"C'mon, Fozzie, we've missed the opening already!" Rowlf panted, the cool dry air of the Museum a relief after jogging through the already-muggy streets. "Nothing to race for now!"
"Ohhhhhh but I wanted to be dere! Everyone else is dere, even da flu sicky people!" Fozzie argued, stopping in confusion at the top of the stairs, unable to read his map correctly.
Rowlf sniffed the air. "That way, Fozzie," he said, turning the bear in the correct direction.
"Dat says reptiles, Rowlf! Are you sure?"
Rowlf was about to point out the large sign proclaiming FELT AND BONES EXHIBIT THIS WAY when screams and a frightening roar echoed through the entire third floor; patrons on the stairs or browsing in the Hall of African Mammals turned in surprise. Suddenly a Museum guard came sprinting past, a panicked expression turning his face from average into something pale and sickly. Hot on his heels, Sam the Eagle fluttered and stumbled. "Security! Security! Man, don't run from danger! This is your duty!"
Neither of them paid any attention to Fozzie or Rowlf, legging it down the stairs. Fozzie sucked a finger apprehensively. "Wow! I didn't know guards were scared of eagles!" he said.
"Uh, I don't think that guy was running from Sam!" Rowlf gulped, and Fozzie whirled to see a tide of people come racing out through the reptile hall. The two friends exchanged a look, and as one fought their way around the panicked professors and squealing old ladies toward the entrance to the new Muppet Natural History exhibit gallery. When they peered inside, Rowlf wasn't sure arriving earlier would have been a better or a worse idea.
The first thing which caught their eyes was the meeping, bouncing, utterly helpless Beaker being dragged across the floor close to the exhibit entry by what appeared to be a very big gun turning red-hot as it sputtered and blasted; Fozzie jerked to one side when a ray narrowly missed him, instead hitting a case of mounted Muppet insects. A giant moth flapped its wings at once and took off; numerous smaller things like winged crayfish shook themselves awake and began crawl-hopping down out of the case with fluttering buzzes of their vestigial beetle-wings. "Aaaa! Bugs!" Fozzie cried, then noticed much worse things were crawling or jumping or thunderously pounding through the gallery. An enormous clawed foot slammed down right in front of him, and the bear gaped up at a bony, elongated skull easily three times his size. Empty holes of eyesockets stared right at him. "Ulk!" Fozzie gulped.
The Muppetasaurus Tex opened its ponderous jaws; four prominent fangs and a bristling mouthful of shorter but equally vicious teeth shook in Fozzie's face as the monster roared. Fozzie's hat flew behind him somewhere. The bear caught a glimpse of a frog trying to hustle a pig toward the far side of the room, and ran toward him, wailing. "Keerrmiiiiiiiiiitt!"
"Whoa!" Rowlf ducked as something not quite bat and not quite lizard swooped overhead, its tiny claws clutching at the air where the dog's nose had been a second before. "What the Jimmy Dean's goin' on here?" the dog griped.
In the middle of the room, Kermit tried to see to Piggy's safety. Unfortunately his wife had other ideas. "Shake your ugly mug at my frog, willya? Hiii—yaaahh!" she cried, chopping one of the snapping, turkey-with-shark-teeth Velocimuppet skeletons over its bony beak. It shrieked, jerking back, but then advanced again. Desperately Piggy spread her arms protectively in front of Kermit, noting two more of the ugly reptilian birds encroaching from the side where they thought she wouldn't notice them. She beat them back, but they weren't giving up. Apparently having no flesh anymore was an advantage; her blows knocked them back but didn't seem to be doing any damage. "What the heck? Are these guys indestructible? I've broken bones before!" Piggy growled, confused.
Bunsen Honeydew put up a helpful finger, dodging another swoop by the bat-lizard. "Technically, Miss Piggy, these are fossils! You see, when a creature becomes entrapped in a wet environment, mineral seepage over thousands of years will eventually fill in the bones as they decompose, leaving a bone-shaped fossil actually made of—"
"Well whatever they're made of, can ya make 'em dead again?" Piggy yelled, kicking another Velocimuppet. It croaked and squealed and lunged back at her, toothy beak snapping.
"Oh," Bunsen murmured, one hand to his mouth, worried. "Oh, dear…"
"Keep rolling! Keep rolling!" Rhonda urged, sticking close by the sloth; nervously, the Newsman ducked away from the ponderous tread of a Muppetasaurus Bovinocorpus as it strolled by apparently unconcerned with the chaos. "We're gonna go live, Newsie! Keep talking!"
Newsie clutched Gina, his eyes darting every direction, unwilling to let her go for the sake of the filming. She in return held onto his shoulder, yanking him aside when two white feathery things with long necks and teeth and red wattles chased a bounding, protesting Gonzo past. "Girls! Camilla! Look, I said I thought the new look was sexy! Aaaagh!"
"Er – things seem to have turned strange here at the Museum of Natural History!" Newsie ad-libbed, trying to stay vaguely in front of the sloth's camera.
"Stranger than usual, you mean!" complained a balding, grayhaired gent in a suit far too thick for the weather outside, and more wrinkled than a shar-pei on a diet, standing in the middle of the chaos.
"Statler, you old fool, this isn't the 'Bombshells of '45' exhibit!" His companion, a shorter and even frailer codger, grabbed the official Museum map from the first gent's curled hands. He peered at the map, then thwacked the first man. "You were holding the map upside down, you ninny!"
"Oh…I thought ol' 'Bomber Betty' was taller!" Statler said, eyeing Miss Piggy.
"She wasn't a pig, either, you blind old bat!" Waldorf grumped.
Statler shrugged one shoulder. "Eh, it was the war! I'm sure those flyboys would've painted pork on their bombers!"
"How ya figure?"
"With wartime rations being so strict, every piece of bacon looked good!"
"Oh, ho ho ho ho!"
"Watch it, twerps!" Piggy shouted at them, grabbing one of the Velocimuppets by its snakelike tail and swinging it into another, tumbling them both in a clatter of bones and a shriek of outraged malevolent fossil fury. However, even as she gave Kermit another push toward the exit, the bony monsters shook themselves all over and staggered back to their three-clawed feet with ominous growling clucks.
Kermit pointed out Gil and Jill huddling with the Frog Scouts next to the platform the M. Tex had stood on. "The Scouts! We have to do something!"
"Er…are we live yet?" Newsie asked Rhonda, who was conferring with someone by phone, one paw pressed to her free ear.
"Can ya keep it down? Some of us are trying to make journalistic history here!" the rat shouted at the room in general, then resumed her hurried conversation. "Now? About time! Great! Take the feed!" She snapped her phone shut and gestured at Newsie, addressing the sloth. "Get an earpiece on him! Fargo's at the studio and the truck's here to bounce the feed! Go! Go!"
Dr Honeydew caught up with Beaker, who by bracing himself against one of the large granite pillars in the center of the gallery had at least managed to stop his ungainly and involuntary tour of the exhibit; now he was doing his best to saw through the safety wrist-strap of the Disint-o-ghoster 4000 with a pocketknife held in his mouth. "Beaker! I've got it! I know what's wrong!" Bunsen cried; Beaker stared at him, dazed. "Somehow the neutron polarity has been switched in the wrong direction! All we must do is to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, and set the Tobin waves down a notch, and assuming the anti-Muppaspectre facilitating engine doesn't—"
At that instant, the barrel of the gun turned white-hot. Beaker shrieked as the safety strap burst into flames, jerking his hands free. With an earsplitting craaaaack!, the core of the Disint-o-ghoster exploded. Shrapnel shot straight up. "…Explode…we should be fine," Bunsen finished lamely; his gaze turned upward with Beaker's at the one Muppasaur anywhere in the gallery which hadn't been animated with a stray shot yet: the Greater Muppassic Muppadactyl skeleton suspended from the high ceiling by airline cables. As the scientists stared in horrified resignation, every single cable holding the fossil up was sliced by a blazing-hot piece of subatomic-reinforced nickel-iron which had seconds previously before failed to contain the explosion. The entire Muppadactyl fell surprisingly gracefully, swooping much like a half-ton pendulum directly onto the heads of the Muppet Labs duo.
As the dust settled around them, Bunsen groaned, "Ouch…"
Beaker agreed with a weak meep before passing out.
"Live, at the Museum of Natural History, this is your Newsman for KRAK," Newsie barked at the camera when Rhonda vehemently gestured at him they were broadcasting directly to the station, where images of this bizarre carnage would be sent out to the entire viewing area. "Er…Bart, are you seeing this?"
A sneering voice came through loud and clear over his earpiece, and Newsie winced. "Looks like the usual Muppet weirdness to me, Newsie. What's the story?" The anchor's tone made it clear he was annoyed at having been dragged away from his brunch date for just another Muppet piece. Angry, the Newsman was about to launch into a curt description of the action so far when Gonzo rode by on the back of one of the altered-state chickens.
"Whooooo—haaaaa! That's it, Camilla! You can beat 'em!" Gonzo yelled, bouncing excitedly like an ostrich jockey; the Muppasaur-throwback bird didn't seem to be racing the other ones hot on her tailfeathers as much as vainly trying to jump up to eat the fearless daredevil, hen's teeth snapping viciously at him.
Gina stared at that, still holding Newsie's shoulder. He tried to regain some appearance of confidence. "Um…well…as you can see, Bart, this is hardly the normal chaos! The scene, in fact, is somewhat grim, with a whole host of ravenous, reanimated Muppasaurs attacking the crowd who'd come to see the opening of the exhibit!" Gina yanked him to one side as the primitive Whatnot shaman glared and pointed their direction, his evil jade eye sparking with energy. "Erk! – and an undead, mysterious mummy is also wreaking a terrible vengeance on the people who dared to ogle him by doing some shameless ogling of his own!" Whatever force the shaman wielded with his evil eye hit the camera aardvark smack in the face, sending him and his camera tumbling right to the feet of the Muppetasaurus Tex.
"Is this yet another publicity stunt by the Muppets to raise their theatre attendance?" Fargo demanded.
"Bart! People are in real danger here!" Newsie protested.
"There they are! Make them – make them behave like proper dead things!" Sam shouted, one firm wing pointing variously at the Muppasaurs running amok, and the altered chickens now snapping and snarling at Gonzo as he perched precariously atop one of the taller freestanding cases. "Er…and…and proper chickens!"
The Museum guards right behind Sam in the entrance to the gallery stared in complete shock at the scene: Dr Teeth and Zoot were desperately swatting as the crustacean-bugs buzzed and clawed them in what appeared to be an attempt to grab the Muppets' noses. The class of preschoolers, one enormous bird, and one shy pachyderm huddled in a corner, staring with wide eyes, thus far unnoticed by the monsters. The giant moth and the winged lizard were locked in a circle of aerial combat, swooping wildly around the room just above head-height. Two M. Bovinocorpii kept trying to eat the reconstructed, plastic giant Muppafern, mooing unhappily as each bite produced no chewing satisfaction. And Animal and MahnaMahna seemed to be doing the frug just behind the arm-waving, angry-dancing Muppeti Quidquid. Sam gestured angrily at the guards. "Well? Do something!"
The shaman noticed him. "Ooogawokka mugga boot!" he screamed, rolling his jade eye at the huge marble pillars framing the gallery entryway. Sam heard the crumble and rumble of rock being forced impossibly from its place and leaped into the room an instant before one of the massive pillars toppled, blocking the entry, trapping the guards outside the room…and everyone else in from that end.
"A mummy coming back to life? Oh, come on, Newsie…wasn't that just a movie?" Fargo asked over the audio feed into Newsie's ear.
Newsie spread his arms, including the room at large in his frustrated gesture. "Bart, I don't pretend to be even remotely qualified to explain this phenomenon—"
"Doo dooo doo doo doo!" Two pink, horned creatures chorused, springing up next to Newsie.
He shoved them aside. "Oh will you get out of here! –-but Bart, I assure you and the viewers, this is no publicity stunt! Somehow, a number of large prehistoric Muppet monsters, most of them with huge, sharp teeth, have animated and are attacking everyone in the room!" Newsie lost the feed for a moment when Gina threw both of them to the floor; another burst of chilly energy shot over them, shattering the remaining glass of another display.
"Hey! Hey! Get me outta here!" a thin, reedy voice shrieked; they looked up to see Fleet Scribbler crouched inside the hollow ribcage of the M. Tex, still alive and apparently unhurt. He began banging on the ribs of the giant carnivorous Muppasaur. The aardvark tilted his camera up, capturing Scribbler's imprisonment…and the monster's irritated reaction. With another earsplitting roar, it shook itself violently, cast about for something to bite, and its open jaws swooped down over the cameramuppet at its feet.
"Jerry! Oh, no!" Rhonda squeaked. The M. Tex gulped the aardvark down; he went sprawling, camera-first, onto the mop-ragged head of one tabloid reporter. The Muppasaur snarled, stomping back across the room, its spiked tail whooshing through the air behind it more than enough discouragement for anyone even thinking about following…not that anyone was. "Jerry! Are you okay?" Rhonda yelled as she saw the aardvark trying to pick himself up within the bony bowels. When he gave her a weak thumb-up, she vented her anger on Scribbler. "Scribbler, you moron! If you've broken my camera, I'll tear it out of your scrawny hide!"
The tabloid hack didn't reply. He wasn't accustomed to having heavy things pound his head.
"Ohmygawd! Ohmygawd! It's gonna eat me!" Rizzo screamed, at about the same time as the much-angered M. Tex was homing in on Statler. The rat bolted this way and that with a snapping Velocimuppet on his tail; seeing Scooter behind one of the walls for the "Timeline of Muppet Evolution" corridor, the rat leaped into his arms. "Save me! I'll give ya all my cheese!"
The Velocimuppet, focused on a tasty rat snack, lunged at him; frightened, Scooter instinctively threw Rizzo. "Aaaaaaaawhatareyoudoing?" Rizzo screeched; he bounced off the tall hat and into the broad hands of the Swedish Chef. "Oh my heart," Rizzo panted, but before he could catch his breath, the same singleminded proto-Muppet turkey raced to the Chef, bony beak spread wide with multiple teeth gleaming. "Ohmygawdhereitcomesagain—aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!"
"Ooh! Der turken-toofer nooo der snicky-snacky!" Chef exclaimed, hurling the rat back at Scooter, who only just managed to catch him.
"This is Lewis Kazagger with Muppet Sports! An early start to the Muppet International Keep-Away Tourney here at the unlikely venue of the Museum of Natural History! So far the score is Muppets one, vicious fossil monsters nothing! But the Velocimuppets were a species known for their tenacity and fierceness, so it's gonna be a wild contest here today!" Kazagger proclaimed, popping up with a large microphone.
Newsie blinked, eyes wide and jaw slack. "Who the heck is he broadcasting to?"
"This is all your fault, you nearsighted old fraud!" Waldorf complained, shifting around for more elbow room in the ribcage.
"Me? I didn't wave my coat at it, yelling 'Toro, toro!'" Statler grumbled back, trying to free his foot from underneath some sort of long-nosed, shell-less armadillo with a broken camera.
"If you'd admit you need reading glasses, we wouldn't have been here in the first place!"
"That exit's still open!" Kermit pointed out the narrower corridor at the far end of the room to Fozzie and Rowlf. "Get those children out of here! I'll get the Scouts!"
"You got it!" Rowlf promised.
"This is—this is hideous!" Sam stuttered, trotting alongside the dog. Fozzie was already beckoning to the frightened children and their young teachers; the chaperones may have mastered their early education teaching techniques, but nothing they'd learned about ADD, bullying, or cleaning glue spills had prepared them for raging, lunatic Jurassic Muppet carnage. They hustled their charges after the bear and the dog gratefully. Sam brought up the rear of the hasty parade, his sharp gaze swiveling all around as people continued to be chased and snapping, snarling, stomping monsters continued to snap, snarl, and stomp at them. "This is an outrage! Where is the curator? I must protest this ridiculous, antisocial fossil behavior to him at once!"
"Uh, I think dat's him over dere," Fozzie said, nodding briefly at the end of the "Muppet Evolution" display. On the pedestal where Mookie-mookie had been laid in state, Dr Van Neuter writhed and jumped while two of the reverse-DNA-injected chickens, now the size of ostriches and with similarly aggressive attitudes, clawed and pecked at the hapless scientist, yanking out his hair strand by strand as he yelped and swatted vainly at them. Mulch crouched behind one of the display walls, wincing every time his boss cried out.
"Ow! Ow! Stop it! Ow!"
"They're not eating him?" Rowlf wondered, pausing a moment to stare. "What the hey?"
Sam blanched. "Uh…I…I think…they're gathering nest material," he muttered.
He, Fozzie, and Rowlf all shuddered. "Yeeesh…"
"Gil! Jill! This way!" Kermit urged, and the adult frogs saw him, nodded, and began herding the Scouts around the empty platforms toward the unguarded, still-open exit. Kermit felt a tap on his ankle, and jumped. Looking down as he landed, he relaxed as he saw the tiny, fluffy, pink bunny rabbit. "Oh! Geez…uh…do you want to come with us? I'm sure it'd be much safer for you too away from all these Muppasaurs," Kermit offered.
The bunny blinked its adorably large eyes at him, wiggled its whiskers, opened its jaws impossibly wide and lunged at the frog with incisors the size of a sabre-toothed tiger's. "Aaaack!" Kermit yelped. "Piggy!"
"Kermie!" Throwing aside the squealing Velocimuppet she was body-slamming against the floor in an attempt to break its mineralized bones, Piggy waded into the fray.
"It looks as though the Velocimuppet team may be tiring!" Kazagger announced, somehow keeping just out of range of another circling turkeylike monster as his wobbly parsnip of a nose darted one direction and the opposite repeatedly while Rizzo was hurled between Scooter and the Chef, both of whom were ignored by the Velocimuppets as long as the rat was in the air. "Could this spell defeat for the fulminous fossils? Will they come up with a better strategy and stop this ignominious slaughter?"
"I'm gonna come up with my lunch in another second," Rizzo groaned, flying limply into Scooter's hands once more. "Ooooohhh…" Scooter, showing some strain now, nearly missed his return throw to the Chef, and then yelped and bolted as the second Velocimuppet finally realized it might make more sense to attack the people throwing the rat than pursuing the rat himself. "Aaagh! Chef! Chef! Do something!" Rizzo squeaked, seeing Scooter flee and the original fossil monster bearing down on the Chef.
"A break for the fossil team! Finally they may be able to even the score!" Kazagger exclaimed, following the action.
"Dude, whose side are you on?" Scott demanded, waving his hands at the Chef. "Here! I'm open! I'm open!"
Gladly, the Chef lobbed the rat underhand and looping high; Scott caught Rizzo and promptly plopped the nauseated rodent atop his six-foot-four head. The Velocimuppet chasing the tasty furball screeched to a floor-gouging halt when Rizzo blew a sloppy raspberry at it; from the monster's perspective, the rat had suddenly vaulted in size, and might present more of a challenge than it wanted. Hissing, it backed away. "Holy cow," Rizzo gasped. "It thought me an' you was da same!"
"Good thing we're both Dodgers fans," Scott said, noting the same jacket on both him and the rat today.
"And that concludes the first game, with the final score Muppets twenty-seven successful passes, Velocimuppets still zero, an astounding phenomenon…er…which… which has not been successfully reached in over fifty years of championship Keep-Away play until now, and you saw it here first, sports fans!" Kazagger said excitedly, doing his best to ignore the singing pink horned things suddenly behind him.
The sloth somehow managed to stay unnoticed as he continued filming; possibly his slow movements made the Muppasaurs doubtful he was actually alive. He focused on the Newsman while Newsie repeatedly dodged and weaved, Gina keeping an eye on the dancing shaman while Newsie doggedly continued his on-the-scene coverage. At least, he noticed when his gaze swept the whole room at one point, his mother had vanished. Probably she'd found the whole event too weird; he wasn't sure he could debate that opinion right now. "The schoolchildren seem to have been safely maneuvered out of harm's way, but that still leaves a great number of us in danger here, Bart, including an entire troop of Frog Scouts and celebrity couple Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy! Is there any chance of the governor sending state troops to relieve the overwhelmed Museum security staff, Bart?" Newsie asked loudly over the screeches of hunting prehistoric predators.
"Yoo hoo! Ugly!" Janice cooed; Mookie-mookie swung around, tattered brow furrowed. As Janice waved and struck a pose, lifting her skirt to show off a tanned thigh, Floyd reached for Animal's chain and tugged on it.
"Come on, man, snap out of it! You're a drummer, not a backup singer!" Floyd coaxed. Unfortunately, the entranced Muppet growled loudly at his friend, and the shaman whirled back around to find Floyd inches away. "Uh…what's happenin', my ancient and tombalicious grey dude?" Floyd tried, and held up a hand for a jive shake.
The mummy apparently was not a hipster. "Mooga! Unga hoggah mooga buk!" He roared, bringing both hands together in a clapping gesture over his head and glaring at Floyd, then Janice. A line of velvet ropes connected to brass posts swooped across the floor, swiftly wrapping the guitarist and the bassist together and rolling them off to a side wall, where had they not already been close, they would've felt distinctly overcrowded.
Janice sighed, barely able to shake her head. Floyd gave a half-shrug, arms pinned. "Well, good thing we're past the holding-hands stage already," he joked weakly.
Bart Fargo, star anchor, was meanwhile casting doubts on the Newsman's motives. "I haven't heard anything from the governor's office, no. You know, Newsie, I'm sorry but I have to bring up the scene last night which a number of people witnessed, where you allegedly blew up at your girlfriend, and yet isn't that her behind you?"
Newsie glanced at Gina; she gave his hand a squeeze, dispiritedly watching the last of the Mayhem become entrapped in crowd control ropes. "Uh, what has that got to do with any of this?" Newsie glared at the camerasloth. "Tony, are you getting all this?"
"The live feed's good," Rhonda promised him, hovering next to the sloth. "And his name's…oh never mind…"
"Well, we all know the Muppets have a reputation for bizarre, crazy stunts—" Fargo continued.
Right then, the transformed Camilla lolloped past, riding Gonzo, her oversized feet clutching his shoulders as he galloped. "Yeeehaaaa! Okay, can I be the cowboy again now, Camilla? …Camilla? Sweetie?"
"Grrrr-BAWK!"
Newsie, Gina, and Rhonda stared after the pair. "Er…no, Bart; just that guy," Newsie muttered. "Some of us are pretty normal…"
"Mooga-shaka!" Mookie-mookie howled, pointing at the Newsman. Animal and MahnaMahna echoed him loudly, swaying, their arms and legs pumping up and down as they did what looked like a dancercise. "Mooga-shaka! Mooga-shaka!" Gina shoved Newsie out of the way, stumbling; he frantically grabbed at her as she fell, and a high-pitched squeal in his ear made him yelp in pain and dig the audio-feed earpiece out and throw it. He wound up gasping on the floor next to his beloved.
"Newsie!" Gina said, reaching for him. He returned the embrace, relieved to see she didn't look hurt. "Forget the stupid coverage already! This is out of control and we need to get the h—out!" she argued.
"He what? What do you mean? Live? Now?" Rhonda squeaked into her cell phone. Disgusted and astounded, she lowered the phone, staring at Newsie. "That was the station. Bart just broke out in green fur flu…on the air live." She threw her paws in the air. "Sheesh! What next?"
Next came immediately in the form of two of the Velocimuppets. One of them veered off at Newsie and Gina, one at Rhonda. "Ack! Why do they always pick the rats? Why?" Rhonda cried, legging it for the huge hollow Muppafern, the only thing nearby which seemed likely to provide shelter she could reach but the snapping, demented bony turkey behind her couldn't. She dove into one of the tiny holes in the fern's trunk just ahead of the surging stretch of fossil neck and a clash of hard teeth. Panting, the news director suddenly realized she might be out of the Velocimuppet's reach, but she was certainly not alone; she looked around in growing apprehension at an entire clan of animate, stuffed creatures which appeared to be the ancient ancestors of Muppet mice, although these things still seemed more reptile than rodent. "Ah…hi, guys," Rhonda said, nervously backing into a fern wall, the creatures sniffing and closing in around her. "Uh…speak English? No? Um—how about mouse? Squeak? Squeaky squeak?" she tried, rummaging through her memory back to foreign-language classes in high school. "No, huh? Um, look, I'm with the local news, maybe I can get you an interview? Ack!"
Across the gallery, three other rodents were experiencing a similar problem. The recent Frog Scouts of small furry persuasion bounded as fast as their tiny legs could carry them, but couldn't keep up with the longer-springing froglets all making a break for the one unblocked exit. "Eep! Eep! Wait!" one of the mice called, but his tiny voice went unheard beneath the roar of the M. Tex shaking its body from side to side in an apparent attempt to shut up the newly-complaining Scribbler trapped in the ribcage under one aardvark, two grumbly old men, and one Museum staffer who hadn't moved fast enough when the enormous mouth opened over him. Melvin the snail, who'd hung back and stared in awe at most of the fast-moving events since the giant Muppasaur had roared its defiance the first time, saw the mice's peril.
"Iiii taaaake it baaaack," he muttered as he scooched across the path the mice had just gone between two broken display cases, laying a trail of slime on the marble floor the instant before the Velocimuppet hit it. Talons skidded, bones slipped, and the Muppasaur went tail-over-beak, crashing into one of the cases. "Yoouuu're noooot soooo cooooll," Melvin sniffed at it. "Yooouuu're juuust a buuuuuuulllyy!"
The vicious predators hadn't even seen the small shelled creature until now. Now…it turned, seeking the voice, and finally located it. Melvin yanked himself into his shell as the Velocimuppet bit down, but the shell crackled dangerously under the tremendous pressure of the strong teeth. "Heeeeellllpp!" the snail yelled.
His lower voice carried where the mice's high-pitched squeals hadn't. Robin and Dill, both at the rear of the Scouts to usher the younger ones ahead, heard and whirled around. Robin gasped. "Oh no! Melvin!"
"The mice!" Dill agreed, shocked, seeing their newer members all in trouble. The two raced back the way they'd come, into danger's reach.
"Robin! Dill! Keep away from those monsters!" Kermit yelled, jerking aside when the violent pink bunny growled and tried another leaping lunge at his face. "Someone! Get that snail!"
"Ungh! You leave him—alone, you horrible –ergh!—beast!" Piggy shouted, but even her best karate chops missed the wildly hopping rabbit.
Rowlf and Fozzie, at the doorway to help usher the scouts out of the exhibit hall, stared in surprise at the sight of their friend and employer bouncing higher and higher, equaled by the lightly springing bunny with ridiculously long teeth. "Good grief! I think that thing's rabid!" Rowlf exclaimed.
Scooter, his lungs and legs hurting, joined them, and stared as well. "Uh…no. Its eyes aren't googly enough to be a Rabbid…" he opined weakly.
"Get 'em, guys!" Robin whooped, leaping upon the Velocimuppet attacking Melvin. With croaking war cries, several of the older Frog Scouts followed his example, grabbing bony shoulders and legs and ribs, pulling and kicking and pounding with tiny frog fists. Dill scooped up the mice, hustling them to the relative safety of the exit and the adult troop leaders, who looked on in horror, separated from their brave little frogs by two of the mutated chickens fighting with another of the fierce fossils as the monsters ranged all over the back section of the gallery. The Scouts kept up the assault, perplexing the Velocimuppet; it screeched in protest, shaking itself, hopping from one foot to the other, trying to scratch at them, but the troop clung tight. It dropped Melvin to try and bite the frogs; the snail hustled out of the way at a full-throttle half-mile an hour. "Yeah! Take that! and that!" Robin shouted, kicking repeatedly at the thing's ribs, ducking its beak. Suddenly the entire thing shivered and collapsed into a pile of quivering bones. The froglets froze, surprised. Everyone turned to look at Ribsy the toad, who blinked slowly at them, and held up a small triangular bone.
"Duh…lynchpin bone," he croaked.
Robin cheered. The other scouts took up the cry, peeping and ribbiting happily. "Yeah! Yayyyy Ribsy!"
Their joy didn't last. The bones began to reassemble before their stunned eyes. The shuddering fossil resumed its upright stance, the beak darting down and grabbing the bone from a frozen Ribsy, tucking it back into its spine near the neck. "That didn't work! Run, everybody!" Robin cried, and the troop took to their flippers again.
As Gina ducked and darted around broken cases and half-collapsed portable walls, pulling Newsie along by one hand, she saw Mookie-mookie distracted by something in the center of the room, where Kermit was leaping in the air in some sort of contest with a pink bunny rabbit and Piggy's powerful kicks could be glimpsed behind the M. Tex lumbering into a better angle of attack on the pig. Was the shaman directing the Muppasaur? Hard to tell – but he wasn't paying attention to anything else! She halted their flight, yanking a startled Newsman almost off his feet as she dropped into a crouch behind a tall platform. "Newsie!" she hissed, "Look! None of them can see us here!"
Trying to pant silently, he peered around the corner. "Good," he said weakly, slumping to the floor. "This is insane…"
Gina studied the angle, the distance. "I think I can sneak up on him. If I can get close enough and yank out that d—d eyeball, maybe I can stop him, at least!"
"Gina, no!" Newsie said, shocked. "There's no way you can do it!"
She looked around warily; in every direction, ancient Muppet creatures still ran, flew, crawled, and chased. The mummy shaman chanted, waving his arms over his head, and the rumble of support pillars throughout the room made her and Newsie shudder. "There's no telling what he'll do next!" she whispered heatedly. "Sounds like he'd be happy burying the whole d—d Museum along with himself again!"
"Gina!" Newsie gasped, grabbing her arm, shaking his head. "No, you can't! I couldn't…I can't lose you!"
She stopped, meeting his worried stare, then drew him close for a deep kiss. "I love you, Aloysius. I'm not going anywhere without you."
He held her tight, fervently returning the kiss. They pulled just far enough apart to breathe, both short of air and tense. Gina brushed his prominent nose with her own smaller one. "Together, then."
He heaved for breath, trying to steel his nerves. But if his beloved could dare this…how could he stay behind? He nodded at her, holding her gaze. "Together."
Gina gave him a silent finger-count the same way the floor manager would on the news set: three…two…one! They sprang up, running as quietly as they could the few steps to the terrible Mookie-mookie and his even worse backup singers. A second before they reached him, the shaman sensed something, and started to turn.
"Hey, stupid!" Newsie shouted before Gina could, startling her as well as the mummy. He ran past it, turning to pull his mouth open even wider with his fingers, sticking his tongue out. "Bllleaaahh! You couldn't hit the broad side of a gravestone, you ugly—"
"Oooongrah fugguh muh!" Mookie-mookie yelled, throwing his arm forward threateningly – and Gina snatched the jade eyeball out of the withered socket. "Ragguh-puh!" the mummy howled, waving its arms wildly.
A small shockwave of force hit Newsie, sending him sprawling into the tail of the Muppetasaurus Tex. The beast snarled, automatically smacking its tail; fortunately the spikes missed, but the thick, bony part of the elongated spine made contact. "Whoof!" Newsie choked, the wind knocked from his chest, landing hard against a pillar by the exit to the gallery.
Scooter nodded at him, still winded himself. "Nice distance!" Zoot and Dr Teeth, wheezing, clinging weakly to one another and still looking green around the edges, made room for Newsie in the exitway. They'd finally managed to fight free of the nose-pinching crawdad-bugs, but were too ill from the lingering flu aftereffects to do much else.
Mookie-mookie shouted and pounded his feet on the floor angrily. "Mookaka baroo foogah shaka-laka!" He swiped at Gina, but his depth perception was off. She stepped back, but then Animal grabbed her leg.
"Aaaaa! Wo-man!"
"Eeek!" Desperate to keep the eyeball out of the shaman's reach, Gina threw it over his head at a man in a large collar with buggy eyes. "Hey fish-guy! Catch!"
"Ooouhhh okay!" Lew Zealand agreed enthusiastically. He palmed the heavy eyeball, feinting left and right as MahnaMahna raced over and jumped up and down trying to steal it back. "Heh heh! Catch, cook!" He lobbed it over to the Chef, who protested.
"Oom nut er kook! Oom uss noormal uss der eenywuns!"
"Aaaaaand the second round of the International Keep-Away Games is on!" Lewis Kazagger shouted, suddenly in the midst of it again. "This time it's the Muppets versus the Munificent Mummy Muggers! This might not be a fair fight, since the Muppet team has brought in a ringer who has at least two feet over most of the other players!"
Animal rushed the Chef, growling, and the frightened Chef tossed the eyeball back at Lew. "So far the score is two and oh for the Muppets! Can they repeat their earlier victory or will this be the match that stops their relentless advance?" Kazagger commented, avidly watching the tosses back and forth. Gina tried to break away from the contest, but Mookie-mookie grabbed her arm, chanting at her. However, he immediately jerked back in pain; she felt heat around her neck, and realized with a start that her copper bead necklace was humming.
Oh my gosh…is his energy the same kind as Newsie's? Just…better directed at chaos-causing? she wondered. Whatever the case, the mummy, frustrated at not being able to touch her without consequences, went into a hopping rage, and Gina quickly scrambled out of the way.
Newsie saw the last part of that from across the room, relieved when it seemed the horrible dead thing couldn't harm her. He shook his head in amazement as Kazagger continued to narrate the eyeball keep-away contest. Scooter asked, "How does he manage to just be there when sports happen?"
"Search me," Newsie grumbled, not without admiration. "Wish he'd teach it to me…that would come in really handy for news reports!"
Another bone-rattling roar from the M. Tex made everyone jump. The thing loomed over Piggy, and the remaining Velocimuppet still stubbornly snapping at her gave up, backing off before the much larger beast. Unsure whether she could afford to give it her full attention, Piggy glanced from it to Kermit; her frog still dodged and bounced and panted around the room, going in random directions to try and throw off the killer rabbit, but the springy pink thing wouldn't relinquish its pursuit. "Kermie?" she called. "I may have a teensy problem…"
"Same here!" Kermit yelled back, turning in midair to see what she was dealing with now. All in one glance he took in the gigantic fossil with its ribcage full of uncomfortable people all being knocked around when it moved into a position to try and add Piggy to that total…and his nephew and the rest of the Scouts backing toward the exit with what looked like all of the Velocimuppets trailing them hungrily. "Oh good grief!" he cried, ducking when the rabbit lunged at him again. "Piggy! Robin!"
"Out! Everybody out!" Rowlf yelled.
"Gina!" Newsie called at the same instant.
She waved him off. "I'm fine! Go! Go!"
Oh, he hated that idea. However, the ring of Velocimuppets closed in swiftly, coordinating finally, the flock herding the Muppets not tied up or trapped elsewhere in the room all toward the exit doorway. If these things get into the rest of the Museum…if they get OUT of the Museum-! No, no! Frightened, Newsie could all too easily imagine what those razor-claws and vicious teeth would do to any non-Muppets they encountered…and he doubted they would turn to dust if caught outside in full daylight, as the Museum's inhabitants had in the movie. We can't let them out! We can't!
He voiced these fears as the Frog Scouts edged past him. "Those things will destroy the city if they get loose!"
"They'll destroy us if we don't get out!" Scooter argued, backing away. The Velocimuppets chirped and growled oddly among themselves. Newsie didn't like that one bit…they were communicating…planning.
"Split up!" Rowlf suggested – and then the lead monster leaped at the terrified Muppets.
The group charged along the hallway. A stairwell opened down and up just past the gallery on the right, but Fozzie had heard the Newsman and knew he was right. "Not down dere!" he shouted, directing everyone past the stairs instead. "Dere's innocent people down dere! We can't let dese monsters loose!"
"Wish we had some of our monsters!" Rowlf panted, casting a disappointed look down the stairs as he ran past. "Where they heck are they, anyway?"
"Monster-petting therapy at the Shadows on the Dial Happy Home for the Dangerously Senile," Scooted puffed back. "It's supposed to be good for the old folks…"
At the top of the stairs, a purplish Muppet with a stringy mustache and dreads and a leather-clad prawn, both in dark clothes and bad moods due to the guards at the Columbus Avenue entrance to the Museum having forced them to leave their double-jolt cups of coffee behind, paused to stare at the river of small frogs and larger Muppets who pounded past them, not even noticing. A few paces behind, six monsters consisting of toothed beaks, long sleek bodies with no skin or flesh of any sort over their dark bones, and enormous claw-toes propelling them forward raced in the Muppets' wake. The last of these turned its skeletal head to shriek at the visitors on the stairs, but didn't slow, and in a moment all were out of sight.
Clifford blinked. Slowly he looked down at Pepe, who returned his slack-jawed, weary-eyed stare. "Maaaaaannnn," Clifford sighed, "it is waaaaayyy too early for this stuff!"
"You said it, amigo," the king prawn agreed. In perfect synch, they pulled out their shades and donned them, and turned as one to slouch downstairs and back home to bed. "Do you think that blonde from last night will call me? She has my number," Pepe wondered as they trudged down the stairs.
"Man, only because you scotch-taped it to her wrist! You have got to give it up, Pepe!"
"Hey, right now I don't gots to do nothing but get some sleep. Hey, we should go clubbing more often, you know? I gets more free drinks with you around!"
"Uh, only if you promise to stop climbing into girls' drinks…"
Kermit was only slightly relieved to see several of the more responsible Muppets leaving with the Scouts; there was still little he could do with this blasted rabbit on his heels, and the crazed thing didn't seem to be tiring…unlike him. Meanwhile he could see Piggy squaring off against the M. Tex. She made a feint to the left, then swung out a leg in a fast foot-sweep; the Muppasaur snarled, stepping back surprisingly sprightly, and lashed its tail at her in return. It missed. The two circled one another, sizing up postures and possible weaknesses. "Come on, ya big bony loser, ya want a piece of me, you're gonna have to do better than that!" Piggy growled. It growled back, and tried a bite, but Piggy expected that and dove to one side, then stomped hard on the thing's bony big toe. It snatched its foot out of the way with a low grunt. Kermit could only focus on his own contest, despairing; he knew Piggy had enormous reserves of strength and determination, but these things seemed unstoppable…and sooner or later the Muppets' energy would run dry…
Newsie veered right when the Frog Scouts did, running through a hall of stuffed birds behind glass while the other Muppets kept going straight into the Eastern Woodland Indian exhibit. He tried to recall the exact layout of this floor; with the entry to the Muppet exhibit blocked, there was no longer a complete circuit to be made without going up or downstairs…but… When Robin and Dill finally paused, panting, at the door at the far end of the Hall of African Mammals with its now-famous lion pride motionless in the center, he was able to catch up with them, but saw three of the Velocimuppets pacing through the bushes, closing in. "We can't lead these things down into all the people!" Robin gasped, seeing the main stairs just ahead.
"They're right behind us! What'll we do?" Jill croaked.
"Well we're not taking the ad account for this place, that's for sure," Gil groaned. "This is a PR catastrophe!"
"Mom, Dad, we're being chased by Muppasaurs! A little focus, please?" Dill begged.
"Go straight," Newsie directed. "Next room!"
"But – but isn't that the scary snake room?" one of the other Scouts asked, shivering.
Robin glanced at Newsie, realizing what he had in mind. "That's where the live frog exhibit is!"
"Go hide!" Newsie urged. "Climb in the tanks if you have to! Maybe they won't pay attention to regular frogs!"
"Right!" Robin cried. "Come on! Hop, everyone! Hop!"
A cavalcade of frogs, two toads, and three mice made a last-ditch run for the long Hall of Reptiles and Amphibians just around the corner from the grand stairs. Gil paused, looking back at the Newsman. "But…you're not a frog! Where will you hide?"
Whoops…