~Yes, I'm finally back! Sorry for the long wait, and I hope the chappie's worth it. :)~
It was Curly's longest hush-up for as far back as her memory went. Everything she could possibly say clogged in her throat like a Fire House somebody was standing on. She guessed if they HAD come out, they'd be pretty close to what was spraying from Lefty's mouth right about now:
"But – but you're a Mover and Shaker! One of 'the elite!'" Lefty shaped a quote with her fingers. "You got Field Offices! You earned the VP's respect!"
"Yes, and make no mistake, that was quite an honor," the Cog hurried to say. His drone drooped as sadly as Dr. D's entire body had. "But…with the old VP….you didn't have to earn it."
Curly found herself nodding. Another first for her: she completely understood a Cog.
He glanced back over his shoulder, which suddenly looked timid and narrow, without any of the power to make Toons tremble in more ways than one. "And besides – I have the Glitch."
It seemed like it took Lefty a sec to retrieve that, but her rising eyebrows weren't too far behind Curly's. The CFO's enormous voice echoed in Curly's mind:
The Chairman alone has information….
…report any unusual behavior…
The Mover & Shaker leaned in, the dim light reflecting off his greasy-looking black hair. Curly was half-expecting a lock or two to fall out of place before it struck her that – duh – it was painted on. "And I know the old VP wouldn't have cared," he whispered. "But I don't know about this new one."
A gasp was the only noise Curly could make.
"Now, then." The Mover & Shaker gave his head a brisk little shake. "Run along and be about your business."
Business. For once the Cogs' favorite word seemed to apply. Still –
"No way!" Curly rediscovered how to talk –a little fierier than she'd intended. "You're coming with us!"
The Mover & Shaker's squinty eyes flickered with fear.
She lowered her voice a few frantic notches. "I mean, I don't want you to stay behind to get in trouble. We're getting together a group of Toons – nice Toons. They won't hurt you."
Curly bit back, Which is more than I can say for the Chairman.
There was a pause while Curly's neck hairs reached for the roof. Eventually, the 'Shaker said, "Would it help the VP if I came?"
"Absolutely!" Curly was saying before her thoughts had even stood still long enough for her to get a good look at them. "We could totally use a Cogs'-eye-view on things."
The Mover & Shaker seemed to be doing some thought-wrestling of his own, his face the picture of huh-wait-REALLY? Then grim determination settled over him like a fluffed-out sheet, and he straightened up to his full towering-over-Curly height. "Then I shall transfer my assets to this endeavor."
Could they, like, never speak English?
Whatever. Enough of it got through for Curly to knuckle-bump Lefty. She almost started to hold out her other fist to the Mover & Shaker, but that would have probably been enough to short out his Glitched circuitry.
"And if anyone sees us, they'd just figure we're fighting," Lefty said. "I mean, the other Cogs wouldn't be suspicious if they saw you, say, dragging us off by the arms."
Dude. Wish I'd thought of that first.
Curly blurted the next-best idea that launched into her brain. "And we could yell insults and things at you!" She glanced sideways at the Mover & Shaker. Studying the slickness that had saved their tails, she had to add, "We wouldn't mean them, of course."
Lefty shot her a look so deliberately blank it could mean nothing but, Are you SERIOUS, Curly?
"Thank you for the reassurance," the Mover & Shaker said, as levelly as ever. "However, I think you will find that I have a very thick skin."
No doubt. The chilly chrome fingers that wrapped themselves around Curly's wrists felt like the Toontanic would sink sooner than it could bust 'em. She didn't even hear herself peep, but she must've, because the Mover & Shaker looked down at her with an odd, half-sick expression Cogs never used. "Is this too tight?" he asked.
Ah. Concern. No wonder she didn't recognize it.
Ordinarily, Curly would have been doing cartwheels across the Tower over a breakthrough like that. Even now, she couldn't hold back the Violet-style squeal when she said, "Just enough to make it easier to scream."
The slick head moved & shook. "Toons," he muttered. But Curly noticed he didn't stop smiling.
Deep breath, Megaquack. We can jump up and down and scream later.
Curly watched the Cog's chest dip in and swell out under the deep-deep-deep-maroon suit. If he was nervous, he was playing it cucumber-cool. Only the ever-so-tiny quiver of his hands suggested he was just as frightened as she was.
What is it LIKE? Curly wanted to cry. What have you been LIVING with these last two weeks?
Uh. Yeah. Not what she wanted to have scrawled all over her if they ran into a couple of those guard-dog Minglers. She forced images of the Chairman into her mind so she'd have that just-wait-'till-I-get-my-Pianos-on-you snarl down pat.
The Mover & Shaker dragged them, one in each hand, across a floor so cold and smooth it would have frozen Eddie the Yeti himself out of the room. He kicked the elevator door open, bumped Curly and Lefty in with him, and rode the nerve-wracking trip back in silence, feet positioned in perfectly symmetrical rows. Even Curly had never been able to dig up how Cogs stayed so on-routine when the whole world was being turned upside-down and rattled like a snow globe.
The elevator doors dinged open to a staring security eyelight, a Goon who must have been waiting on the platform for the last who-knew-how-long. Curly had an it's-okay-good-Goon-NICE-Goon hand ready, but all the Mover & Shaker had to do was nod, and the Goon dipped its – his? – hard hat respectfully and let them pass.
Don't smile, Curly told herself sternly. You'll blow your cover.
It was almost disturbing how into it Lefty was getting, hollering things like, "Oh, yeah, you think you're so tough, huh, Cog? Bring it! I'll splat you so hard your gears will smell like pie for CENTURIES –"
Then again, maybe it was disturbing how hard it was for Curly to drum up anything even close. All of her thoughts were exploding into fireworks. Like, for example:
For the second time in a week, she was teaming up with a Cog. As in, a mutual partnership, not just Curly getting down on her knees and begging him to open up so she wouldn't have to cake him.
The Sellbots missed their old boss. Who could blame them? The meanest substitute teacher Curly had ever had couldn't begin to compete with the new VP. And Curly understood firsthand how terrifying it was to look into those beloved binocular eyes and find them only hard and flat.
And then, of course, there was Dr. D. Just when Curly thought she'd settled on one particular way to feel about him – angry, sad, hurt, concerned – another one would pop up like those annoying Sellbot ads that flashed on the Toon Hall computers when new Toons were practicing Skullfinder. THOSE had probably been planted by Dr. D himself, too.
Yeah, she was lucky anything at all was coming out, and that it sounded even vaguely like a Toon ready to kick Cog rear.
Anyway, the chaos of hissing and growling must have been convincing enough for the Minglers on duty, who nodded the Mover & Shaker on with knowing versions of the let's-sit-down-and-discuss-your-doom-over-a-cup-of-oil smiles. Curly focused every scrap of her energy on not letting out the biggest sigh of relief EVER once the now-shiny blacktop of Sellbot HQ gave way to Daisy Gardens' moist soil and soft sprouts of grass.
The Mover & Shaker gave Oak Street a really fast once-over. Nobody was within name-tag distance, except for a tiny Cold Caller who wouldn't have been able to waddle there fast enough to see…whatever was about to happen.
Curly's palms were oozing all over the place as the Mover & Shaker steered her captive arm so that her gloved paw rested on his shoulder. She barely had time to notice that he'd done the same thing to Lefty on the other side before he announced, all pre-battle confident, "Going up!"
No. Way.
But sure enough, a propeller whirred from out of the painted hair and started to lift the Mover & Shaker off the ground. Slowly at first, and then it met a gust of pollen-scented wind that rushed it upward in quick little bursts of speed. Curly hadn't realized she was going higher and faster than she'd ever flown in Toon Slingshot until her pulse was racing in every inch of her like she'd had WAY too much sugar.
"Owooo!" she howled. "This is great!"
The rods in the Mover & Shaker's neck tightened. "Please spare my audio receptors," he said in a voice just as tight.
For a Cog, that wasn't too far up on the party-pooper scale.
And since she pretty much owed him her freedom and every seventy-some Laff point that was still plugging away in her meter, Curly dropped her own pitch to something a little less glass-breaking. "Sorry," she said. "But seriously, look at this! What a view!"
She gestured with her head – because there was no chance she was loosening her grip – down at the long strip of patchwork-quilt-type stuff that was Daisy Gardens from above. A sand-colored street curled its path between thick rugs of green, dotted with brightly colored shop-rectangles and split in two by the purple blob of the Toon HQ. Even the occasional gray lump of a Cog building didn't look so bad from up here.
"What about the view?" the Mover & Shaker said.
Curly dared to twist enough so she could see his expression. It was nothing. "You've never noticed this?" She didn't gesture now, not with her head already tilted.
"No. Why would I have? We see it every day."
How does anyone expect me NOT to pity them?
As if he'd read her mind, the Mover & Shaker pinned Curly with a stern look. "May I remind you – gently remind you – that we are on a mission?" he said stiffly.
Right. There was the VP to think about. They could work on the rest later.
Later.
That right there – that was hope. Professor Pete would be proud.
Curly nodded, doing her best not to flap her ears into the Mover & Shaker's nose. "Right," she said out loud. "You need a nice boss again."
And I need to see that happy face again.
Still, with the warm wind ruffling her fur and the beautiful blend of colors below her, it was hard not to smile a little and be sort of happy. Curly could feel the eagerness coursing through the Mover & Shaker's wires, too – nice twist on the whole all-business-and-no-emotion thing.
That was why it surprised her when the 'Shaker slowed down in short chops. His propeller blades swapped their whir for an occasional ticka-ticka that reminded Curly of a fan shutting off as he lowered himself to the ground. He'd shaken Curly and Lefty off as if they were drops of water before the tickas even came to a complete halt.
Part of Curly had the urge to jump back on and yell, "Let's do it again!"
That was so not happening. Just the fact that he'd let her touch him was beyond huge. Lefty was doing a trying-to-be-discreet check of her arms and legs for Cog germs – and, yeah, Curly didn't blame her – but, hey. A start was a start.
"This is as far as I go," the Mover & Shaker said.
"What?" was Curly's reply. "Why –"
Lefty elbowed her into silence, nodding at the rounded stone arch above their heads. Beneath a picture of Daisy Duck's long eyelashes and big smile were the words, "Daisy Gardens Playground."
"Oh." Curly knew her own smile was so sheepish, it might as well have been woolly too. "Right. I…forgot. Sort of." Despite the warmer curl to his mustache and the eyes that seemed to go to a deeper place, he was still all Cog, and a playground's zaniness was spread too thick for him to enter.
"Good luck to you." The Mover & Shaker nudged Curly with the toe of his metal boot. "Time is of the essence, Miss Megaquack. I wouldn't stand around gaping if I were you."
Curly closed the mouth she hadn't known was hanging open. "Yeah, well, if you were me, you wouldn't be locked out. Problem solved."
Because – leave her rescuer at the mercy of Toons with Fire Hoses and Defeat-Ten-Sellbots tasks? No THANK you.
Gyro was in there, though. Gyro, who knew where Scrooge was. Gyro, who was assembling a team right this second. Gyro, who would –
Who would understand.
Curly didn't give herself enough time to hesitate. She just stepped as far into the curve of the entrance as she could get, cupped her hands around her lips, and called, "Gyro! Can you come to the tunnel? We've got a guest here that can't go in the Playground!"
A few brows furrowed at that. But the right-down-to-the-Converse shock on the Toons who clustered behind Gyro in the tunnel was something you'd pay tickets to see. Hats spun backward, sunglasses toppled off snouts, the whole nine yards.
"Howdy, guys," was all Curly could think of to say.
"Welp, it was bound to happen sooner or later," said a purple pig Curly had done a few Mints with. "She finally just adopted one."
Cutie Bear added, "I always thought it'd be a Flunky."
The Mover & Shaker danced sideways on those quick little legs, and for good reason. Most of the Toons who weren't Gyro were angling toward the Cog in suspicion, and one cat even had her fingers already wrapped around the Nozzle of a Seltzer Bottle.
Curly had never actually jumped in front of a Cog to defend him before, but it felt as right as plopping down on the trolley or scratching a Doodle's belly. "Nobody hurt him!" she said. "Please – he's on our side! He helped us! He broke us out after the VP – after we got caught!"
Yeah. Way easier to put it THAT way.
An are-you-serious hung over the group like a Cog building about to fall from the sky. Curly didn't want it to drop and squish all the goodness that made her glad to be a Toon.
Gyro's already-kind eyes softened like warm pudding. He took a few steps toward the Mover & Shaker, one hand extended cautiously, the way you'd approach a shy Doodle. "Thank you," he said, his voice soft-even-for-Gyro. "Thank you, my dear boy."
The Mover & Shaker flicked imaginary dust from his suit, over and over and over again. If he were a Toon, he'd have been gnawing his nails off like corn on the cob. "Is that – is that –"
He flicked his slitted gaze at Curly. She nodded.
"Yeah," Curly said. "That's Gyro Gearloose, live and in person."
The slits opened and rounded to perfect ovals. "The Maker," he breathed.
It was Gyro's gentlest smile yet.
The Mover & Shaker let himself swallow, a hard, jerky swallow. Curly paced away and left him to his wonder.
"Really?" A horse finally broke the silence. "You honestly expect us to believe some random Cog wants to help us?"
Lefty got to that one first. "Nope," she said, giving her chin a calm hike. "We expect you to believe a Sellbot wants to help the VP."
The horse's half-sneer faded. "I hate it when she's right," he muttered to the duck next to him.
Curly knew THAT feeling. Right now, though, she was just having a hard time not pulling everyone around her into a hug.
"So what exactly is the plan?" someone squeaked from about two-and-a-half-feet off the ground.
Curly looked down to see Violet peering around Gyro's denim-clad leg. Her big liquid eyes were scolding them for worrying her and, at the same time, brimming over with, I'm so glad you're okay!
Gyro cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck. "Well, we have Mr. McDuck's location," he began. He pulled out his Schticker book and flipped it open to the map page. "He's being held deep within the very heart of Cog Nation."
"Cog NATION?" the duck quacked in alarm.
"That's for REAL?" said the pig.
"How do you KNOW that?" a rabbit joined in.
"The VP told him," Violet said.
The pig flung her hands skyward. "That does it. I have no idea what's going on anymore ever."
Hoo boy. Time to break out the "it's a long story"s, Curly thought.
She was gearing up for one, in fact, when Lefty squeezed her face in over Gyro's shoulder and said, "So – where exactly is this 'Cog Nation'?"
Gyro repositioned his mini-glasses on the edge of his nose to beam a grim look over their tops. "Huddle closer."
The un-Gyro intensity scooched Curly right to his side. Even though he hung back from most of the Toons, especially the ones with Big Head and Small Leg rewards and the wackiest dressers, the Mover & Shaker joined the huddle. Realizing that no one had walled him out was the only thing that kept Curly's heart from pounding its way straight out of her chest.
"So – heart of Cog Nation," she said. And then grunted. "If it has a heart."
Gyro ignored that and hunched back over the map. With a long, skinny finger, he jabbed the climbing design of Sellbot Towers at the corner of Daisy Gardens. "We're here. And the manholes go here" – the finger slid up until it bumped the Cashbot Register – "here" – over to the it-could-be-jail gloom of Lawbot HQ – "and here." The finger made a final drop, down to Bossbot's creepy castle. "Notice anything?"
"Um, besides them being ugly and scary?" Lefty said. She gave the Mover & Shaker a quick glance. "No offense."
The Cog rolled his eyes and waved them on.
Curly stuck her head under Gyro's arm – one of the benefits of being super-small – and narrowly missed getting an ink-smudge on her nose. "They're in the four corners. Toontown's literally surrounded by Cog HQs."
"Exactly." Gyro snapped his fingertips together, his good ol' give-yourself-a-gold-star twinkle shining all over his face at Curly. "So what better place for Cog Nation than smack in the center?"
He tapped the exact middle of the map – Toontown Central.
Every Toon lung gasped. One Cog framework looked as if it had been on the wrong end of his own Quake attack.
"Wawaiwait – no!" Curly sputtered. "That's not Cog Nation. That's Toontown Central. That's where Mickey is, not the Chairman! A Glad Hander's the nastiest dude you'll see there, and that's super-rare and only because of Field Offices…."
Curly knew everything she was saying was supremely dumb, but Gyro's words were as slippery and as hard to catch as a Holey Mackerel.
"Not in Toontown Central," Gyro said, patient in the way only Gyro could be at this point. "Below it. Underground."
Even Lefty's paw went to her mouth.
"According to the VP, Mr. McDuck is being kept in a cage and held for ransom," Gyro said. There was an awkward pause while everyone did their best NOT to look at the Mover & Shaker. "But the Chairman's demands are much grander than the VP's ever were," Gyro went on, like he'd read everyone's minds. "He doesn't want money. He wants control of the whole town."
Somehow, Curly forced herself to snort. "Uh, he stinks at ransoms, then. Took us this long to even figure out he existed."
Gyro's beak pinched at the corners. "The VP mentioned that, too. The Chairman's been waiting – I believe 'until the time is right,' was the phrase he used. And, my friends…I'm fairly certain that time is very, very soon."
The group of Toons came alive in a series of squeaks and growls and one loud, long neigh. "He really thinks that's gonna HAPPEN?" and "What is he, STUPID?" were the most common outbursts.
Curly wanted with everything in her to be able to join them. And couldn't. The red eyes burning from inside her memory shook her head back and forth instead. "Guys…you haven't seen the Chairman."
Gyro gave her an eyebrow twitch, which clearly meant, And you have? We'll talk about this later.
"He is an intimidating fellow," the Mover & Shaker put in.
"Yes! Thank you! Or did you notice that even the CEO doesn't wanna mess with him?"
Silence. Frightened silence that Toons weren't usually stricken with.
It was Cutie, naturally, who got her BEARings first. "Okay, so the Chairman is scary, eek, blah-blah-blah," she said. "Question is: how do we GET to him?"
This time, no one bothered to hide their twists toward the Mover & Shaker.
"The manholes are a teleportation device," he said, like every word had to be yanked out and not painlessly. "But –"
"But it can only be activated from the inside!" Violet shrieked. She was the least likely Toon in town to forget her manners, and it was flooding Curly's palms again. "By the Chairman! He only lets in Cogs!"
If the Cogs considered interrupting rude, that wasn't what made the Mover & Shaker's jaw fall open on its hinges. "How did you know…" His slick-painted head shook. "Never mind. That doesn't matter now."
Curly felt her own jaw gaping. Even though he was still standing in that cocky, long-legged pose – had a Cog really just tossed aside regulations?
"Uh. Hello." Lefty bounced to reach the Mover & Shaker's height and stabbed an obnoxious finger at him. "Cog. Right here. Imagine me as a flashing neon sign."
Before Curly's heart could climb back up from her belly, the Mover & Shaker was shaking his head again. "Just because I'm a Cog doesn't give me automatic clout. Not with the Chairman. A lowly fifth-tier such as myself will never enter Cog Nation unless summoned. I've only seen the Chairman a few times, and those were on occasions where he came to Sellbot Headquarters."
You mean he actually lowered himself to setting foot in there? Curly thought – just a TAD bitterly. It was hard not to be that way when she pictured the Chairman curling those wavy electric panels he had for lips at the oil-soaked junk-heap SBHQ had been two months ago.
The Mover & Shaker sighed. "This would be so much easier if we had the VP."
There was a whole choir of hero-worship in that metallic voice. The kind that didn't care if his boss met his defeat at the hands of 16-Laffers, or that he couldn't recognize Toon faces poking out of Cog suits, or that everyone else either made fun of him or pitied him.
It was the kind that just went on ahead and admired him.
Judging by the round-eyed, this-is-significant stare Lefty directed at her, and the, "I bet the Chairman never thought anyone would ever say THAT," she muttered under her breath, Curly could guess she'd caught it too. Curly herself got a missing-the-VP pang straight through the lump in her throat.
She flashed back to Bossbot HQ's abandoned courtyard from – had it really only been a few hours ago? – and another possibility burrowed its narrow, dark way into her mind. "But the manholes are tunnel entrances too!" Curly said. "Is there a way we could get to Cog Nation through there?"
The Mover & Shaker didn't even bother with astonishment this time. "There is, technically, but the scenario is much the same. Cogs must show their passes before the Chairman unlocks the door from the inside. He wouldn't doubt me, but I don't think he'd have any reason to let me in, either."
Curly felt like she was falling down one of those holes. "I don't suppose Cog suits would help?" she yipped – in desperation.
"I don't suppose, either." His drone had stopped droning and gone stiff. "The Chairman gives the VP such a hard time for not recognizing your disguises that it's quite difficult to believe he wouldn't be able to see through them himself."
There was a stumped pause. Toons slapped their thighs and hissed, "Drat!" and otherwise seemed ready to climb the walls, as if sadness couldn't catch them if they just kept moving fast enough.
Curly herself had to force her shoulders not to meet over her chest. "Come on, guys," she said. "Remember what Professor Pete always says. If we lose hope, the Co –" She glanced back at their non-Toon guest, standing firm without a Quake attack in sight. "– the Chairman's already won," she corrected herself.
And she didn't know about anyone else, but just that little change gave her a tiny spark of the stuff she needed.
The Mover & Shaker flinched, ever so slightly, like he was nose-to-frosting with the gooiest of cream pies. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "I wish there were more I could do to help."
Curly melted. Her arm came out in auto-comfort mode, and she snapped it back right before it could slip around the Cog and totally short-circuit his brain. "Are you KIDDING? You've done so much already. This is HUGE."
The Mover & Shaker flashed his teeth at her. A miniature drop of watch-me-make-this-sale smooth had disappeared and been replaced by a question mark – as in, Is this what I'm supposed to do?
Exactly like the VP.
"Okay!" Cutie slapped her gloves together, and every head swung back to her. "We need to start some serious brainstorming."
The Mover & Shaker's eyebrows startled up.
Cutie's fuchsia fur turned a shade pinker, as far as Curly could see. "All right. Bad choice of words. We need to all put our heads together and think really hard."
Curly grabbed the first thing her hands could find – her sleeves – and stretched them, wishing she had a glob of Toony putty. Her brain grabbed the first thing it could find and pushed it out. "How about we just march into Toontown Central with some shovels and start digging until we hit metal?"
Yeah. Good thing there are no dumb ideas in brainstorming.
Lefty grunted. "Forget shovels. Who's got a bulldozer?"
"We can rent one from the Duckburg Construction Company," Violet said in a pitch so high it might have been lost to everyone except the dogs.
Gyro smiled, too, but his was in nervous pieces. "Well, let's hope it doesn't come to that."
Birds chirping and a fishing line plopping into a pond were the only sounds. Curly sucked in huge breaths and tried not to forget letting them back out.
"Wait a minute. I just thought of something."
The lack of exclamation points could only belong to the Mover & Shaker, who'd come out of his starched-in-place pose. Most of the Toons eyed his knees suspiciously, but they stayed straight and stomp-free as he mechanically crossed closer to Curly.
"The trains in Cashbot Headquarters," he said. "I was never privy to their exact destination – none of us in the other three branches were – but it was a big rumor around the water coolers that they made stops at Cog Nation."
Of course. The boxes in the mint were the first hint of Cog Nation they'd ever gotten, and who'd even known what it meant back then?
And half the Toons didn't look convinced now. Curly guessed their thoughts, because they were the same ones gnawing at her own mind: Really? Our rumors are bad enough, and you're going off one you heard from a COG?
A Cog who'd said the words "I'm sorry" without falling down and choking on them?
Curly's gut turned to ice, freezing her fear for now. There was just the next task, and no one had ever made Dr. Fret's Toontask a bit easier by shivering over Glad Handers. "Is there, ya know, security?" she heard herself ask.
"Um, does there need to be?" Lefty said. "You touch those things – BAM! Minus ten."
"That's right!" The Mover & Shaker snapped his fingers and pointed them at Lefty the way he probably would have done if she'd named a price he really liked. "The Chairman wouldn't feel the need to take any additional precautions, because contact with the trains is already effectively Toon-proof."
"You mean, he'd never think we'd come on the trains because it would mean we lost Laff?" Violet asked.
"Precisely." The Mover & Shaker gave her a salesman-approval nod.
"The Chairman never understood the concept of 'sacrifice,' did he?" Curly ground out the sentence.
A blink from the Sellbot. "On the contrary. It's one of his favorite words."
How, how, how do they STAND it?
Curly bit the inside of her cheek to stop her temper from spilling over. Every horrible new detail she learned about the Cogs' Big Boss screamed inside her as if it had a story of its own."Yeah? But I bet he's always talking about someone else! One of you guys! Right?"
Lefty put in a hacking-up-a-hairball sound.
The Mover & Shaker's eyes hardened almost shut. It wasn't the usual grr-I-hate-Toons squint, though. There was something more vivid and….natural about it.
"Come to think of it – you are absolutely correct," he said.
"Uh, yeah, let's talk about that 'sacrifice.'" It was rare for Lefty to turn pale, but her whiskers were popping against her muzzle as if she'd made a quick stop at Hibernation Vacations. "If we get on a train, won't we just keep losing Laff until we go sad?"
Gyro adjusted his glasses again. Curly could almost see his thoughts going at a million miles per hour behind them. "Not necessarily," he said slowly. "Provided we remain in contact with the train at all times, it's very likely that our Laff meters would simply register it as an extension of the original hit, thus sustaining no extra damage."
What Curly understood of that made enough sense for her to nod.
The Mover & Shaker was nodding, too, gazing at Gyro like he was the first ever door-to-door salesman. The ends of his mustache curved up higher than Curly remembered them going.
Not schmoozing. In awe.
Well, ye-ah. How many other Cogs had ever gotten the chance to meet Gyro face-to-face? Except ACE, of course, and it was tough to drag the poor little Flunky anywhere near his fellow Bossbots' hangouts. And even though the Chairman – if Curly's ninety-nine-percent-sure hunch was right about him being the original Cog – had taken over and whipped up the first Cog prototypes in Gyro's own lab, there wasn't any room for him to have met the inventor. There was only one who Curly knew without a doubt HAD. . . and it was the VP.
My VP.
Okay, that was mushy even for a Toon.
"So if the group shouldn't be too big," Violet said, glancing at Gyro for a yes-that's-right, "we'll need to have a bunch of Toons who all have really good gags. And know how to use them."
"Indeed. We'll need to make every Toon count." Gyro glanced up from his Schticker book with such an intense look that Curly was half-scared he was about to kick somebody off the team. Maybe her. "I've put out an all-points bulletin for Toons with six maxed tracks," he said.
Curly didn't ask with what. There was a skinny antenna poking from Gyro's pocket that he'd have plenty of time to explain later.
With any luck. They WERE going to Cog Nation, after all.
Curly waited for the very dots on her bow to get up and flee – but her reality felt distant. It seemed like there was a thick layer of fuzz between her and everything that was happening. Probably the only way her body could prevent a major freak-out-shut-down by now.
"Well, I'm not going," Cutie announced – if "announced" was the word for how she said it, without a pinch of drama. "An extra hit from that train, and I'm a goner. I know I like a challenge…but this is serious."
She was using the factual, don't-argue-with-me voice that Curly never questioned in a Factory run. If any Toon knew what she was doing, it was Cutie Bear.
"Besides." Cutie grimaced. "Far as we know, the Chairman could attack any minute. Somebody's gotta stick around here to help."
"So," Curly said, out loud, where she might convince herself with her own words, "we're going, then. We're actually going."
"Looks like it," Lefty said.
"I need to restock my Gags." Way to go, Curly. That's only the silliest possible thing you could have said.
The pig snorted nervously. "I need to be able to carry more than 80."
"I need my security blanket," a duck added.
"I need to know…"A monkey grabbed Curly's arm and tugged her a detection-zone away from the Mover & Shaker. To his credit, the finger he jabbed at the Cog wasn't too obvious. "…can we trust him?"
Do we have a CHOICE?
Curly shrugged as if someone else were working her strings. "He saved me. He saved Lefty. He told us secrets the Chairman would have his rump in a cannon for. He didn't bring out an evil cloud the minute someone said 'Brainstorm.' I dunno what more we can ask from him."
"Fair enough." The monkey screeched out a sigh. "I'd keep an eye on him, though."
There was so much concern in his eyes that Curly couldn't even resent that. Not while she was still trying to process, We're actually going to Cog Nation. We're actually gonna fight the Chairman.
And maybe stand a chance.
The other option was too dark to consider. Nah, she'd stick with the image of dropping a Toontanic on the Chairman for everything he'd done to her. And the VP. And Dr. D. And the entire population of Toontown.
Curly frowned to herself. It'd been a long time since she'd licked her chops over defeating a Cog. Wasn't a feeling she was crazy about.
"Now, we'll need to be prepared." Gyro leveled them all with a solemn stare. "Everything the VP has told me indicates Cog Nation will be heavily fortified."
"Uh, ya think?" Lefty said, entire forehead shooting to her pointy ears. "You'd probably need, like, a team of burglars to break in."
Everyone else had been coming up with all the good ideas today. So when one threw itself into Curly's brain, pinning any objections to the wall with both hands, she had to go with it.
"Be right back!" she hollered to the Toons who would have her back in the biggest battle of her life pretty soon.
And then Curly raised two fingers to her lips and whistled, loud enough to put a Siamese Cat Fish to shame, for PJ's Taxi Surface.
"Sixty-eight bottles of pop on the wall!" Lefty sang as she experimented with just how tightly she could wrap her thumb in the braid of her fez without losing all feeling in her hands. "Sixty-eight bottles of pop! You take one down and pass it around! Sixty-seven bottles of pop on the wall!"
She wasn't meaning for her meow to get higher and closer to a yowl with every verse. It was just…working out that way.
"And you say we dilly-dally," the Mover & Shaker couldn't seem to help adding. "In addition, I see no wall with bottles of any sort. And what is 'pop'?"
There were times when Lefty agreed with Curly: Cogs being so literal and so baffled by Toons could be kinda cute. And then there were times like now, when she had enough on her plate without translating everything Toony into machine-speak.
"It's a drink," she said.
"Like oil?"
Lefty did her best not to wince. That goopy stuff she could smell on him trickling down her throat? No thank you. "Uh, yeah. Sort of."
"Can you sell it?"
Lefty took about the deepest breath of her life. Before she could blow it out, Violet was on her feet, squealing to crack glass. "Curly's back!" she said, jumping up and down on her plump little legs to get a better view. "Curly's back!"
Cutie turned toward the tunnel's entrance and shaded her brow. "Who's she got with her?"
Lefty's stomach did a snap-fast jump, then a long, slow plunge. She unfolded from her pretzel on the ground and came to peer over Cutie's shoulder.
Curly was jogging back to the tunnel, all right – leading a stream of green caps and red sweaters and black masks right behind her.
"Oh, no she didn't," Lefty heard herself say.
Another wonderful smile broke across Gyro's beak. "Oh, yes, she did."
~Yeah, I had to bring some more DuckTales characters into the mix, cause they're my faves. Points for anyone who can tell me who they are! :D~
