Sylvester was waiting for them outside the ballroom. And so was manager Claude Cat, wringing his paws and hopping from foot to foot. He had a function due to start in fifteen minutes for two hundred people.

Daffy and Sylvester took up positions on either side of the door while Bugs brushed Claude aside and pushed the door open with his foot. Sylvester and Daffy darted swiftly into the large dark room, with Bugs trailing behind them.

"Doc, if you and your staff could please wait out here we'll take care of everything," Bugs told Claude before closing and locking the doors behind him.

Bugs took point again once they were inside the ballroom. He looked left, then right, and finally up. High above, in the center of the ornately-molded ceiling, a huge crystal chandelier gathered the room's dim light and gave it back in tiny shimmering glints. And hanging from it was the monster.

"There it is," Bugs whispered. "On the chandelier."

Sylvester rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn't seeing things.

"That's the one that got me," Daffy confirmed.

Bugs raised his thrower as Daffy and Sylvester scuttled forward. All three took aim.

"All right, Docs. Ready?" Bugs asked them. "Throw it!"

They fired their particle streams at the monster and the blast knocked a sizable chuck out of the ceiling and destroyed the chandelier. Fragments of pulverized crystal tinkled over the tables.

"I did that. I did that. That's my fault," Bugs said.

"It's okay. The table broke the fall," Daffy replied.

"Wait!" Sylvester stopped them. "There's something very important I forgot to tell you."

"What?" Daffy asked.

"Don't cross the streams,"

"Why not?"

"It would be bad,"

"I'm confused on the whole good/bad thing," Daffy said. "What do you mean, 'bad'?"

"It's hard to explain, but try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light," Sylvester said.

Bugs blinked slowly and looked away.

"Total protonic reversal," he translated.

"Okay, that's bad," Daffy replied. "Okay, important safety tip. Thanks, Sylvester. All right, Bugs, you go left. Sylvester, you go right."

They switched their attention back to the monster, standing by the buffet. The monster grabbed a wine bottle and sucked out the dregs.

"Okay, Bugs, give me one high and outside," Daffy instructed.

Bugs fired off a stream wide to the left of the monster. The monster dodged nimbly away and Bugs blasted blackened holes and scorched the silken wall-drapes into tattered strips.

"Sylvester, cut it off!" Daffy shouted.

Sylvester's marksmanship was even worse.

How much worse?

He fired with such poor accuracy that he blasted the bar and continued to fire blindly long after the monster had dodged him.

"Okay, all right. Hold it, hold it, hold it!" Daffy shouted. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Nice shooting, Sly!"

Meanwhile, outside the ballroom, the guests were wondering what was going on inside, and Claude was wincing at the sounds of crashing plaster, smashing glass, and other expensive property damage.

"I assure you, there is no problem with the ballroom," Claude lied. "It will be ready as soon as your guests are with us. Excuse me, please."


"That last throw took something out of him but he's going to move," Bugs said. "We need some room to put the trap down. Give me some room."

Sylvester and Daffy started overturning tables and throwing chairs.

"We've got to get this in the clear!" Bugs told them.

"Wait, wait, wait!" Daffy exclaimed as he grasped the tablecloth. "I've always wanted to do this." He yanked the tablecloth away. "And the flowers are still standing!"

The round tables, once covered with crisp white linen and set with gleaming silverware and sparkling goblets, were now wrecked and strewn with chunks of plaster and flaming debris.

Keeping his eyes on the monster, Bugs unhooked the containment trap from his belt. The small rectangular box, about eighteen inches long, painted with diagonal yellow-and-black warning stripes, was fed by a cable from the proton pack, and had a row of PKE indicator lights set into the titanium steel, lead-lined casing.

Very slowly and carefully, Bugs rolled the trap into the center of the room while Daffy and Sylvester maneuvered the monster into position.

"Okay, on my signal," Bugs instructed. "Sylvester, I want a confinement stream from you. Go!"

Bugs talked them through the whole process. Luckily, Sylvester had finally mastered the technique and caught the red monster in a swirling cocoon of energy particles.

"Okay, hold him steady. He's gonna move. Hold him! Daffy, go!"

The monster weaved between the streams, and Daffy and Sylvester delicately adjusting their aim to keep it boxed in.

"It's working, Bugs," Sylvester said.

"Start bringing him back. You got him," Bugs encouraged them. "Don't cross your streams."

"Maybe now you'll never shed on a duck packing a positron collider, huh?" Daffy taunted the monster.

The monster, fuming and seething, attempted to get free. The streams drifted dangerously close, within centimeters of each other.

"Daffy, shorten your stream," Sylvester said. "I don't want my face burned off."

"I'm opening the trap now," Bugs warned them. "Don't look directly into the trap."

Bugs stomped on the button and there was a loud, high-pitched electronic buzz. A beaded curtain of intense white light, in the shape of an inverted pyramid, sprung up from the device, enclosing the red haze, which writhed and squirmed inside the force field.

"I looked at the trap, Bugs," Sylvester panicked.

"Turn your streams off when I close the trap. Get ready. I'm closing it. Now!"

Bugs stomped on the button again. There was a blinding flash of pink light and the trap closed. The beaded curtain was gone and so was the monster, leaving just a puff of smoke and some wisps of carbonized particles floating to the ceiling.

For a long moment, there was absolute silence.

They stood in a limp semicircle, staring uncertainly at the trap. Then Sylvester gently bent down to inspect the trap's valence indicators. He turned and looked at the other two.

"It's in there," he confirmed.

"And so," Bugs said, with a broad and beaming grin, "having disposed of the monster, exit our heroes through the ballroom door, stage right. None the worse for their harrowing experience."


"Bert, I want that door open now!" Claude said. "Hubie, stand over there."

The Quackbusters burst from the ballroom and found two hundred guests in evening clothes milling about. A low murmur of curiosity and polite alarm rippled through the crowd at the strange appearance of the three weary, stained and disheveled toons.

"We came, we saw, we clobbered!" Daffy misquoted.

"What happened?" Claude asked. "Did you see it? What is it?"

"We got it!" Bugs said triumphantly as he proudly held up the ecto-containment trap.

Claude stepped back a pace and wafted the air as he caught a whiff of the putrid fumes drifting from the innards.

"What is it?" Claude repeated. "Will there be any more of them?"

"Doc, what you had there," Bugs told him, "was what we refer to as a focused non-terminal repeating behemoth, or a Class-Five Full-Roaming Gossamer. Real nasty one, too."

"Now, let's talk seriously," Daffy interjected as he began to write out the bill. "For the entrapment, we're gonna have to ask you for four big ones, four thousand dollars. But we are having a special this week on proton charging and storage of the beast. And that's only gonna come to one thousand dollars, fortunately."

"Five thousand dollars?" Claude replied, aghast, staring at them with bulging eyes. "I had no idea it'd be so much. I won't pay it."

"Well, that's all right," Daffy countered. "We can just put it right back in there. Can't we?"

"We certainly can, Professor Duck," Bugs added.

"No, no. No! All right! Anything," Claude said.

"Thank you so much," Daffy said, handing him the bill with a sweet smile. "Happy to be of service. Hope we can help you again."

"Coming through!" Bugs shouted. "One class-five free-roaming gossamer!"

The Quackbusters were now in business!