Author's Note: I would've had this ready to post sooner, but I came down with a little while ago and felt to out of sorts to write anything. But I just finished this up today and I figured those waiting for the first proper chapter of Infinity Crisis: Glimpses - Season 2 had likely been waiting for it long enough. Well, that and because I also have a very special Halloween one-shot I want to have ready before, y'know, Halloween. Anyway, please read on!
Earth-5282
Los Angeles, California, USA
The Chow Household
Within the walls of a small, but charming suburban home, the soft echo of noise could be heard from behind a bedroom door. It was the sounds of friendly laughter and small talk of three growing young women. As one may expect, they were indeed having a sleepover inside.
"I'm so glad you two could come." said the host of their little party.
Kai-Lan Chow was sitting on her bed, which sat in the corner of her cutesy, colorfully decorated bedroom. She was a petite, bright-faced Chinese-American with brown eyes and smooth black hair, which she wore in two thick puns with red flower clips. She wore a white undershirt and pajama bottoms with pink, purple, and blue horizontal stripes.
"It's been kind of boring here at home lately." Kai-Lan admitted, looking at the two.
One of her two guests was sitting on a bean bag chair that was designed to evoke a white furred monkey.
"I'm glad we could liven things up for you then!" she smiled at Kai-Lan.
Dora Márquez was a bubbly Latina who had a fairly athletic build. She wore her rich brown hair in a messy, neck length bob cut with bangs. For her pajamas, she wore a pair of faded pink sweatpants and an oversized light orange t-shirt.
"We've been having a good time too, Kai-Lan," her other guest added. She was standing by Kai-Lan's window, poking at a decal sticker of a smiling cartoon sun on the frame. "Your grandfather is a nice man."
Emily Negroni was a slender Italian-American with a fair complexion. She was taller than both Dora and Kai-Lan and seemed slightly older than them too. In the past, she wore her naturally brown hair longer and with a headband, but currently had a crew cut dyed a strong blue. She wore a long sleeved gray pajama shirt and light blue pajama shorts.
"You said he's your father's father, yes?" Emily asked.
"That's right, Emily!" Kai-lan nodded approvingly. "That's why I call him Ye-Ye, because yéyé is used for paternal grandfathers."
Kai-Lan's Ye-Ye had raised her alone since she was at least five or six years old. It was a happy life and he took care of her well, to the point that she didn't think much about the whereabouts or status of her actual parents.
"You didn't mind me taking time to help him get to bed, did you?" she asked.
"We didn't mind," Dora shook her head. She walked over to the bed and crawled up behind Kai-Lan. "I honestly found it sweet."
Kai-Lan leaned her head back and let Dora undo her hair buns. Her hair fell and flowed down her back, revealing it to be far longer than Dora's. From her spot by the window, Emily watched bemused as Dora ran her fingers through Kai-Lan's beautiful locks and talked about wanting to braid it for her. Kai-Lan briefly closed her eyes and bit on her lower lip before snapping back to reality and turning her gaze to Emily.
"Before I moved here to be with my mom, I lived with my grandmother out in the country after my parents split up," Emily said. Though she said it casually, a somberness could be found in her voice. "So…I get it."
Emily looked back out the window and finally saw what it was she was keeping an eye out for; A young teenage boy in the window of a neighboring house not far away. He was looking through a pair of binoculars pointed towards Kai-Lan's window, clearly attempting to spy on the girls.
"Looks like we have an admirer," Emily smirked, her mood improving. She briefly glanced back to see Dora and Kai-Lan before looking back out the window and right at the boy. "…Watch this, ladies."
Emily motioned for the boy to keep quiet and flirtatiously at him, causing him to gasp. He looked pleasantly surprised, even from so far away. His jaw dropped when Emily began to lift up her pajama top, his cheeks going red. Then, just before she revealed half of her midriff, Emily quickly pulled her top back down and jeeringly stuck her tongue out. Upon seeing the fast encroaching dismay on his face, she shut the blinds.
"Thanks for keeping watch for the neighbor kid, E. I normally welcome getting attention from boys, but I don't care for peeping toms any more than the next person." Kai-Lan hopped off the bed.
The two shared a laugh.
"That little perv really thought I'd strip off my clothes for him?!" Emily chortled. She fell backwards onto the same bean bag Dora had been sitting on earlier. "As if! Haha! Thanks again for the heads up!"
"Emily, don't shout so loud. You may wake Kai-Lan's Ye-Ye." Dora tried to shush her.
"No she won't. He's a very heavy sleeper, so we can do whatever we want." Kai-Lan winked at Dora playfully.
Dora and Emily shared a perplexed look, unsure what Kai-Lan could be implying. Kai-Lan picked up a small electric lantern that had been sitting on one of her shelves and then flipped a switch on her wall, turning the lights to her room off. She then turned on the lantern, illuminating their faces in the dark.
"I hereby declare it to be time for a spooky story!" she grinned widely and wiggled her free hand's fingers theatrically. "One if you must have a halfone."
"Sure. That could be fun." Emily said casually.
"Umm…Okay, I guess." Dora gulped.
Kai-Lan placed down the lantern in the middle of her carpet and she, Dora, and Emily sat around it in a circle as if it were a campfire.
"So which of us should go first?" Emily asked.
"You can go before I do, Emily," Dora suggested. "I mean…If you want to."
"Well, one of us has to, so why not?" Emily shrugged. She leaned over the lantern slightly. "…This is something that really happened to me, years ago after I had just moved in with my grandmother. I woke up early one morning and when I went outside…I'm not sure why I did, but I did. It was so cold that I turned to go back inside, but then I saw something standing among the trees. At first, I assumed it was the bear cub I often saw, but…"
She paused and looked down towards the window. Dora and Kai-Lan waited for her to continue her tale with baited breath.
"…It wasn't him. It was a woman, short and elderly. She was covered in drying mud and was holding a snake. A copperhead, I think. She saw that I had spotted her and she looked right at me and…smiled. For a moment, I felt relief and I assumed she must've just been lost in the forest. I was even about to offer to help her…"
"Really? Before she even said a word to you?" Dora questioned.
"An example of my childhood naïveté, I am afraid," Emily shook her head. "Thing is, that relief didn't last long. Before I could say anything, the mud covered woman bit off the snake's head and swallowed it down in one gulp. Its blood was dripping down her hand and her mouth."
"Eww!" Kai-Lan gagged.
"I shrieked and stumbled backwards towards the door, but I couldn't avert my gaze," Emily continued her account. "That old woman was drinking the blood out of the rest of the snake's body like it was a waterskin. I ran back into my grandmother's house, but before I slammed the door shut, I heard an echo traveling over the early morning air…It was the woman's voice. She had said something."
"Wh…What did she say?" Kai-Lan shuddered.
She and Dora were lightly hugging one another.
"She said…" Emily almost seemed hesitant to say it. "…'Sendak, I invoke thee'. After that, there was nothing."
Dora and Kai-Lan both stared at Emily, unsure what to think.
"That's…confusing." Kai-Lan said.
"Do you know what she meant?" Dora asked.
"I don't. Something about the name sounded vaguely familiar, but I have no idea why. That was the only time I ever saw or heard the woman. My grandmother found me sobbing and brought me to her bed. She somehow convinced me that it had just been a bad dream. She was always good at making me feel safe there in the forest. I miss her…" Emily closed her eyes and went quiet for a second, before looking back at Dora and Kai-Lan. "I went back to sleep, and after I woke up and got dressed for the day, I went outside and saw . I figured my grandmother was right and I spent the day playing with my…erm…"
"Animal friends?" Dora asked knowingly. "Kai-Lan and I had some too."
"The memory of them gets fuzzy, doesn't it? Hmmm…There's no way a single balloon would be enough to make a rhino float, right?" Kai-Lan stroked her chin.
"I have absolutely no idea what that means," Emily shrugged. "We're getting off topic."
"We're sorry. You can finish." Dora urged her friend on.
"…Good, because you're gonna want to hear this," Emily crossed her arms. "Later that same day, I got tired while I was out playing and decided to sit down next to a small boulder to rest for a minute. But then I saw something on that boulder. It was a single word, written in blood."
Kai-Lan and Dora looked at each other nervously and gulped, waiting for Emily to reveal what the word was.
"It was the same name that I heard the old woman say; Sendak…" Emily ran a hand through her hair. "I tried to show it to anyone I could, but then a storm rolled in. When I returned to the spot the following day, the snake blood had been washed away. To this day, I'm not sure what it all meant, but nothing like it ever happened in the forest again. At least…Not that I saw."
For a full minute, the three sat there with none uttering a word.
"…Dude, you just gave me so many goosebumps that I'm tempted to call you R.L. Stine," Kai-Lan broke the silence. She cracked a smile. "There's no way I can top that!"
"Same here," Dora agreed. She shook her head a little. "I was going to tell a story about a grumpy old troll who lived under a bridge, but it just wouldn't hold a candle."
Kai-Lan picked the lantern up, turned her room's lights back on, and turned the lantern off.
"I guess I should've gone last!" Emily chuckled.
"Anything else you two want to do before we turn in for the evening?" Dora asked.
"Actually, I did have one thing in mind," Kai-Lan eyed the two. "But only if—"
She was cut off by a sharp ringing sound from somewhere else in the house. This was followed by a booming thud.
"What the heck was that?!" Emily blurted out.
"Let's investigate." Dora suggested.
The three friends nodded in agreement.
"Sounds to me like it came from the bathroom." Kai-Lan opened her door.
They walked down the hallway towards the bathroom, glancing around in all directions. The darkness made it hard to see, so Kai-Lan turned her lantern back on. She tried to hand it to Dora.
"No thanks," Dora declined. "You can lead the way."
Kai-Lan nodded and they continued down the hall.
"I hope your Ye-Ye didn't just hurt himself." Emily said in concern.
"If he had fallen, he would've called out for me. This must be something else." Kai-Lan led the way to the bathroom. She looked over her shoulder at Dora. "Could it be your little monkey pal that you talk about at school?"
"Oh, you mean Boots?. No, it couldn't be him," Dora dismissed the notion. "He's been too preoccupied to follow me around everywhere lately."
Kai-Lan was about to ask what a monkey could possibly be so busy with, but her thought was interrupted by another loud thud. Just as she had suspected, it was indeed coming from the bathroom, which was at the end of the hall. The group could see that there was a white light leaking out from under the door. Cutting into it were squirming strands of shadow.
"There's something inside there." Emily said.
Emily rolled up the sleeves of her shirt, exposing her well toned arms. She had a tattoo that depicted the black silhouettes of two adult bears and a bear cub walking in a line along her left upper arm. Kai-Lan couldn't stop herself from staring, if only for a moment.
"Get ready to open that door, Márquez," Emily looked at Dora. "I'm heading in."
"I've got your back." Dora nodded.
Dora yanked open the bathroom door and Emily lunged in. The light from the room poured down the hall.
"What in the world?!" Emily gasped.
Kai-Lan and Dora promptly followed her in and both their jaws dropped. They chewed there with Emily, who for a similar expression of surprise at what stood before them. There, in the middle of the Chow family's bathroom, was a highly unusual organism that could be best described as a more spherical and upright octopus-like creature with two shiny black eyes. It had a black electronic device of some kind grafted onto its body.
"Hello. I hope you don't mind my asking, but is this the planet called Earth?" an unexpectedly soft and pleasant masculine voice came out from the small black device on the creature's head, revealing it to be a speaker. "I know nighttime isn't an ideal time to come in unannounced b—"
"What are you?!" Emily staggered back before catching herself.
"Where did you come from?!" Dora rubbed her eyes to be sure she was awake.
"Why are you in my house?!" Kai-Lan motioned wildly around the area.
"Oh dear. I'm sorry to have alarmed you. Please, allow me to answer all your questions. I'd be very rude if I didn't," the strange organism held up four of its actually rather short tentacles. "First, I am a lifeform hailing from another life supporting planet. My name is Oswald."
The three teenage girls looked at each other incredulously.
"…You're an alien named…Oswald?" Kai-Lan could hardly believe the words coming out of her own mouth.
"Yes, Oswald. My pronouns are He/Him," Oswald continued on. Despite everything, the tone of the voice from his speaker was calm and amicable. "I used a transporter to escape to your planet from a ship that abducted me from my own planet."
The three looked understandably baffled, but none of them could think of a rational way to explain away the presence or existence of Oswald.
"This is insane… I'm insane… I'm insane… I'm insane, Dora!" Kai-Lan shook Dora by her shoulders.
"You can't be, Kai-Lan! I'm seeing and hearing all of this too!" Dora grabbed her wrists. "Oh no…Emily!"
A speechless Emily had slumped down onto the bathroom floor. Seeing their friends in the state prompted Dora and Kai-Lan to sit next to her. Oswald moved forward towards them.
"So you're Emily. Goodness. I feel so awful," Oswald said glumly. He moved in a way that suggested he was hanging his head, or at least his approximation of it. "I frightened you? Gosh, I don't think I've ever frightened anyone back home. I'm…I'm a nice person. I promise you that I am, all of you."
Emily looked up at Oswald and looked him over.
"What about Kai-Lan's question? If you were really sent here by some sort of weird sci-fi teleporter, why did it bring you here?" she asked.
"…Because of you, Emily," Oswald answered. "You see, the same forces that abducted me also captured a lone human from Earth and he was the one who helped me get to their teleporter. He's someone who cares for Emily, so he sent me her way, specifically."
"What? How could they pull that off?" Dora asked.
"I know this sounds far-fetched, but our abductors' teleporter uses DNA samples to hone in on targets for their abductions," Oswald explained. "My ally put a clump of his hair into the scanner and told me it would either bring me to Emily or his sister here on Earth. He was going to come with me, but there was only time for me to get away."
"Wait…That would only make sense if the guy who helped you escape was Emily's uncle then!" Kai-Lan realized. "And she has never mentioned having an uncle!"
"But that doesn't mean that I don't have one." Emily spoke up.
Dora and Kai-Lan looked taken aback.
"My mother and her brother have been estranged for years. She never approved of what he does for a living because it's such dangerous work," Emily revealed. "So…if all of this is true, it must've been him, and I actually sort of see how he could end up being the first human abducted by aliens."
"Why's that?" Dora asked.
"Because he's an astronaut, Dora," Emily answered. She pulled away from the two and got back up on her feet. "Or at least he was training to be one, last I heard. That was a few years ago, after he and my mother got in a huge fight about it. Their older brother died in a plane crash before I was born, so she…She didn't take it well, I've been told. Of course, I doubt that space aliens were her first concern."
"I may not be insane, but the situation sure is!" Kai-Lan turned Dora. "You're the globe trotting explorer here; What're we supposed to do? Is there anything we even can do?"
"I…I'm not sure, Kai-Lan," Dora confessed. She looked down at her own feet before looking up with steely determination in her eyes. "…But if Emily's uncle is in trouble, I do know that we can stand around and do nothing!"
"Yeah! That's what I like to hear!" Kai-Lan beamed.
Emily nodded in agreement.
"Oh wow! I can see that you girls are real go-getters," Oswald looked at them in awe. "Emily, your uncle saved my life, so I'll help you get him back however I can."
"Good, because our crew's going to need all the help we can get," Emily crossed her arms and tilted her head at him. "For one thing, you're the only reason we know about any of this — you'd better not be lying, by the way — so slinking away wouldn't be appreciated."
"Oswald, we're going to need you to tell us everything you know about the people who abducted you." Dora requested.
"Of course, Dora! I may not be a fighter, but I'll do whatever it takes to help," Oswald obliged. "So the first thing to know is that they're actually from another uni—"
"Aaaaaaaaaauuughh!" a man suddenly shrieked.
Everyone in the bathroom then looked to see an elderly Chinese man dressed in a set of disheveled, off-white pajamas standing only a couple steps away from the open bathroom door. He wore a pair of circular frame glasses over his chocolate brown eyes. He had tufts of bushy, fully grayed hair behind his ears, as well as bushy, expressive eyebrows. It was Kai-Lan's grandfather, who had awoken in the night to relieve himself only to be met with the startling sight of Oswald.
"Ye-Ye!" Kai-Lan yelped. "Uhm…Don't be scared!"
"K…Kai-Lan? Wha…what is that…that beast?" Ye-Ye trembled and shook, pointing at Oswald.
Kai-Lan, Dora, and Emily all looked at Oswald worriedly, not sure what to do.
"Say 'Hola'!" Dora blurted out.
"No!" Emily cut in "Say 'Ni Hao' like Kai-Lan does!"
Oswald moved straight past the three young women and waved two tentacles at Ye-Ye.
"Errr…Ni Hola! I'm from another planet!" Oswald awkwardly introduced himself.
The elderly man then fainted there in the middle of the hallway. Kai-Lan understandably ran to his side.
"¡Por el Amor de Dios!" Dora threw up her arms. "This is not how I saw this sleepover going!"
"…Sorry." Oswald apologized.
I'll admit that a universe based around Nick Jr. characters may be a surprising choice, but I can explain myself. You see, late last year I watched the surprise hit movie Dora and the Lost City of Gold. While it had its shortcomings, it was an entertaining oddity (Isabella Merced is such a good fit for Dora that it's almost freaky) and it got the gears in my head running about what other characters from Nick Jr. cartoons she could potentially cross paths with. So that's how the whole idea for this chapter came to be. Earth-5282 is the universe of Dora and the Lost City of Gold, but expanded to include characters from shows like Ni Hao, Kai-Lan, Little Bear, Oswald and so on. Okay, now for...
Some Notes:
- This is set after the events of the movie. Dora met and befriended Kai-Lan and Emily in the interim. The Snap/Blip/Dusting also happened in that time. Unlike Earth-4262 (that's the Nickelodeon sitcom shared universe from the original Glimpses fic), Earth-5282 handled the Crisis very well and devastation wasn't nearly as extreme.
- Earth-5382's numbering is a combination of the value of a nickel in the USA and Canada (5 cents), the atomic number for the chemical element Nickel (28), with the second "2" at the end meant to represent the "Jr." part of Nick Jr.
- I thought it'd be kind of silly to have all three of the girls be described as looking exactly the same as they did as they did when they were younger, so I decided I could get away with Emily having a new look.
- Emily moved to the city after her grandmother passed away and she couldn't live in the woods anymore. The idea of her parents being divorced is my way of explaining why she moved in with her grandmother in the woods later on in Little Bear in the first place. Also, I gave her the surname Negroni as a reference to her voice actress from the cartoon, Jennifer Martini.
- Kai-Lan's bedroom includes references to her show, such as the sun sticker for, well, Mr. Sun.
- The old woman from Emily's scary story was, in actuality, a character from the show the PBS Kids show Seven Little Monsters. She is a witch is the mother of the titular monsters. Here's what was actually going down with her; Mom (the show doesn't give her a name other than that) is actually from Earth-16219 , the shared universe for PBS Kids cartoons that I first introduced in my story Of Mice and Mojo. She was stranded on Earth-5282 after a spell gone awry and was stuck in the forest for days. She only ate the snake out of desperation and she didn't intend to scare Emily at all. After eating the snake, she regained just enough strength to invoke her god, i.e. Maurice Sendak, who created the book that the show Seven Little Monsters was based on. Sendak also illustrated the original Little Bear book series. So that connection to him is why they overlapped the way they did here.
- The idea to have Oswald be a lifeform from an alien planet just sort of came to me. Not only does it go along well with the whole "astronaut uncle abducted by aliens" plot, but it means I didn't have to change him too much beyond his iconic little bowler hat being reimagined as a combo speaker/translator. I picture his world as being a diverse place that is home to many different races, with the city he and his friends called home being a hub for interplanetary relations and intermingling (hence how he can have a penguin and a sunflower for friends).
- I was originally going to include a scene with Oswald's and Emily's abductors at the end, but I decided to not rush it and save that particular threat to the Multiverse for another day. I want to be able to do them justice, is all. All I'll tell you about them is that they are most certainly NOT the extremist Skrulls, the Irkens, the Derichets or any of the other aliens seen pop up in Infinity Crisis so far. They're quite...dark.
HAPPY WORLD OCTOPUS DAY