Chapter 3
By the time the Iron Vulture was only half an hour from its destination, Karnage himself, without the aid of anyone, had scourged through as much of the ship as possible, starting with his own cabin, leaving no knickknack unturned. The mouse was always nearby... he could hear it squeak wherever he went. The horribly aggravating part was, it seemed more like the mouse was following him than the other way around.
Meanwhile, events in the hangar were winding down smoothly. One of the pirates had just departed in his CT-37, in order to scout out ahead for the Queen Maureen's position. The other planes were replenished and moved out of the way, and ropes and mechanical winches were set up around the airship's giant bomb bay doors.
"Somebody get a hold of Karnage," Will said through a radio. "Tell 'em we can drop as soon as he and the boys are ready to go."
The craft elevator siren went off again, and Sadie and Hacksaw lowered down into the hangar in the same seaplane as before. They had just got back from setting the stray cats free.
They taxied the plane to the far side of the hangar where Will wanted it. He wasn't so angry with them this time, but still annoyed that they had to make another trip. But as soon as they came to a halt, he noticed something was terribly wrong... the plane was shaking like something big in the cargo hold was wildly thrashing around.
Sadie jumped out of the cockpit first, looking even more pleased with himself than he did the last time.
"What in—whaddaya got in there this time?" Will wanted to know.
"It was a stroke of luck!" Sadie proclaimed. "Picture it: we set down on a beach and were shooin' the cats away, when all the sudden, we notice there's a bloomin' circus on the other side of the trees! So we go take a peek, see all these animals in cages, and Hacksaw gets a great idea! The boss was right, little cats ain't gonna do much on a big ship like this...!"
From inside the plane, there was more shaking, and a deep, blood-curdling roar.
The cigar fell of Will's mouth as he dreadfully recalled Karnage's sarcastic remark to the two earlier. "You stole a tiger to catch the mouse?!"
"'Course not," Sadie said, looking at him like he was inane. "There ain't no tigers at the circus!"
Just then, Hacksaw came around from the other side of the plane. His clothes were shredded, he had scratch marks everywhere, and he was carrying a huge butterfly net, of which the mesh had been all but annihilated. "We stole a lion!" he squealed gleefully.
Will just about came unglued. "You brought a lion onboard this ship? A lion?!"
Sadie ducked his head modestly as if he was being complimented. "Well... Hacksaw did most of the work."
"You dumb-bells!" Will cried. "Lions don't eat mice!"
"Well they're still cats, aren't they," Hacksaw protested.
"Yeah," Sadie added, "what more would they rather eat?"
"Us!" blared Will. "The Captain'll have your sand-filled heads for this!"
Suddenly, they all noticed the turmoil from inside the plane had quelled. All the pirates that were present slowly gathered around, wondering what could have happened...
"Hey, Hacksaw, you did remember to close your door when you got out, right?"
Hacksaw scratched his head, thinking about it. "Ummm..."
They all had their answer when the lion jumped on top of the plane, brandishing its big fangs with a deafening roar.
The pirates scattered faster than they had ever scattered before, screaming for their lives. "Grab your muskets!" some shouted. Will hollered for someone to get word to Karnage right away.
But by the time they had regrouped, guns and clubs ready, the lion had disappeared.
"You know, maybe it wasn't such a good idea," Sadie mused. Then he received a smack upside the head from Will. "Ow!"
"You two really did it now! When Karnage finds out about this..." Will made a gruesome cutting gesture with his thumb across his throat. "It's curtains for you both!"
Sadie gulped. "Wait wait wait, we'll get the lion back, you'll see!"
"What color curtains?" Hacksaw wondered. "I think orange would go pretty with..."
Sadie grabbed his arm and led him away. "Shaddup and let's go! We gotta find that thing before the boss finds us!"
"The Captain's not on the bridge," said Bandit Patch, a scruffy, dark-furred wolf. He had just finished contacting various places on the ship, and came to relay to Will what they had reported back to him. "I told 'em it was an emergency, but none of 'em know where the Sam Hill he's at. And he ain't in his cabin either, or the radio room. 'Fact, nobody's seen him for about an hour."
"Somebody check his bathroom?"
"Yup. He ain't on the pot, either."
"You tellin' me we're twenty stinkin' minutes from the heist, and Karnage is missing? That's impossible!"
"All I know is nobody's seen 'im," Patch shrugged.
"I will find you and clobber you myself," vowed Don Karnage, who, on his hands and knees, was scouring the rafters of the Iron Vulture's engine room. "You cannot run away from me forever!"
He had been following the mouse throughout the entire port-side of the airship like a scavenger on a wild goose chase. He followed the squeaking... that vexing, wrath-invoking squeaking... until he actually caught glimpses of the critter, and chased it from one room to another. In its latest stunt, the mouse scurried up a pipe along a stairway wall toward the engines, and there Karnage had been for at least the past thirty minutes, searching for it.
The engine room was a perfect hideaway for such a small enemy, with all the ear-numbing rumbling and grinding of the massive turbines and gears, and distracting mechanical parts everywhere spinning, pumping, and whirring around. Still, Karnage kept focused, harnessing all his concentration toward his single objective. He wasn't doing that bad, either; he was constantly flushing the mouse from behind and under machinery, and had almost been able to snatch it with a couple of flying leaps. As Kit has said earlier of it, though, 'Holy propwash! That thing's fast!'
Karnage was crouching beside one of the control lever panels, shifting his eyes from side to side. "I am smarter, stronger, and deadlier!" he cried out. "You will 'rube' the day you snuck aboard my ship!"
*squeak!* was the response he received.
"Oh, think I am joking, do you?" He got down low, with his face near floor level, and visually combed the area. "Soon I will be the only one doing the ha-ha-ing around here!"
The squeaking grew closer and closer. "Yes, I have you," Karnage whispered. "Show yourself now..."
More squeaks, this time very nearby; he could practically smell its cheese-ridden breath. It was as if the mouse was sitting on his shoulder, squeaking in his ear... then he realized, it was.
"Ack!" Immediately, Karnage shot up, inadvertently clunking his head on an over-stretching metal beam. "Ouch! Die, you wretched beast!"
The mouse ran all the way to the opposite end of the engine room, with Karnage charging after it at full sprint. "I have you now!" he huffed.
To his chagrin and frustration, though, the mouse merely slipped down through the square grates of an air shaft covering. "Aaaugh! No!" the Captain cried, sliding headfirst into to grate. "Come back here, you coward!"
*squeak!* the mouse answered from a distance.
"'Come and get me', you say?! You think I would not? Oh no, I am not giving up that easily, not after all this!" With his mind only one-tracked and bent on the mouse's ruin, he pulled the covering away and slid down himself after it...
In the meantime, while everyone else busied themselves preparing in the hangar, Jacque, Rugby, and Kit kept an eye over things on the bridge.
Kit kept watch out the Iron Vulture's windshield with a pair of binoculars. Ample pass was drawing closer from the horizon, where tall, sharp, mountainous peaks sprouted out of the open sea. Its valleys were green and lush, where birds soared between and above the towering crests. In all, it was a beautiful area, and not hard to understand why a luxury ship would chart its course through the cradle of its scenery.
The plan was to hover the airship low and use the mountains for cover, until the appropriate moment when it would spring over and take the Queen Maureen by unpleasant surprise.
The radio buzzed, and the scout in the CT-37 reported in: "Ship ahoy! I see it, and it's right on time! It'll be in the pass within ten minutes!"
"You're about five miles out and two hundred feet, Jacque," Kit said to the helm. "Better slow it down and start descending."
"Aye," Jacque morosely replied. "If there's even a point to it anymore."
Kit sighed. "Well, he's gotta be somewhere around here."
Elsewhere, Hacksaw was tip-toeing aimlessly about the ship, searching for the lion. "Here kitty kitty," he coaxed. "Nice kitty..."
Faintly, from a drain in the middle of the corridor, he heard, *squeak!* *squeak!*
"The mouse!" he gasped. He dove to the floor and gave the drain a good sniff. "Aaaah... definitely mouse!"
With nothing but brute strength, he reached down and ripped out a big, square piece of the steal paneling the floor consisted of, then tossed it aside like a piece of cardboard. "Don't run, mousey! I'm coming to get you!" With that, he squeezed down into the adjoining space, and followed the squeaks...
Will and some of the others spread out through the ship to look for Karnage. "Captain!" he called out. "Hey boss, where are ya? Captain!"
From literally out of nowhere, he finally heard Karnage answer, "What?"
"Captain! Is that you?"
"Who does it sound like, you idiot, Errol Slim?"
Will turned and looked everywhere, but had no clue where the voice was coming from, as if he were talking to a ghost. "This is givin' me the spooks," he muttered. "Boss, where are you?"
"What?"
"I said, where are you?"
"What? Speak up!"
Losing his patience, Will just got to the point. "Listen! We're less than ten minutes from the Queen Maureen, but we got a big problem! There's a lion on the loose somewhere!"
"What?"
"I said, a lion on the loose!"
"Oh, shut up and hold on!" said Karnage, very annoyed.
Will looked up, and it finally dawned on him that the Captain's voice was coming from the vent right above him on the ceiling... but without warning, Karnage kicked out the metal covering and dropped down to the hall. "Now, who is riding on a goose?" he asked, but realized he was talking to himself.
Will was laid out on the floor, out colder than a frozen tuna. There was a bump on his head where the cover had hit him.
Just then, the brown mouse dropped down on top of Karnage's nose, sprang forward and sped down the hall.
"Mouse! Die!"
Karnage grabbed his cutlass and galloped after it, chasing it all the way to the bridge, where the mouse disappeared into a gap by the helm wheel, a small, cracked part of the floor that was in need of repair. Karnage burst into the room and, nearly knocking Jacque on the ground, came to a sliding halt over the small hole. "I saw where you went! You cannot hide!"
"Captain, you're finally here!" Kit said, speaking for everyone else.
"Of course I am—wait, boy, you're hands are small! Get over here at once and reach for that mouse!"
"But the...!"
"No buts! Pronto!"
Hal rushed into the bridge, panting. "Boss, what are ya doin'? That cruise ship's gonna pass us by in five minutes! You gotta get to the hangar!"
"Cruise ship...?" Karnage blinked as if an egg-timer suddenly went *ding* inside his head. "My plunder! How could I forget—aaugh, that blasted mouse! Tell the men to get ready! I will be there soon!"
Hal nodded and jogged back down to the hangar, where the rest of the looting crew were standing by.
"Boy, the hole!" Karnage ordered. "Quickly!"
"But what about the cruise ship?"
"If I have five more minutos to catch that thing, and I am going to use them! Now hurry!"
Kit complied, and felt inside for anything he could find. As he did, Karnage hurried to the windshield to see how they were positioned. Just as planned, the Iron Vulture was barely fifty feet in the air, screened by the mountains, and crawling to a still hover on the far side of the pass, far enough where the Queen Maureen's passengers would never hear its engines before it was too late.
"It is almost happening," Karnage mused to himself, on the verge of panicking. "That mouse has come this close to ruining everything!"
Kit heard him and offered his two cents. "You know, Captain, maybe if you just forgot about the mouse, everything would be—" He stopped when Karnage turned and gave him 'the look'. "Or... maybe I oughtta quiet up and just help you catch it."
Rugby, who was monitoring the bridge radio with a headset, said, "Capt'n, Jack says the cruise ship's gone into the pass! It's all ours!"
"Fine! Scotty, prepare to lift off!"
"It's Jacque," the helmsman corrected (for about the ninety-fifth time).
"It's no use," Kit said. "I can't reach anything down there."
"Then try harder, boy! I know it's in there!"
"But I can't!"
Karnage grumble something in Spanish, but then had a better motivational idea. He bent down next to Kit's ear and said quietly, "You know, my boy, the reward could be yours."
Something flashed in Kit's eyes like little dollar signs. "Well, when you put it that way..." He pulled back his sleeve, got flat on his stomach, and reached for all he was worth.
Just underneath them all, in the crawlspaces below the bridge, Hacksaw crept through the recess of pipes and beams like a tiger on the prowl. Just up ahead, from what was his ceiling, he saw the blurry movement of a brown shape feeling about a small gap, then watched it retreat back up through the hole.
"Darn it, it's no use," said Kit, pulling out his arm. "I bet that mouse is long gone."
Before Karnage's hopes were dashed, they all heard Hacksaw cry out from nowhere, "The mouse! I found the mouse!"
"What—who is that? Where are you?" Karnage called back.
"It's Hacksaw!" Kit said. "And it sounds like he's coming from..." He gestured to the gap in the floor, puzzled. "Well, don't ask me how he fit in there."
Karnage pushed Kit out of the way and shouted down at the floor, "Hacksaw! You can see the mouse?"
"I saw it, Capt'n! I saw it! It went right up here!"
Karnage's face lit up like a Christmas tree as he looked up at Kit and the others. "Hee ha! Good good good, he sees it!" Then, back to Hacksaw, he said, "Listen to me! I want that thing blasted into a thousand-and-one kingdoms coming!"
There was an awkward pause; though none on the bridge could see it, Hacksaw was licking his chops. "You... really mean it?" he squealed.
"Yes, of course! Kill the estupid thing!"
"Oh boy oh boy oh boy," Hacksaw exhaled. He dug in the pocket of his tattered trousers until he fished out a match, and struck it under his chin to light it. He always carried a pack of dynamite strapped to each arm—for he loved to set off explosives like fish loved to swim—and times like these they really came in handy.
Closing one eye and squinting, he eventually managed to meet his shaking hands together and lit the dynamite's wick. "Here we go-o," he sang.
"All right, Scotty," said Karnage, "it is time! Take the ship up!" Waving his arms in the air enthusiastically, he continued, "Hee hee, the mouse is doomed, and I am about to become the black cloud raining over the Queen Maureen's parade of silver linings!"
Karnage's face fell as he was in mid-pose when a burning stick of TNT suddenly sprung out from the floor and rolled at his feet. "You know, I am really starting to get cheesed off."
"Pull chocks!" Kit screamed. It was every pirate for himself!
With a ear-splitting bang, the explosion sent a blinding surge of gray smoke through the bridge. The group was knocked to the floor, coughing and gagging.
"Everyone *cough* okay?" Rugby asked.
"Aye," moaned Jacque. "And I quit."
"Capt'n? You good?"
"Yes, yes," Karnage replied, half-dazed. "*cough* I seem to have fallen on something soft..."
"Yeah, and get off me!" Kit yelped.
There was a very rapid clicking sound that baffled them.
"What'n the world...?"
When the smoke began to fade a little, through their blurred vision they saw something terribly unpleasant, and the clicking noise was revealed. The helm steering wheel was knocked out of control, spinning recklessly on its own.
"Grab that wheel!" Karnage barked.
Jacque and Rugby made a beeline for it, but ended up running into each other instead and falling back on the ground. By then, it was too late.
The ship began to tilt to the side, and everyone onboard was sent rolling on the floor. Even the parked planes began to slide and bump into each other. Almost just as quickly, there was a violent, rolling tremor as the Iron Vulture slid side-first into the ocean, plopping and bobbing in the water like a fifty-thousand ton beach ball. Its great metal hull creaked and groaned under the impact, and massive, foamy waves flew out in all directions of the sea.
One passenger, sunning on a lawn chair with his wife on the deck of the Queen Maureen, thought he heard something suspicious from afar. "I say, Lovey, did you hear that?"
"It's only the wind, dear."
"Huh."
Meanwhile, the air pirates were picking themselves up from the floor, groggy and dizzy as if they'd been on the merry-go-round for too long (and then fell on their heads).
Using a window sill, Don Karnage shakily pulled himself up to his knees, and pressed his nose against the glass as he saw the Queen Maureen sail off in the distance, unspoiled and completely oblivious to the pirates' presence. From the look on his face, you'd think it was the saddest sight he'd ever seen. "My... plunder! My beautiful plunder!"
One by one, the rest of the pirates from the hangar staggered to the bridge, wondering what went wrong.
"Well, I'm sure we can still catch 'em, boss," said Rugby.
"No! No no no!" Karnage fumed. "It is all wrong! I had a perfect plan! An unstoppable plan! And now it's all kaput!"
"But, it wasn't our fault this time," said Dumptruck.
Then, right on cue: *squeak!*
A lone eyebrow rose above Karnage's crown. His pupils shrank, his nose twitched, and his stare drew a blank.
"What's wrong with him," Kit whispered aside to Hal.
"Give 'im a second," the hefty feline said. "It's the first time Dumptruck's ever been right."
"The mouse," Karnage breathed. A new wave of fury washed over him, snapping him back to his wits. Slow and gravely, he drew his cutlass. "Take your weapons, men, all of you..." In a deep growl, he finished, "The mouse will not survive this hour."
The crew complied, brandished their pistols, swords, and clubs, and began to grumble about the cause of their misfortune. Soon, they were in an uproar and shouting for the mouse's hide.
"Shush, you fools," hissed Karnage, silencing them. "Listen for it..."
*squeak!*
Karnage slowly crept through the crowd, following the sound. "I can hear it..."
*squeak!* *squeak!*
"It always shows itself, just to mock me..."
*squeak!*
"And laugh at me... it knows what it has done."
From on top of the pipes that were lined near the ceiling, Karnage heard the very light patter of mouse feet, running away from the bridge.
He threw his finger in that direction and shouted, "There it goes! After it!"
"Harr!" Like a heard of spooked wildebeests, the crew charged forward, and poor Karnage quickly found himself drowning their thundering stampede. By the time they had cleared the hallway, he was on the ground, seeing stars.
Kit grabbed him by the arm to help him up. "Come on, Captain, forget about the mouse. You're gonna put yourself in a pine box if you keep up like this."
"Oh, no more for me, thank you," he slurred. "I'm flying home."
Kit just rolled his eyes. "Sure."
In reckless abandon, the pirate crew galloped into the hangar area, two decks above the floor. There, on the far side of the catwalk, the mouse appeared in plain view, sitting calmly in the middle of the walkway.
"Hey, there it is!" one shouted.
"If I didn't know any better, I'd say it was waiting for us," another said.
"Bullocks, it's just a dumb mouse," a third replied. "Pummel it!"
With a battle cry, all thirty-or-so of them charged again, waving their weapons in the air. The catwalk began to creak under their pounding weight, but they took no heed of it. As they reached the other side, though, they found no sign of the mouse.
"Hey, where'd it go?"
*squeak squeak!* The mouse was still on the catwalk, but now back on the other end, where they had just ran from.
"How'd it get clear back there?"
"Just shaddup and smash it!"
Like angry bulls, the crew stampeded the other direction. The catwalk shook more, creaked louder, and this time nuts and bolts began to pop out of place from underneath.
Just as before, the mouse was gone by the time they got there; also just as before, it was calling to them from the opposite end. *squeak!*
"Blasted thing! Over there!"
Inevitably, as they began to run, the catwalk could take no more and snapped loose, and fell right from under their feet. There was a big chorus of "Whoooahh!" just before they hit the hangar floor with a monstrously resounding crash, knocking them clean out and crushing two parked CT-37s.
Kit was one of the few that didn't join the mouse-hunt, knowing it was healthier that way. Instead, he was heading to the kitchen to sneak an afternoon snack together when he was startled by the immense crashing noises from the hangar. He quickly about-faced and raced to see what happened...
Don Karnage finally came around again and hurried to the hangar. When he saw the destruction laid before him on the floor, his jaw dropped in shock and outrage. "My ship! And my planes! What have you imbeciles done?!"
From the messy pile, Dumptruck alone started to stir, just to mumble, "Stupid smart evil mousey." With that, he joined the rest of his comrades in lullaby-land.
*squeak squeak!*
The squeak sent nerve-racking chills down Karnage's back like claws scraping against a chalkboard. This time, the mouse was on the catwalk on the stern side of the ship, zipping around to and fro in short distances, as if begging for the Captain to chase it.
"Mouse! It is over!" Karnage didn't waste a split second. He hoisted his sword and charged gung-ho, his eyes red, furious, and fixed on the mouse. The critter stopped just at the base of one of posts supporting the catwalk's handrail, and turned to look at Karnage eye-to-eye, fearlessly, as if it had no comprehension that it was in any danger at all.
What Karnage never noticed was that Dumptruck had been scrubbing that catwalk, and the earlier turmoil that crash-landed the airship had spilled a pail of soapy water all over the metal walkway. He slid to halt, winding his cutlass high in the air... but kept on sliding.
"Yiiieee!" He tripped and fell on his tail, but he wasn't about to give up so easily. Just as he slid by the mouse at great speed, he swung his sword so ferociously that when it hit the metal post, it knocked the hilt clear out of his hand.
Karnage came to a stop on the far side of the catwalk, only a step or two away from the head of the stairway that led down to the decks below. He took a good look behind him, and a richly satisfied grin crept up on his face... the mouse wasn't there anymore.
"Ha, yes!" He jumped to his feet, in the spirit of a football player who just scored a championship-winning touchdown. "I got you! I told you, you raunchy rodent, I am smarter, I am stronger, and I am—whooahh!" In his gloating, he absently planted his heel on a misplaced scrub-brush, and went tumbling backwards down the entire flight of stairs... and then a second flight.
Between all the clanks and the clunks, he yelped and swore, until he finally hit the floor in a sprawled-out heap of ruffled fur.
As Kit jotted down one of the corridors, nearing the hangar, the mouse suddenly appeared at the junction ahead. The two stopped and studied each other.
"Oh, man, twenty pieces of gold," Kit said to himself.
*squeak?* asked the mouse, curiously.
Instead of running after it, Kit knelt down and searched the hidden inside-pocket of his sweater for a cookie. He liked to carry one or two around as spares in case of an emergency sweet-tooth attack. He found one, ate half, and held the other half out as an offering. "Here little guy, wanna cookie?"
He waited patiently as the mouse drew slowly nearer, then, like a slingshot, it darted up his arm and ran around his collar, tickling his neck. "He-ey," he giggled. The mouse went inside his sweater, scurried down his arm and back out into his open hand, where it began nibbling on the cookie. As Kit watched it, his conscience got the better of him. "Aw, dangit, I can't turn you in. You're too cute!"
*squeak!* agreed the mouse.
With his new friend cupped in his hands, Kit walked the rest of the way to the hangar, and was taken aback how, within five minutes, the whole place was turned into a disaster area. "Oh my gosh!"
He quickly and carefully ran across the slicked catwalk Karnage had fallen from, down the stairs, and came to the Captain's side. "Captain! Are you okay? Speak to me!"
Very dazedly, Karnage looked up at him; by the way his eyes were spinning, he was probably seeing four or five blurred and wavy bear cubs instead of just one. "Did... I... get it?" His expression was practically pleading for Kit answer in the affirmative.
"Um, well..." Kit quickly hid the mouse behind his back. He just didn't have the heart to tell him the truth. "It's eaten its last piece of cheese."
Brightened, but his head still swimming like a school of anchovies, Karnage managed to wobble to his feet, and throwing a prominent finger in the air, proclaimed with great pride—well, more like wheezed, "Victory!" Then he collapsed to the floor like a broken accordion.
Never any the wiser, the Queen Maureen made it to the borders of Uslandian waters without incident. Don Karnage never even tried to regroup and chase after her.
With the mouse finally disposed of, or so it was believed (Kit kept it to himself until he would be able to set it free on Pirate Island), the next several hours onboard the Iron Vulture were spent cleaning, repairing, reorganizing, and tending to wounds. As Jacque had predicted, the infirmary was packed heavier than a sack of potatoes; but because of the pressing need to get the Iron Vulture back in service, few pirates were actually privileged enough to get some resting time out of it.
Will was one of the lucky few; he had a whopper of a black eye, and was holding an ice pack to it, reclining on a cot. Rachet was on the cot next to him, heavily into a mechanics book (injury or no, he was actually enjoying not having to work). Will watched him for awhile, and a thought crossed his mind...
"You ever hear of that one book," he said, "where there was the guy, he was a sea captain, I guess, one of those chumps that used to hunt for whales."
"Nuh-uh," Ratchet absently replied, turning a page.
"Yeah, I heard in the story, he's so obsessed with killin' this one whale, and it ends up ruinin' the dumb sap."
Ratchet put down his book momentarily and glanced up at him. "What made ya think of that? The boss and mouse?"
"Mouse? Oh, naw, I was just thinkin' of how much I hate to read..."
When all the commotion had died down much later that afternoon, and the Iron Vulture was back in the air, headed home, Don Karnage was ready to call it a day and went to bed before the sun even began to set.
Yawning like a hippo, he swept his feet into his cabin, only to find somebody already in his bed! It was a large figure, perhaps Dumptruck or Hal's size, lying under his covers. The audacity of one of those smelly nincompirates napping in his bed left him scandalized.
"You! Get your flea-infested flanks up from there this minu-ette!"
The figure stirred, but ignored the order.
Infuriated, and gritting his teeth, Karnage yanked up his sleeves and stormed toward his bed, seething, "Whoever you are, I am about tear you into ten thousand tiny bits of kibble.......!"
Throughout the halls, there was suddenly heard a roar like rolling thunder... followed by a distant, terrified shriek from Don Karnage.
Sadie and Hacksaw, who were nearby cleaning up their berth, were startled.
"Hacksaw, you hear that?"
Hacksaw cupped his hands up to his ears to listen. "The mouse again?"
"No, it sounded like—" After thinking about it for a second, Sadie cringed. "Oh, crud, we're in for it now."
"Why?"
"We forgot about the lion."
*Squeak!*
(The End, in mouse-speak)