Quintet: Part Seven

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. Lady Jaws had the fog idea, and Grand High Idol had the giant birds idea. Now, on with the story!

***



Our heroes were walking along after having conquered the Underwater section.

They were, understandably, in very high spirits. After all, they'd gotten pretty far in their adventure.

Cassie was even humming a tune to herself.

"What are you humming, Cassie?" Sagwa asked curiously.

"Nothing in particular," Cassie responded blissfully. "Just a tune I picked up somewhere."

Our heroes kept on walking, even though the road up ahead went up an unusually steep hill.

Our heroes kept on walking...and walking...and walking...and the hill kept going higher...and higher...and higher...

Pretty soon, our heroes were getting pretty tired.

"I'm exhausted," Clifford complained, panting.

"I thought the Sky section was supposed to be---" Matt began, and then gasped.

Our heroes had reached the end of the unusually high hill...and found only air past it.

There nothing but sky beyond the hill.

"Great...how are we supposed to get past this part?!" Arthur demanded.

As Matt paused to think, giant birds appeared.

They were huge, fierce, and blood-red.

"I wonder if they're friendly?" Clifford asked.

It turned out that they weren't friendly, as they soon attacked our heroes.

They dived down at lightning speed, and it was all our heroes could do to dodge them.

"No one trespasses on the Sky section and gets away with it!" the leader of the giant birds shouted, diving at Sagwa.

Sagwa was metaphorically paralyzed with fear, and Matt had to dive at the last minute and grab her to take her out of the way of the attack.

Another giant bird started attacking Clifford, but Cassie managed to chase it away by screaming at the top of her lungs.

That was the answer, our heroes soon discovered.

They quickly shouted at the top of their lungs, creating a racket that could be heard for a quarter of a mile.

The giant birds didn't like noise, judging by their reactions.

"No...please...stop!" one of them shouted.

"We can't take it anymore! We surrender!" the leader screamed.

Our heroes stopped shouting.

"Now how do we get past the Sky section when we have no means of transportation?" Arthur demanded.

The giant birds, in answer, started chanting under their breaths.

Magical energy flowed from them into our heroes...and then, the spell stopped just as quickly.

"You now have the ability of flight," the giant bird leader declared. "Now, we must take our leave."

And with that said, the giant birds took off, fleeing over the horizon.

"Well, I guess we should see if we really can fly," Clifford commented.

Our heroes concentrated, and, indeed, they rose into the air.

"All right! We're flying!" Matt shouted excitedly.

With that, our heroes took off into the air, travelling further into the Sky section, well aware that there was nothing beneath them, but not caring.

Of course, something eventually happened that they did care about.

Namely, the wind was picking up.

In fact, it was getting a mite too high for our heroes' tastes.

"Is it just me, or is it getting a bit windy up here?" Sagwa asked rhetorically.

Soon the wind climbed to hurricane-force, tossing our heroes about like rag dolls.

"Let's just stick this one out!" Matt declared. "Maybe it'll go away! There's certainly nothing else we can do!"

Our heroes reluctantly decided to bear the brunt of the hurricane wind.

The hurricane wind tossed them about mercilessly, like an evil giant toying with its prey.

It was a very harrowing experience.

Clifford wasn't as bad off as the rest, because since he was so huge, it was slightly more difficult to toss him about, for reasons of mass.

Then, after about 5 minutes had passed, the hurricane wind subsided, and degenerated back into the gentle breeze it had been once before.

Apparently the test had indeed been merely to endure the horror.

So, of course, our heroes were relieved when it was all over.

"Thank goodness we never get anything like that on Birdwell Island," Clifford commented.

"If I ever have to go through that again, I'm gonna scream!" Arthur complained.

With that, our heroes continued to move forward, hoping to clear the Sky section as they had the other sections.

It was peaceful for a while. Nothing but the gentle breeze...and the clear blue sky...

At least, the sky was clear until our heroes ran into fog.

And it was very thick fog, at that.

So thick, that our heroes couldn't see anything.

"No problem," Matt said casually. "I have my Skwak."

Matt pulled out his Skwak and pressed some buttons on it...and to his dismay, the Skwak didn't do anything.

"Oh, of course!" Matt groaned, smacking himself on the forehead. "The Skwak doesn't work at such high altitudes!"

Now it was everybody else's turn to groan.

"So now what are we supposed to do?" Sagwa demanded.

"Let's just keep going forward," Clifford suggested.

"But then we might crash into something!" Cassie said fearfully.

"Well, we can't do anything else," Arthur said. "Besides, we stuck out the hurricane wind and made it. We can stick out the fog too."

Surprised that Arthur was being positive, our heroes agreed, and they kept flying through the fog.

To their surprise, their strategy worked.

They made it safely through the fog...and found only sky ahead.

"Whew...we made it," Sagwa said, sighing in relief.

Then, Sagwa screamed.

The fog was gone, but now a sphinx literally the size of a skyscraper was flying in towards them.

It occurred to Matt that if this was a video game, this guy would have "boss" written all over him.

"I take it back!" Sagwa shouted, referring to her earlier "we made it" comment.

The sphinx grinned evilly at our heroes.

"To get past me, at least one of you must answer my riddle correctly!" the sphinx roared.

Matt remembered that a sphinx appeared in Greek mythology. It terrorized a city. Anyone who wished to leave or enter needed to answer the sphinx's riddle correctly. If the person answered wrong, the sphinx tore the person to pieces.

In the legend, no one answered correctly...until Oedipus figured it out. Then the sphinx, who no longer had any power now that her riddle had been answered, tore herself to pieces.

Matt wondered if this sphinx would ask the same riddle.

"What animal walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?"

Matt burst out laughing. It was the same riddle! And Matt knew the answer.

"Humans!" he immediately shouted. He would have answered "man", which was actually the answer in the legend, but there were females present, even if they weren't human, so "humans" encompassed both males and females. "It's actually a trick question. The 'morning' isn't really a morning, it refers to an early period. The 'afternoon' isn't really an afternoon, it refers to a middle period. The 'evening' isn't really an evening, it refers to a late period. Humans fit, because at the early period of their lives, they're babies who don't know how to walk, so they crawl on hands and knees, as if they had four legs. At the middle period of their lives, they're grown adults, so they walk on two legs as usual. At the late period of their lives, they're old and sometimes (but not always) weaker than usual. So they use a cane, just as if they had a third leg."

The sphinx started screaming in despair.

"Nobody gets that riddle! How?!" the sphinx screamed. "You got it right! I can't believe it!"

The sphinx left while still screaming, allowing them to pass.

"How'd you figure out that answer so fast?" Cassie asked curiously.

"I read it in a book of Greek mythology," Matt said. "I come from a dimension where pop culture is very important, so I know a lot of trivia."

Then, our heroes, as they were flying on, spotted a thriving city below them.

"That must be the Metropolis section!" Sagwa shouted.

Suddenly, because they had passed the Sky section, our heroes' flight ability conked out, and they fell to the ground below...



To be continued...



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