she declared, pointing to where the electrical cable ran through the wall. "Bigger stuff outside." Only two hundred yards away the pylons of a high-tension power line ran through the forest.

The chicks nodded in sync, and cautiously explored the potentials.

Unseen by anyone, in a sealed room a hundred yards along a darkened corridor, a dusty console lit up with a row of red lights. Ten minutes later, one of those red lights turned to green.

* Editor's note: ABM = in Toon parlance, Anvil-Busting Missile.

Outside a row of military-surplus trailers in the foothills of Mount Acme, Unit Four Plus Two had finished their own breakfast rations an hour ago and were ready to move out.

"That was a fine night on the town, a couple of nights ago, with our dear Shirley," Angelina Angelique smiled, the magpie hopping through the snowdrifts towards the road and the Assault Bus stop. "Educational at least – for her."

"Yes – it's good that we can spread enlightenment," Calgari agreed. "A fine restaurant, that 'Wok the Hell!' I couldn't believe she'd never seen deniable food before. Oh, the poor girl. Oh, the deprivation!" He shook his head sadly.

"It's pretty basic, after all," Angelina said. "Having mystery ingredients you can be suitably shocked and horrified at – on camera, anyway – when the authorities finally discover just what flesh was being served there."

"Si! And even vegetarian dishes are deniable. Talking funny vegetables on deniable menu, not funny animals. That some place for Shirley," Tlalocopa said. "Some trick, that. Soon we take her there again, see if she try and bust place up when she find out."

"That'd be fun to watch. I'm told she can really light up the town when her temper goes supercritical," Angelina nodded.

Calgari smiled and shook his head. "I think things are going well enough for our lovely loon. There are many roads to the Dark Side."

"Si! Miss Righteous has much pride, much confidence. She begins to enjoy it, always the looking down on us," Tlalocopa said. "Bueno. We have last laugh. Someday she join us and not even know it, maybe. Till too late."

"Yes. Like the great Inquisitor, Torquemada – he spent his whole life convinced that everything he did was always on the side of good. That justified everything, right?" Calgari mused. "Well, he found out in the end. I'd love to have seen his expression when he turned up at my Master's mansions. Not where he was expecting to get his eternal reward. Not everyone ends up where they expected."

"Long before Satnav, that must have been" Angelina nodded. "Though I'm sure your Master invented that too." According to recent figures, a fair percentage of the world's anger and frustration was engineered by malicious navigation devices deliberately sending Toons up one-way streets the wrong way with heavy traffic of steam-rollers and main battle tanks speeding in the other direction.

Calgari gave her a wave of dark benediction. "So much for the righteous Inquisitor. And since then, I'm told… never a dull moment for him, really."

"Dire!" Angelina exclaimed happily. "Who says life is unfair?"

Just then they spotted Shirley stepping out of her trailer.

"And stepping on the catwalk we see Miss McLoon, she model latest creation of Government Parks Department fashion for the season," Tlalocopa announced brightly. "Is perfect camouflage in all situations – whether against background of green grass, green rocks, or green skies."

"Equipped with the latest in ethical military technology," Angelina took up the theme. "In her hand-woven webbing kit she carries a cyanide pill craft-distilled from organically farmed peach kernels – for use only in absolute emergency, or if it's funny."

"And her extra-vegan ration pack is revised to meet the new Block Seven standard – the ethically aware dessert range no longer contains forced rhubarb," Calgari finished off, smiling. "Naturally, she can't exploit non-consentual vegetables."

"Always thought rhubarb was a fruit, personally" Angelina mused.

Shirley stopped, her bill going up slightly at the sight of her three least-favourite comrades. "Rhubarb's not the only thing that should be like, planted in the ground and fed guano. I see you're at least back in proper uniform today, Calgari."

"He wore a perfectly good one last night, too," Angelina winked. "You should try him that way sometime. He gives good 'Archbishop', if you know what I mean."

Calgari looked sympathetic at the loon's outraged expression. "You know, Shirley… sometimes I could almost think that blasphemy, sacrilege and desecration… they just aren't the things that make you smile."

Shirley sniffed. "Like, I should be taking advice from a Toon whose favourite incarnations were all totally murderous pirates."

"Proper ones, si," Tlalocopa nodded. "Wipeout! No romantic Hollywood swashbuckling posers."

"Just think of us as early eco-warriors," Angelina said. "We capture a ship, recycle the treasure and… return all the crew and passengers to the ecosystem, via the shark route. What's not to like about that?"

"Happy days, indeed. 'We'll flood the hold with cups of gold, and feed the sea with ghosts.' As we did. How did that jolly old song go? I remember a bit of it…" Calgari pulled out his air guitar, and sang from an old Emerson, Lake and Palmer epic once current in the historical age of Prog Rock:

"Six days, off the Cuban coast, when a sail ahead they spied

"Galleon! Of the treasure fleet!" The mizzen lookout cried

"Closer – to the wind, me boys!" Our mad-eyed Captain roared

"And every man, that's alive tonight, will be hauling gold aboard!"

"Spare us!" The galleon begged, but mercy's face had fled

Blood ran, from the screaming souls the cutlass harvested

Driven to the quarterdeck, the last survivor fell

"She's ours, me boys!" the Captain grinned "And no-one left to tell!"

Angelina gave a contented sigh. "Ah. I do so love a happy ending."

The raven bowed modestly, flourishing his air guitar. "That is a true story, my friends. And I know, because… I was that Captain."

Shirley looked down her bill at the raven. "I'm totally not into military drama but I'd give three historical cheers for the Royal Navy. Doing anti-piracy campaigns long before anyone tried ripping off a video tape."

"Ah, Shirley. If only you knew the power of the Dark side of the Farce," Calgari sighed, shaking his head regretfully. "We'll pray for you."

The Number Nineteen Assault Bus pulled up, and Unit Four Plus Two climbed aboard to head out on the day's mission, the Addams Academy Toons taking the back seat. A few minutes later, a flat mitten-like thing of greasy black fur appeared from somewhere and crawled into Angelina's lap. Her eyes went wide as she silently communed with it. "Good boy!" She whispered, a sinister smile on her sharp beak. "Keeping very busy."

Tlalocopa snickered knowingly, relaxing on the seat next to her. She switched on the Assault Bus's wide screen. "Say, it news time!" The Chupocabra enthused. "Our favourite show!"

Shirley looked up at the screen. Her heart sank at the familiar sight of Piers Keenleigh, interviewing a neatly dressed human Toon whose official T-shirt read 'Official Government Spokesperson.' Evidently it was dressing-down Friday in WashingToon.

"Sir, you have an official statement to make from the party supporting Congressman Hitcher?" The collie thrust the microphone forward eagerly.

The Spokesperson nodded sombrely, and pulled out a sheaf of paper that he read from. "Our Party strongly denies any allegations that are, or might be, made concerning Mister Hitcher's super-powers as an agent for Truth, Justice and the American Way. They have no basis at all in fact."

"What unique super-powers in particular are you denying he has, Sir?" Piers peered keenly at his interviewee.

"We utterly deny that he can look in the future and see what heinous deeds completely innocent-seeming Toons will certainly be utterly and heinously guilty of later on. We deny that when he uses his super – I mean, entirely normal and well-trained, axe and chainsaw powers on apparently harmless Citizens, he is in fact saving the world from future consequences far too terrible to publicly discuss ever, or at least at this time." The Spokesperson put the papers back in his briefcase. "We cannot comment further."

"So." Piers turned to look at the camera quizzically. "There we have it, folks. The Government you trust, has issued a public statement on the issue. Why would it feel the need to do that? Is there ever smoke without fire? Questions America will certainly be asking in the rundown to the election." He turned to address another toon, a stork wearing the tweed uniform of a professional Distinguished Academic. "This is Professor Stan Leeson, expert in Super-Power Studies. Professor – assuming for the sake of argument Congressman Hitcher really is a Super-Hero – would that fit with his known… tendencies?"

"Yes, very much so," the Professor gestured with a traditional Academic Briar Pipe (+5 to gesticulating skills.) "The crucial thing with super-heroes is creating a plausible Secret Identity to conceal their true nature. Having a public record as a violently psychotic axe-murderer – that's genius for you. And setting up as a career WashingToon Politician, of all things… who'd have believed it? Nobody. That's just another layer of excellence. So yes, it fits the picture perfectly. And the fact that he'd certainly deny it if ever asked… well, he would, wouldn't he?"

"Thank you, Professor Leeson. And now, on to Congressman Hitcher's recently announced Justice Bill. As his hard-working P.R. Toon has pointed out, the whole point of trial by jury is that a citizen is tried by his peers and equals. We have here today Ms. Ethyl Mercaptan, from the respected WashingToon law firm of Fleecem and Runne, to talk about the proposed bill." He nodded respectfully to the hard-faced skunk-lady sitting presumably downwind of him. "Ms Mercaptan, can you comment on the proposals?"

"Why, I'd be glad to," the power-dressed polecat replied. "Congressman Hitcher has been a victim of our biased and partial so-called Justice system many times. Not once did he have a fair trial! A trial by his peers is what the law says, not by prejudiced non-axe-murdering citizens! What do they know about it?"

"So, 'Don't knock it if you haven't tried it', is that what you're saying?" Piers Keenleigh asked eagerly.

"That's exactly it. Only a jury of his true peers could appreciate the nuances of Congressman Hitcher's chosen form of artistic self-expression by axe or chainsaw, and judge his deeds by their true merits" Ms Mercaptan nodded smugly. "When he is President, we are sure at last Justice will prevail."

"Gross." A brief jab from Shirley's telekinetic power switched off the television. "Like, if he ever gets into the White House, it's time for me to see if really 'Mars wants women' like the old film says. As I'll be so out of here."

"So much for us all to look forward to!" Angelina enthused. "For every medically registered psycho like Congressman Hitcher, I'll bet you'll get dozens of keen amateurs who're just into it for the lifestyle."

"That's the benefit of strong leadership for you. So many people just talk about the overpopulation problem, but you have to admit, he's personally doing something to help. Still, who knows if he'll win? Politics is a dirty game. There's always Congressman Concord on the other side," Calgari mused. "Although he may need a more suitable election slogan if he's going to end up as our Chief of Staff. How about – 'Vote for Concorde – it's a no-brainer decision!'?"

"And he the go-to guy for no-brainer decisions," Tlalocopa nodded enthusiastically.

Shirley moved down the bus to Sergeant Gander. "Like, what's the call-out this morning?"

The tall avian tapped his milspec T-pad significantly. "Where you get any huge magical usage, you're going to get – leakage. Vulnerable Toons will react to it, you get obvious phenomena. And if we trace those, we might get a lead of where it's coming from. Got a few calls to check out in town, reported paranormal events."

Like, fer sure, Shirley's aura nodded, her head overlapping with the T-pad and reading its internal storage the direct way. Like astral footprints – but they leave a dent in Toons' minds, not the ground.

"Maybe we'll get some classics?" Angelina asked brightly from the back seat. "You know, spectral blood running down the walls, TV sets that don't turn off, that sort of thing. Shirley could get pulled through the TV screen into a way cool nightmare world."

"We can only hope," Calgari nodded sagely. "It's not our fault if she's not into that."

As it happened, the first call was a false alarm – the badger reported as speaking in mysterious tongues was wearing a discreet paws-free headset, and on the phone to his grandmother in Albania.

"It used to be, if you saw someone walking down the street shouting to themselves, you'd just reckon they were a loony," Sergeant Gander shrugged as they got back on the bus. "Now they've got phones." He looked around the mini-mall. His feathers bristling slightly at the sight of a shabby stall boasting 'Any phone or computer unlocked. No questions asked. Bulk discounts!'

Doesn't mean they're not a loony, the glowing 'ka' of Pvs. Lewis pointed out sagely, his material body stowed in the trunk.

"Too true." Sergeant Gander nodded to his comatose comrade's spirit form.

The second call proved to be very different. The Assault Bus pulled up outside another suburban shopping mall, an unpretentious place of pre-stressed fibreboard decorated with simulated PVC cladding. Outside, standing in the snow pf the parking lot a pigeon Toon wearing a badge labelled 'Store Manager' was looking in through the windows of UnHappy Shopper, wringing his feather-hands in despair.

Sergeant Gander was first out of the bus. "What's the problem, Sir? We're here to help."

"And we totally deny we're from the Secret Government," Angelina said in a stage whisper, just behind him. "Whoops! What a give-away."

"It's our new sales clerk, Ida," the Manager moaned. "She's only been here a week, and now she's stuck to the ceiling, with all sorts of expensive special-effects going off around her. We spotted a passing Vicar and he went in, but it's not helped."

"We'll take a look," Sergeant Gander promised, signalling his half of Unit Four Plus Two forward while mentally contacting Colonel Fenix.

Inside the store, all the lighting seemed to have blown – but it was still brightly lit by the teenage swan-girl wearing the corporate apron of the UnHappy Shopper chain.

"Avian girl, pinned to the ceiling by unseen forces, astral chain lightning cascading in all directions." Shirley gasped. "Just like that old film 'Poltergeese!"

"Ooh!" Angelina looked up excitedly, getting her camera out. "Maybe she'll do that 'Possessed' thing with her head spinning round and round? That always looks so cool."

Sergeant Gander scratched his head, flipping through a pocket copy of 'The Observer's Book of Psychic Phenomenon.' He frowned, staring at one particular page in it. "Looks like a classic Class Nineteen, young Toon starting to develop untrained psychic abilities, exposed to hostile entity attack."

"Weak spot in the Universe, mind like an unlocked door to the Spirit Plane," Shirley agreed. "Way dangerous. Way tricky to get her back, too."

"We could try tasering Shirley for a while, or that manager?" Angelina asked brightly, dipping into her Hammerspace pocket and pulling out a lightning-crowned cattle-prod the size of a baseball bat. "Or some outwardly innocent-seeming bystanders, who are sure to be guilty of something or other and deserve it really?"

"And that would help… how, exactly?" Sergeant Gander asked, one eyebrow raised.

"Well… surely you've heard of 'no pain, no gain'?" Angelina blinked innocently. "I'm not guaranteeing it'd solve the problem but… if we don't try, how will we ever find out?"

"This Ida, you've like only known her a week, you said?" Shirley asked the manager, who had followed them in.

The pigeon nodded. "Ida. That's the name she gave. But the company aren't fussed about background checks."

Sergeant Gander raised his T-pad, took a photo of the illuminated swan-maid and studied it intently. "Our system says she's on the Missing Persons list. Flew the nest a month ago."

"You said there was a Vicar went in here?" Shirley queried. She looked around. "I totally don't see anyone else in the room."

"Probably sucked into a dimensional rift, or some stuff," Angelina said with evident relish. "Better put him on the Missing Parsons list."

Sergeant Gander looked up at the blank-eyed, writhing figure stuck to the ceiling. "Right. Before that happens to her, we've got to break that psychic focus. Any ideas?"

Shirley's feathers drooped as the team went into heated debate and ruled out a dozen options. She knew one technique her mother had demonstrated – but it was the side of Mother's hobby she was least comfortable with. "Like, we could build a classic Electric Pentacle."

"That might work, if we had the parts. It'd take hours to get an official one out here and set up," Sergeant Gander blinked.

Shirley gave a wry grin. "I was in Calamity Coyote's Improvised Props class at Acme Loo, 'kay? We were into way different things – but I've seen how it's done."

Ten minutes later, a cleared space directly under the pinned clerk had been put to a rather different use than its usual display space for gluten-free mineral water and zero-calorie energy drinks. Enough fluorescent tubes had survived intact to be duct-taped together in a neat geometric shape exactly centred and geometrically precise to the last degree.

"Looks cool," Angelina stared down critically, unwillingly impressed. "But all the fuses in the store have blown. How are you going to power it?"

It was Shirley's turn to give a superior grin. "Like, you've got that anti-tank stun prod packing half a million volts? That should do it."

Despite Angelina's protests about it being a shocking waste of her batteries, she handed the prod to Shirley, who cautiously walked towards the five-pointed star of fluorescent tubes taped out on the ground.

The blank-eyed swan above them stirred, moving for the first time since they had arrived. It seemed to see Shirley and the improvised star, and understand the threat to its beak-hold on the material plane.

TOO LATE, FOOLISH MORTALS, a deep telepathic voice rang out.

"Ooh, I love it when they speak in capitals," Angelina whispered to Calgari, who nodded appreciatively.

"Like, totally get thee gone from this plane, grody spirit," Shirley snapped irritably. "We toast trash like you before breakfast." She thumbed the activating stud of the cattle-prod, and thrust its contacts down to energise the circuit.

The room lit with a brilliant flash – the material glass tubes and duct tape vanished, replaced by a star of white fire. From some great cosmic distance there came a psychic roaring as something was cut off from its hold on Acme Acres and pulled back to its rightful plane. As the voice faded, one last message reached them:

TOO LATE, INDEED! FOR SHE WILL ARISE TOMORROW, AND HER ASCENSION WILL BE TERRIBLE. GIVE MY REGARDS TO SHE OF THE UNSPEAKABLE NAME!

With that, the voice and lights faded, and the swan floated down to the centre of the star burned in the floor.

Shirley caught her, and gently laid her down on the floor. "Like, Ida? We've got you back. Where did that way uncool thing timeshare your spirit off to?"

The swan stirred, and shuddered. "It was a terrible place. Dark stars in a dark sky, and all the angles were wrong,"

"Must be the Private Hell ™ where they send the spirits of dead geometry teachers," Calgari said, a smile on his sharp beak. "After telling generations of maths students they got the wrong answers, they get to see who was right about the angles after all."

"Well, you're back, totally safe now," Shirley reassured the swan. "Back to Acme Acres."

Ida seemed to droop. "Back to working ten hours a day for minimum-wage, at UnHappy Shopper? That's nearly as bad as the other place."

Shirley shrugged, helplessly. "There's nothing I can do about that. It's like, really sad. Because you're a psychic talent, you know?"

"Hold it!" The Manager bustled forwards, looking horrified at the pentacle shaped burns on the floor. "You mean this kind of stuff could happen to her again?"

Shirley inwardly cursed her inability to lie, but spotted her aura standing behind her, tapping an immaterial webbed foot tetchily. "Without training in how to protect herself from that sort of junk… it's mondo possible."

"Ida, you're fired! I'm not having ectoplasm and all that muck in my nice respectable store, scaring the customers," the Manager pointed towards the door. "And I'm docking you the time you were stuck on the ceiling, away from your till!"

"There might be something I can do about that," Shirley whispered to the swan's ear-hole, her psychic senses picking up the presence of Colonel Fenix arriving outside. "My boss, he's totally into finding talents like yours."

Half an hour later, most of Unit Four Plus Two were doing something that Toons would never have associated with top-secret military units – sitting down together in a diner in full uniform, discussing their latest mission. As Shirley realised, that made for a very convincing cover.

"Six black coffees and a camomile herbal tea?" The waitress roller-skated over.

"Over here, please" Colonel Fenix waved. "The tea for Miss Loon there."

"I like my coffee the way I like my sorcery," Angelina said cheerfully. "Very black."

The human Toon waitress, a stunningly statuesque girl in faux-fur lined Eskimo Chic fashion, studied the group with interest. "Y'all from the Parks Department?"

Colonel Fenix nodded pleasantly. "That's what our uniforms say. Of course, this time of year all the parks are tail-deep in snow… so now's the time for indoor staff meetings."

"Guess so." Satisfied she skated off, only pausing to fit ice-skate tips over her skating shoes for a call out to the drive-in part of the diner.

Hal Fenix waited till she was out of earshot. He had been briefed by Sergeant Gander on the events in the store. "So. Sounds like we've got another prophecy. 'She of the unspeakable name', eh? Sounds suitably apocalyptic."

"Like, we've been chasing this elevator sorcerer dude for ages," Shirley suggested. "We know he's planning to raise something way grody, and how he's trying it. But we don't know who he's trying to raise..."

"And we still don't," Hal sighed. "That's a pretty generic name. At least – I don't know of any Entity called that, exactly."

"Mother might know," Shirley said, and instantly regretted it.

Angelina smiled to Ida, who they had brought along with them. "Shirley's the black sheep of her family. Her Mother's a respectable Necromancer and Demonologist. Well-known in sorcerous circles."

"Circles, si! And pentacles," Tlalocopa added.

Hal nodded, considering the idea. "It's worth asking her. For now – Ida, we know you're a runaway. No respectable Government Agency's going to let you on the payroll. But we're a Deniable Agency, and sometimes we can get away without that kind of paperwork. How about tagging along as an Intern? Fifty dollars a day, room and board, and the sort of Education you won't get at that High School you ran out on. Might be more interesting than working a cash till." The bird colonel winked.

"And we're the only kinda dudes who can, like, help you put a lock on that psychic door in your head," Shirley said. "Or we'll find you someone who can."

The swan's eyes went wide. "I'll take it!"

Drinks finished and paid for, they headed back past the UnHappy Shopper store, where they could see the Manager sweeping up alone inside with a disgusted expression. As they passed, Tlalocopa rummaged in her webbing pouch and threw a small item in through the open door, landing unseen behind him. The Chupacabra spotted Shirley's gaze, and winked at her.

Shirley's aura probed what had been thrown, and recoiled in shock. It's that way boosted Misfortune Cookie!

For a second Shirley hesitated, about to shout an alarm. She could prophecy the Manager would pick it up and might well open it. She could stop that happening. But then she cast a glance at Ida. She's one of us now, and look how he treated her. She's worth a store full of that guy, she decided. What happens to him, is his karma.

And getting that Misfortune Cookie out of the way – that's one temptation less for us, her aura agreed. I can totally not believe some of the things you're doing these days!

Live with it, spook-girl, Shirley sniffed on their private channel.

Out in a place difficult to describe to any Toon without the experience of taking higher-planar geometry classes or large quantities of medication, an expedition braced itself for the new day.

"Mmmmm. This place is wild." Babs looked up at Buster contentedly, refreshed after a night that might have been expected to leave them worn out. "Being able to see the back of your own head without a mirror is the least of it around here."

Buster smiled. "And you make the most of it. In six dimensions – the more Babs the better."

"There's things you can do here you really can't, back home." Babs nodded, a thought striking her. "Remember back in India, when we were filming 'Blue Indus'? That temple we shot the dance scenes in had those ancient pictures of local deities. Some of them looked like they were a sort of model sheet of themselves. Drawn in twenty poses at once."

"I remember, Babsy," Buster agreed. "All their different aspects, shown at once – a chorus-line sort of special effect."

"Yes…" Babs looked at her mate quizzically. "If you had to draw me the way we are here, on flat paper – that'd be tricky. To show me all at once. That effect might work."

Buster caught on. "I see what you mean, Babs! You think they strolled through here sometime, and brought their art club and fan club along to sketch them?"

"Could be. Could be." Babs nodded, an unusually thoughtful aspect of her briefly dominant. "Gogo Dodo would know. His family's been here since about forever."

"Plank Time, even, *" Buster agreed. He remembered first meeting Gogo not so very far away, the surreal bird sitting on his throne in Wackyland eating a big pile of bananas and spitting out the pips and skulls in his own inimitable style. "Kind of thing you look for in your Pie-smasher, Marcia?"

( * Editor's Note: in Toon Physics, Plank Time is defined as the first instant of Comedy, when an early life-form spun around and accidentally whacked another with the branch it was carrying. The Fun-damental forces of Slapstick, Drama and Irony split off in the first few seconds of Comedy, but research into high-energy gags in facilities like the Suppercollider have revealed they were united in the beginning.)

"And waste a perfectly good video-games playing computer trying to make sense of it," Babs added, waggling her eyebrows.

Her expression unseen by any earth-based Toons, Marcia frowned. She was used to handling powerful computers such as the ones linked to the sensors measuring the torrents of raw humour particles released by the Suppercollider, which generated thirty or forty GiggleBytes of data a second as custard pies impacted each other at almost the speed of light. "It's way logical that deities go to higher planes."

"And on those planes I bet they fly first class," Babs said, her eyes gleaming. "There's logic!" She liked Marcia, but doubted she would enjoy visiting her world. Mars was an ancient, highly structured society whose comic potential had decayed over the long, strange aeons since they had enough ocean to host a wet T-shirt parade let alone a surfing contest. On her first week at Acme Acres, Marcia had complained about being made to walk most of the way to school barefoot – on Professor Bugs' enquiry, it seemed she passed a thrift store on the way in every day with a charity donation bin; its sign said 'Recycle your old shoes here!' Every time she walked past, Marcia had unquestioningly done so. In a Martian city that would have been an official order and instantly obeyed by all subjects of Queen Tirranee.

"We'd better break camp." Buster nodded. From somewhere not well defined there was a loud special-effects crash as he said so, that made everyone jump.

"Sounds like it's broken, all right," Babs agreed. "So broken – we'll never find the pieces." They rolled up their shelters and set out across the abstract landscape again. Babs and Buster led, paw in paw, with Marcia following under a small floating cloud of gloom and then the two attendants Jackson and Johnson carrying Calamity on the stretcher between them.

"I hope Plucky's staying out of trouble back home. I mean, tomorrow's his big day," Buster said as they walked. "Still – knowing the Pluckster, that might be asking a lot…"

"Sure. His usual reading material, it's something out of that series '101 things Dummies really shouldn't fool around with… for Dummies'." Babs chuckled. "It's a good thing our burrow's only a decommissioned missile silo. You know the video game he was always into."

"Yeah. And a good thing the Toons we bought it from aren't the type to mess up and accidentally leave one behind. I mean, can you imagine ACME ever doing a dumb thing like that?" Buster quipped. "With their reputation?"

For a second both bunnies looked at each other, their ears right down and their expressions troubled.

"Naaahhh…" Babs and Buster suddenly burst out in sync, collapsing onto each other in gales of laughter.

Back in EinsToonian space, Acme Looniversity was starting its final day of term. The revered halls buzzed with excited Toons whose attention was firmly fixed on the three o-clock bell, at which point they would scatter homewards like shrapnel from one of the explosive slapstick classes.

"Oh boy." Mortimer checked his desk and seat for traps as he sat down for the last Memes and Tropes 101 class of term. "Final day. We made it! Holiday time!"

"Enjoy it while you can." In the desk behind him a long-faced bloodhound girl nodded sombrely. "The omens are dire. I read terrible things in my tea-leaves this morning."

"You always do, Cassie," Mortimer refused to be discouraged on such a happy day. Cassandra Bloode was constantly predicting the imminent demise of the Universe at the very least. "You should use tea-bags… they don't leave you messages like 'Die, Cassie, die' every time you look in your cup."

"So ignore me, go right ahead." The bloodhound looked mournful, but that was a species trait. "But don't come crying to me if you get messily devoured by Things From Beyond, in slow-motion, 3-D Technicolor close-ups."

"If that ever happens, I'm sure I won't. Talking of Things from Beyond… here she is." The buck's long ears twitched as the slight hum of anti-gravity generators in the corridor outside announced Shelley's arrival on her Dalek-surplus transport platform. The transporter saved her a lot of time getting around the Looniversity, and saved the janitor Pete Puma's constant complaining about the trails of slime on the floor.

Mortimer forced a smile as the gastropod girl powered down her platform and slithered down to park her tonne of slippery mass behind the desk next to his. She needed no chair, which was just as well considering no seat at the Looniversity would remotely fit her size and shape. Gene Ericson sat comfortably to the left of her, but he famously wore an extra-extra-medium in all clothing sizes.

Hello Mortimer! Hello boys! Shelley's telepathic voice rang out cheerfully, her subtitles now in a festive Christmas-card font. It's a wonderful final day!

Lucretia waved, the gothic mouse dressed in a festive black outfit with a hangman's noose of black tinsel around her neck as a concession to the season. "It is. Darkest day of the year tomorrow. A significant day." Her big round ears twitched gleefully.

Just then the class fell silent as their teacher, Professor Le Pew strolled nonchalantly in. Face-masks and clothes-pegs made a sudden appearance on noses around the room. The helmet visor of Granville Laverne's steampunk power armour clicked shut automatically and the brass and rubber suit bulged slightly at the joints as it went to positive pressure.

"Eh, garcons, madamoiselles, eet eez almost Christmas, non? Ze mistletoe and ze good cheer, are almost 'ere!" The handsome skunk sat on the desk at the front of the room, his two-tone tail waving. "But first – you 'ave anozair day of ze education in ze memes and tropes." He pointed to Gene Ericson. "First, we shall see what you 'ave learned zis term, non? Ze meme. La definition, if you please."

The human Toon cleared his throat, and stood up. "A meme is a bundle of ideas and beliefs that hang together – and can take on a life of their own. They can behave like living things in that they can move from one environment to another without anyone planning it."

The skunk nodded, pleased. "But yes! Anozair student, un example, s'il vous plait." He pointed at Mortimer.

Mortimer stood up. He had been exposed to a very quotable meme, second-hand. "Like right now, there's nearly as many Christmas Trees being decorated in Japanese cities as in Acme Acres. Even though the Toons hanging the stockings up are likely Shinto or Buddhist. They saw Christmas and thought, 'that looks neat, let's get one of those,' even if it makes no sense to them religious-wise."

"Tres bon!" Professor Le Pew relaxed. "Anozair example, class?"

Shelley raised her stinging tentacle in the air. At the teacher's nod, her telepathy flooded the minds of the class with a replay of her date with Mortimer – a standard kind of social event, the dinner in town, Mortimer escorting her home, and the traditional goodnight kiss.

Mortimer's ears glowed bright red with embarrassment as the girls in class all excitedly whispered about that last bit as Shelley had hiked up her shell a few inches further than usual and indicated just where. What was the big deal? He had just kissed her on her doorstep, like he had seen done as standard in a hundred movies.

"It must be handy being able to re-shape your own biology," Lucretia whispered to Cassie as Shelley broadcast a candid diagram of her recent body developments. "You'd have to really understand cell by cell how it all worked, though. I mean, like know exactly what your gall bladder's doing, and how. Not that she has one, looks like. Though I bet she could if she really wanted to."

"And I guess it's much easier to grow new bits modelled on existing ones, just re-purposed," Gibson Goat mused, the cyberpunk's head-up display calling up 3-D images of standard mollusc biology for comparison. "What's that new bit, going into to her mantle cavity? Looks like she copied a chunk of her venom duct, and scaled it up a bit…." He considered the various systems involved, and nodded appreciatively. "Getting a new nerve net properly wired into the fun centres of the brain looks like the hard part."

"Oh, yes. A girl could have hours of fun playing with the fine-tuning," Lucretia snickered. "Quite enliven a wet afternoon."

"A wet afternoon? Where she's from, that would be most days," Cassie agreed.

Shelley's broadcast mercifully shifted to her home life at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Life in the cold dark was literally an uphill struggle – cities built on the downward-moving conveyer belts of ocean plates had to keep rebuilding over the centuries as each lowermost level was buried and crushed by the ever-shifting ooze as continents thunderously crashed at impact speeds of several millimetres a year.

"Explains why nobody ever found a fossil of Shelley's ancestors, with them all living down there," Granville said speculatively, his voice sounding tinny through the brass speaker grill of his armour "Anything stops moving uphill, you don't need to bury it – the environment does it for you."

"And down-town there is really, really down," Cassie confirmed. "Ocean trenches are all subduction zones, just heading straight towards the centre of the Earth."

Professor Le Pew looked on, impressed. He wiped a sympathetic tear from his eye at the sight of Shelley's species' usual life cycle – one scene was simply a female laying an egg cluster in a trench in the ooze, and standing guard till a male scented them, slid over and made his separate contribution to the eggs. The two sexes had no real biological need to even meet each other, let alone touch or stay together; external fertilization had evidently been good enough for Shelley's family for the past several hundred million years. "Ah! Ze tragic background, non? A cold, dark world, without l'amour. But Shelley, she 'as found zat meme, and made ze good use of eet!" The romantic skunk clapped appreciatively as Shelley broadcast again the last part of her date and exactly what she wanted to happen next time.

"Well, she didn't go to all that trouble building that new bit not to use it," Cassie opined. "And testing's always more fun with two."

"Looks like you've got a walking… I mean, slithering example of a whole mall's worthy of memes there," Gene Ericson whispered. "Never mind Christmas Trees in Tokyo - the whole dating thing, everything, made no sense at all in her home town, but Shelley's bought the whole bundle."

"Hardware and software too, you could say." Gibson Goat murmured from the seat behind him. "Hope you have fun!"

Mortimer's ears were burning white-hot; he had just worked out the biological details of that good-night kiss. "Well… that won't be for a while, anyway. Today's the last day of term! I won't even see Shelley again till next year, let alone date her." He gave a mock sigh. "That's so sad."

Oh? I've got good news for you then, Shelley's telepathic voice whispered softly. Your mother and sisters – they invited me home with you for the holidays!

End Chapter Eleven