Quintet: Part Three

by Martial Arts Master

All PBS Kids characters copyright of PBS, PBS Kids, and the shows' respective creators. This fanfiction idea came to me in a dream. In my dream, five PBS Kids characters were on a quest of some sort, though I don't know exactly what, so I made up the story from there in this fic. In my dream, they were known as the Heavenly Quintet. (This was a weird dream. So weird, in fact, that the word the dream actually used was "quantet", which isn't even a word.) However, I had to make a couple of changes. First of all, the Dragon Tales character that appeared in my dream was Ord, but I put Cassie in this fic instead because otherwise, Sagwa, the main character from Sagwa: The Chinese-Siamese Cat, would've been the only female in the entire quintet, which might cause female readers to accuse me of being a sexist pig, and they would have a right to do so. Therefore, Cassie will appear in this fic instead. Second of all, I changed the name of the quintet to the PBS Kids Quintet, because using the word "heavenly" would've been a blatant religious reference, and with the exception of The Adventures from the Book of Virtues, which had an episode centered around "Faith", and the Cyberchase episode that involved the Greek deity Zeus, PBS Kids is completely non-religious. I can't always say the same for the regular PBS, but PBS Kids is for the most part immune to religion. Therefore, to keep the spirit of PBS Kids, the name change stands. Now, on with the fanfic!

***

Our heroes were now in the game world. They looked around, and they noticed that they were in a gigantic forest.

"This must be the the Forest section," Matt observed.

"So what do we do now?" Clifford asked.

Matt looked up the map Dave had entered into his Skwak.

"The map says we go this way," Matt answered, pointing ahead of him.

"Then let's go!" Cassie exclaimed.

"Wait a second!" Arthur piped up before they could move. "Didn't Dave say we'd have to make it past monsters and traps? It's gonna be so scary..."

"We're doing this to save a world," Sagwa pointed out, "so we'll just have to deal with them."

With that, our heroes started their journey through the game world.



As they were journeying, Cassie and Sagwa were talking.

"And that's how we foiled the burglar!" Sagwa was saying proudly.

Cassie shrugged, and pointed out, "In Dragon Land, we don't have burglars. Everybody knows it's wrong to steal."

Arthur, who had overheard, spoke up.

"You've gotta be kidding me! Does Dragon Land even have any crime at all?!" he shouted.

"Nope!" Cassie said proudly.

"Why couldn't I have been born in Dragon Land..." Arthur muttered enviously.

As this was going on, Matt and Clifford were also talking.

"What's Birdwell Island like?" Matt was asking Clifford.

"Very peaceful," Clifford answered with a smile. "Everyone is really nice, and even the mean people are good most of the time, like Jetta and her dog Mac."

"Do other dogs talk like you do?" Matt asked.

Clifford nodded.

"But the humans can't understand us," Clifford said sadly. "Sometimes I wish they could."

Before Matt could respond, a gigantic snake slithered right in front of their path.

"Ha ha ha ha ha!" it laughed evilly. The gigantic snake was about as big as Clifford was. "You'll all become my snack!"

Everyone screamed.

"Quick! Run for cover!" Sagwa shouted.

The gigantic snake lunged at our heroes, but they were able to run to the side and dodge the attack.

"You won't escape!" the gigantic snake shouted, hissing. "No one escapes from me!"

The gigantic snake lunged at Matt, who at first wanted to drive it off by hitting it with his Skwak, but then realized that that would set off the anti-violence spell, blowing the world up.

Instead, Matt had to duck, and the gigantic snake missed its attack.

"Listen, Mr. Snake, we don't want any trouble," Cassie pleaded, trembling. "We just want to pass in peace..."

"Shut up! You're about to become dragon meat anyway!" the gigantic Snake snapped, lunging at Cassie.

Cassie flew away from the attack, but because the dragons in Dragon land aren't very fast fliers, the snake only missed by a hair. It did, however, land directly on Clifford.

"AAAAAAH!" Clifford screamed, beginning to buck about. "Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!"

The gigantic snake, dizzy at being bucked about like this, was thrown off Clifford's back...and in front of a rock Arthur had taken shelter behind.

Arthur prayed that the gigantic snake wouldn't find him...

"Okay, I think I know how we can beat this thing," Matt told everyone. "I think I saw this Hong Kong movie once where this martial artist couldn't beat a guy who was a master of the Snake style of martial arts. But then he saw his cat dodging a snake, and developed the Cat style of martial arts, managing in the end to defeat the Snake style. Maybe Sagwa would be better at dodging the snake than the rest of us. Sagwa, do you think you can tire it out by keeping it occupied?"

Sagwa trembled at the prospect.

"I'll...I'll...I'll do my best..." she stammered.

Sagwa turned towards the snake.

"Over here!" she shouted.

The gigantic snake turned and lunged at Sagwa.

Sagwa gulped and quickly jumped up, landing on the snake's back.

Now it was the gigantic snake's turn to buck about as Clifford had done.

Sagwa was finding it difficult to hang on, but she managed to do it.

Everyone looked on nervously as this happened.

Finally, the gigantic snake tired itself out doing this, and flopped on the ground in exhaustion.

"I give up...you win..." the gigantic snake muttered.

Then, to everyone's astonishment, the gigantic snake disintegrated into dust.

"I...guess that means we pass..." Cassie said with a sigh of relief.

"Yaaaaaaaay! I did it!" Sagwa cheered.

"You did very well," Clifford told Sagwa proudly.

"I call it luck," Arthur scoffed. "Only the first monster and we were already almost killed! We should just tell Dave to pull us back."

"First of all," Cassie said to Arthur, "Dave can't pull us back...at least, I don't think he can. I don't really know what he can do. But second, even if he could pull us back, we can't give up when an entire planet is counting on us! Remember what Dave said Ashura would do if we lost?"

Arthur didn't look convinced.

"We should keep going, if we're gonna beat the whole world," Matt told everyone, walking forward.

Everyone followed him, Arthur still muttering to himself.



Later, our heroes stopped to take a rest in the shade of a tree that was even bigger than all the rest, if that was even possible.

"Boy, am I bushed," Clifford sighed.

"Me too," Cassie sighed.

Sagwa confused.

"You're a dragon! Why don't you just fly instead of walk?" she asked Cassie.

"But I couldn't just leave you all behind like that!" Cassie exclaimed. "I can't carry you all on my back."

"And as hard as it may be to believe, my back's only big enough to carry two or three, not four," Clifford finished.

"And we still have more sections to go after this..." Arthur muttered. "This isn't gonna be a comfortable journey..."

He absent-mindedly kicked a pebble ahead of him...and was astonished, along with everyone else, when the pebble was disintegrated by a mysterious force.

"Now that's weird..." Matt said to himself.

Just as an experiment, Matt found a bigger rock and threw it at the same spot. The bigger rock also disintegrated.

"I think we've found the first trap, as opposed to monster," Sagwa commented.

"This is just perfect!" Arthur declared sarcastically. "How are we gonna get past this thing when we can't even see it?"

Then Clifford noticed a switch hidden in the taller trees. He was the only one who could reach it. Even Sagwa probably couldn't climb this tree, and even Cassie couldn't fly to the switch, considering that there was a huge mess of tangled branches beneath the switch.

"This switch probably has something to do with it," he said, pulling it.

Immediately the air in front of them shimmered for a second. Then, as suddenly as it came, the shimmer was gone.

Arthur kicked a pebble at the same spot he had before. This time, the pebble remained intact.

"I guess Clifford solved the trap," Arthur said, smiling for the first time.

"Way to go Clifford!" Cassie cheered.

"Gee, thanks..." Clifford responded modestly.

Our heroes ventured forward.



As they were walking along, Arthur was thinking to himself about how unlucky he was.

Here he'd been, having a normal life inside his house, when that stupid spirit had to show up and drag him into the middle of this cockamamie adventure!

And what's worse, only one of his companions on this trip even remotely resembled Arthur, and that was Matt. Clifford was a huge dog, Sagwa was a cat, and Cassie was a dragon. Couldn't Arthur have had some normal companions besides Matt?

He knew he was being pessimistic, but he couldn't help it.

Suddenly Matt held up a hand to stop everyone.

"Listen...do you hear that?" Matt asked.

Everyone stopped to listen, and they heard the sound of something moving...

"I don't like this at all," Sagwa said nervously. "It's probably another monster or trap..."

"We'll deal with it when it comes," Clifford tried to reassure her, though he was none too happy at the prospect either.

Suddenly, one of the trees shot out vines at our heroes.

"What on earth---" Cassie began to exclaim, but was cut off when everyone was ensnared by the vines.

A deep voice emanated from the tree.

"It appears I have new meals to snack on," the tree said. "My title is Living Tree the Carnivorous, and you are my meals."

Everyone started screaming.

"It's no use, you worthless cretins," Living Tree the Carnivorous snapped. "You are all mine!"

That's when our heroes got a good look at Living Tree the Carnivorous and screamed again. He was huge! He had to have been curled up before, and was now his full size, about ten times bigger than Clifford.

Also, he had a large, monstrous looking face on his bark.

"We're all gonna diiiiiiiiieeeeee!" Arthur screamed, pessimistic as usual.

"Just stay calm, everyone!" Clifford instructed, trying to keep calm himself.

"I don't wanna be eaten by a tree!" Sagwa screamed, starting to cry.

It occurred to Matt that if this was a video game, Living Tree the Carnivorous would have "BOSS" written all over him.

Cassie, in her desperation, let out her fire breath straight up...and Living Tree the Carnivorous dropped her in fear.

"Fire! Aaaaaaaaaah!" Living Tree the Carnivorous screamed.

Cassie realized that because trees catch fire easily, Living Tree the Carnivorous had a phobia about fire.

Cassie's fire breath wasn't very strong, and our heroes weren't allowed to use violence anyway, but it occurred to Cassie that maybe she could use Living Tree the Carnivorous's fear to her advantage. After all, Living Tree the Carnivorous certainly didn't know that our heroes weren't allowed to use violence, or that the weak fire breath Cassie had used was in fact her full power.

Cassie was a very nice dragon, and she hated having to do what she was about to do. But she had no choice.

"Drop my friends right now, or I'll use my fire breath on you!" she shouted.

Living Tree the Carnivorous dropped everyone else in terror.

"Now leave this place right now!" Cassie shouted.

Living Tree the Carnivorous picked up its roots and hightailed it out of the forest.

"Wow...I didn't know you were capable of that kind of threat..." Matt told Cassie admiringly.

"It wasn't that great," Cassie answered shyly. "I didn't like doing it anyway."

Upon the "defeat" of Living Tree the Carnivorous, two trees suddenly shifted over to the left, revealing the exit that would lead our heroes out of the forest.

"Yahoo!" everyone cheered, running out of the forest as fast as their legs could carry them.



Meanwhile, in his desolate room in the Desert, the final stop should our heroes succeed, Ashura pondered.

"They've proven to be better than I had expected," Ashura mused. "I had no idea PBS Kids characters were capable of such bravery. I guess Dave wasn't so foolish to pick them after all. Still, the Forest section was at least at a comfortable temperature. They probably won't make it past the Volcano section...mwahahahahahaha..."



To be continued...



In the next chapter, our heroes will try to make it past the Volcano section. If you have any ideas about monsters or traps I should put in that section, or any minor plot points involving the PBS Kids characters, tell me in your review. E-mail all other questions and comments to bleifer@comcast.net