The Duck Brothers Return
Imagine you're standing in a desert at night. No grass. No trees. Nothing but sand beneath your feet and a vast, starry sky above your head. It's kind of cool outside, with a slight breeze blowing from the west. The lights of a small town can be seen down a long road that stretches back all the way to the horizon. Next to the road, behind you, is a wooden farmhouse. A windmill also stands nearby, as well as a water pump and two vehicles.
Seems like a plain, ordinary setting, right?
Now imagine you have a little sister holding onto your left hand in fear and a small, pink, female dog holding your right hand. Your dog is also comforted by a pink, male dog that has grown quite fond of her. Standing nearby are four secret agents who plan on quitting their jobs the moment they get out of this place. Also nearby is a small, green-furred Chihuahua wearing a pink Gypsy outfit and a strange man wearing a lab coat and having a misshaped head. All of you, including yourself, are staring in awe at a fallen alien spacecraft that looked like an upside-down metal cooking bowl with Christmas tree lights.
Not a very plain and ordinary setting anymore, is it? But that's precisely the scenario Kevin found himself in at that very moment. Kevin was feeling the same as any ordinary person would be feeling in that same situation…terrified, yet filled with awe and wonder.
The agents were equally amazed. D.M. sighed to herself. Now was probably not a good time to inform everyone that her one and only camera had been destroyed during the fight with Mad Dog.
Courage was quivering and holding onto Sandy with worry. The fact that the spaceship looked oddly familiar was all that was keeping Courage from going totally berserk with terror.
No one knew what to do at first. Everyone just sort of stared at the craft for what seemed like a long time. Then, losing patience, Kevin took a step forward.
Immediately, there was a mechanical sound and a bright light. The craft was opening! A door on the front of the UFO was opening up and a ramp was sliding down to the ground. The ramp reached the ground halfway between the spaceship and the onlookers.
Everyone had to shield their eyes from the incredibly bright light. Kevin began shaking as he saw shadows moving within the ship.
Suddenly, three small figures appeared at the top of the ramp. They were hard to make out because of the light. All you could see on each one of them were two large eyes, two thin legs, and two eyestalks on the top of their heads.
As the aliens walked down the ramp, everyone began to see the aliens' features more clearly. The eyestalks were actually antennae, and each alien had different colored eyes. The left alien had green eyes, the middle alien had blue eyes, and the right alien had orange eyes. Also, the aliens had what appeared to be…beaks! And webbed feet, too!
Kevin crouched down next to Sandy as Katie stood nearby. "I don't believe it!" whispered Kevin in Sandy's ear. "They're…alien birds!"
"They look more like ducks to me," whispered Sandy. "Only, more…alien-like."
Next to Sandy, Courage gasped. He finally recognized who the aliens were! It was none other than his alien friends, the Duck Brothers! The last time he saw them, he had helped two of them save their brother from being cooked in a kitchen. A smile spread across his face as he remembered how he had used the ducks' mind-control device to save the orange-eyed duck from getting in a stew, literally.
So, to the shock and surprise of everyone, Courage the cowardly dog quickly, and without warning, walked right up to the green-eyed alien duck and shook its wing! The stunned onlookers couldn't believe it. Wasn't Courage scared by these aliens? He acted like he was greeting old friends (which, technically, he was.)
"Hey, look!" cried the green-eyed duck to his brothers. "It's the pink dog we met when we last came here!"
"His name's Courage," muttered the blue-eyed duck.
"I know what his name is. Stop reminding me."
"Well, you started it."
"Why am I always the one who has to start things?"
"Will you two pipe down?" interrupted the orange-eyed duck.
"Fine," sighed the green-eyed duck. He turned back to Courage. "So, aren't you going to introduce us to your friends?"
Courage looked and saw everyone staring at him and the Duck Brothers. The agents were the most interested, particularly Agent Barsby. He was shocked to hear the ducks talking in British accents, much like the Beatles!
Courage suddenly realized that he was the only one who had met the Duck Brothers before. Courage quickly glanced at Kevin. Judging from the look that Courage gave him, Kevin theorized that these aliens were harmless and friendly.
To get the point across to everyone, Kevin held up his hands to get everyone's attention and said shakily, "It's okay, everyone. I don't think these aliens will hurt anyone."
"Oh, yeah?" asked Zalost, off to the side. "Well, what about them?" He pointed back to the spaceship.
Everyone turned and gasped, except for the Duck Bros. A group of figures in various shapes and sizes stood at the top of the ramp. As the group walked down the ramp, Kevin, Katie, Sandy, Shirley, and Zalost wondered who these guys were, since they had never seen them before.
Courage and the agents, on the other hand, knew them all too well.
Standing tall at the bottom of the ramp was Katz. He seemed a little woozy from the spaceship ride, but he was unharmed. Behind him stumbled Le Quack, Doc Gerbil, Foot Fungus, Weremole, Cajun Fox, Eustace's Ma, and the Queen of the Black Puddle.
Courage gulped and began shaking in fear. He had never seen so many villains since Eustace had gathered some of them in his basement and challenged Courage to a very painful game of dodgeball.
The agents were more than a little annoyed by seeing these bad guys again. "What the heck are you all doing here?!!!" bellowed Agent R.
Katz and the other villains turned in his direction and were surprised to see the agents again. Ignoring the agents' angered expressions, Katz said coolly, "We were just about to ask you all the same thing."
Before the agents could respond, Doc Gerbil suddenly shouted, "Look! There's that pink dog again!"
Courage's heart plummeted when all the villains turned and glared at him.
"Let's get him!" yelled Le Quack. Crying out in agreement, the bad guys began to charge at Courage.
Courage screamed with fright. Kevin and the agents were alarmed as well. They didn't want to see those guys hurt Courage. They were thinking about protecting Courage from these villains.
That thought didn't last long. Katz and his friends didn't take four steps before they came to a screeching halt. Their faces showed shock and amazement. At first, Courage couldn't understand why.
"Huh??" one of the villains said.
"Look at that!" said another one.
"I don't believe it."
"Am I seeing double?"
"There's…two of them!"
That's when Courage realized that Sandy was standing right next to him. The villains had never seen Sandy before, and she looked a lot like Courage, so they thought they were having double vision or something.
"Who are you?" Katz asked Sandy.
Sandy was too flabbergasted to respond, so Kevin spoke up instead. "That's my dog, Sandy."
The villains were obviously caught off guard by this realization. So much so, that they didn't know what to do next. They began to murmur to each other and look back and forth between Courage and Sandy. Obviously, they began jumping to conclusions about the two dogs, but they didn't get a chance to speak their thoughts because Agent R suddenly spoke up.
"Listen!" he announced to the villains, as well as the Duck Bros. "I know you all are a little…confused at this moment. Me and my fellow agents are too." Agent R turned to Gammon, Barsby, and D.M. They all nodded in agreement and continued to stare at the Duck Bros. "So, I think it would be a good idea if we ask some questions about where you all are from and how…"
Shouts of protest immediately erupted from the villains. They were fed up with these agents and they didn't want to be interrogated by them again. This, of course, led to a heated argument between the agents and the villains. Feeling left out, Shirley, Zalost, and the Duck Bros. joined in too.
Meanwhile, Sandy held onto Courage as tightly as Katie held onto Kevin. The four of them were a little frightened by the current fiasco.
Kevin turned to his little sister and said, "Katie, listen. I want you to go back into the house and stay with Mom and Dad. I promise we'll all be inside in a minute. Can you do that?"
Katie nodded. She gave her brother a hug and ran back into the house. Kevin then saw Courage and Sandy looking at him. Kevin sighed and turned back to the ongoing argument. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and screamed, "HEEEEYY!!!" at the top of his lungs. When he opened his eyes, he saw everybody staring at him.
Kevin pointed to the house and shouted, "Can we please get back to the situation at hand?!"
"Sorry," muttered Agent R.
"What is zees 'situation'?" asked Le Quack.
"We're trying to find the ghost that…" began Kevin, but Katz interrupted him.
"Now look, my good fellow," threatened Katz as he walked up to Kevin. "In the last twenty-four hours, we have been vandalized, terrified, and abducted by these alien geese."
"We're ducks! Duck brothers! How many times must we tell you that?!" shouted the three aliens, one by one.
"Sorry. Alien ducks," corrected Katz. "And my fellow cohorts and I are sick and tired of these nuances. We are going to go back to the motel right now, and have nothing more to do with these out-of-the-ordinary occurrences."
Courage swallowed a laugh. What Katz said was ironic, since every time he or any of the other villains tried to capture Courage or Muriel, it was always under unusual circumstances.
Katz saw Courage laughing at himself and thought he was laughing at him. So he said to Courage, "But we'll be back soon, Dog." Courage stopped laughing.
As all this was going on, Sandy was thinking. She was wondering about Leonard Stromwell and his biography. If he had disappeared, there was a very good chance that he had left the tax money behind in that "secret underground location". She knew that in order to solve this mystery of why Dr. Stromwell's ghost was here, they would have to go in search for Stromwell's laboratory. And they would need all the help they could find.
Sandy poked at Kevin's leg to get his attention. Kevin leaned over as Sandy whispered in his ear.
"You think so?" asked Kevin. Sandy nodded.
Taking a deep breath, Kevin ran over to the villains. The villains were already walking away in the distance, so Kevin shouted, "I guess you all won't get a piece of Dr. Stromwell's treasure!!"
The bad guys stopped and turned around.
"Stromwell?" asked Katz.
"Treasure??!!" shouted everyone else.
"Yeah! We're searching for treasure!" yelled Kevin.
Agent Darkest Moon leaned into Agent R's ear. "What treasure?"
"Yeah," agreed Agents Barsby and Gammon.
"He must be talking about the five million dollars that Stromwell hid," whispered Agent R.
Kevin kept yelling to the villains. "If you'll join all of us in the house, we'll explain everything! We'll serve cake!"
"Cake?!" exclaimed Doc Gerbil, who was bummed that he didn't get any cake back at the motel. "Well, why didn't y'all say so! Outta my way!" He and the other villains began walking back towards the house.
Kevin walked towards the house too, as did Zalost and Shirley, who were both hungry too. Courage and the agents ran up to Kevin.
"Why the heck did you do that?" demanded Agent R.
"Yeah, you're bringing those creeps back?" asked Gammon.
Courage also wanted to know why Kevin just invited those creepy characters back.
"Look," explained Kevin to the agents. "The only way we are ever gonna solve this 'Dr. Stromwell' mystery and end your assignment is if we go and find his secret laboratory and the money. And trust me, we are gonna need all the help we can get."
The agents looked at each other as they thought it through.
"Well, alright. We'll let them stay," muttered Agent R. He saw the villains walk by. "You guys had better not try anything funny," warned Agent R.
"As long as we get our money's worth, see?" growled the Foot.
"C'mon," said Kevin as he walked to the house. "The sooner we get everyone settled, the sooner we'll have some answers to all our questions."
The agents sighed. If they were serious about their job, they wouldn't be taking orders from a teenager. But it was becoming second nature to them now.
Gammon stayed behind and said to the Duck Bros, "Um, what about that?" He pointed to the spaceship.
"Oh, don't worry," said the green-eyed duck. He brought out a keychain from behind his back and pushed a button on it. There was a "weep-weep" sound as the entire craft suddenly disappeared.
"Cloaking device," said the green-eyed duck.
"Which I installed," declared the orange-eyed duck.
"Oh, you did not."
"Yes, I did, and you know it. Don't try to deny it."
"Guys!" interrupted Gammon. "Who cares about who installed the darn thing?"
"Yeah," agreed the blue-eyed duck. "You guys keep arguing so much, it…" The duck began acting like he was in pain. "…It makes me…have to…"
PLOP. A yellow egg popped out of the blue duck and rolled on the ground behind him.
"I thought you said you stopped doing that!" argued the green duck.
"I didn't know I was gonna do that," lied the blue duck.
Gammon blurted out, "You guys aren't supposed to do that at all! You're Duck BROTHERS!"
"Finally!" shouted the blue duck. "Someone else understands our problem!"
"Hey, guys!" yelled Agent R from the house. "Are you four gonna come in or not? And where did the ship go?"
"It's invisible!" answered Gammon. "And we're coming!"
So, Gammon walked back to the house, engaged in a conversation with the weirdest aliens he had ever met…and the only aliens he had ever met. (But with the government keeping secrets, who knows?)
Next chapter: Q&A