This fic is rated PG for violence.
Disclaimer: I don't own Arthur, but I've written so much about him, I probably should.
----
AGF VIII is the final installment of the Arthur Goes Fourth series. If I continue the series after this, it will be about Arthur and his friends in fifth grade, and I will call it Arthur Goes Fifth, or Arthur Pleads the Fifth, or Arthur's Fifth Symphony, or something equally silly.
If you're new to the AGF series and don't want to read it from the beginning, here's some background so you won't get lost (SPOILERS!).
- AGF VIII starts where AGF VII left off, at the beginning of April.
- Buster and his parents, Bitzi and Harry, moved to Chicago in AGF II. They flew to Elwood City for a vacation in AGF VII, and are still there.
- There are four new kids in Arthur's fourth-grade class, which is taught by Bud Wald. Beatrice "Beat" Simon is a brainy half-rabbit, half-aardvark girl from England. Van Cooper is a wheelchair-bound duck boy who comes from a family of six children. Mavis Cutler is a hamster girl of above-average intelligence who formerly attended Uppity Downs Academy. Adil Faruk is an exchange student from Turkey (you may remember him from the episode "Dear Adil").
- Alan (Brain) advanced to fifth grade and is now in Prunella's class. They are taught by the recently hired, rather annoying Mrs. Krantz.
- Sue Ellen and her parents moved away in AGF V/VI. Ostensibly it was due to Mr. Armstrong's emergency diplomatic assignment to the war-torn republic of Karjakistan, but it likely had more to do with the fact that he is secretly a CIA agent. Oops...did I say that out loud?
- As a result of an experiment by the late inventor Andrew Putnam, Francine now has a copy of Sue Ellen's memories and personality in her brain. This has led her to fall in love with Arthur, but he does not return her feelings.
- Three characters introduced in AGF VII will play a role in AGF VIII--Dudley Proctor, Augusta Winslow, and April Murphy. Dudley was once known as Dolly Proctor, a 17th-century witch girl who was transported through time to the present day. Augusta was formerly known as Angus Winslow, an alchemist (and high-school friend of Dave Read) who tried to exploit Dolly's powers to realize his vision of a perfect world. His efforts backfired, however, unleashing a force of evil that was only stopped by a desperate stratagem on the part of Prunella--but not before Dolly and Winslow became magically gender-switched. While Dudley (Dolly) struggled with the loss of his girlhood, Augusta (Angus) embraced the change and the magical powers that came with it. Which brings us to April, who is actually the twelve-year-old Sue Ellen. Two years in the future she will fake her death from AIDS and assume a new identity, and her parents will be murdered by enemy spies shortly thereafter. Heartbroken, April will seek out Augusta and become her acolyte, using the alchemist-witch's magical inventions to travel into the past in hopes of preventing her parents' deaths--by assisting the present-day Augusta in her newest scheme to eliminate all evil from the world. What is that scheme, you ask? Read on...
----
It was April Fools' Day, and many comic strip artists had agreed to observe the holiday by drawing each other's strips. Buster chortled with glee as he read Cathy drawn by Scott Adams and Dilbert drawn by Cathy Guisewite. His parents, Bitzi and Harry Mills, sat on either side of him, waiting for the arrival of the jetliner that would carry them from Elwood City to their home in Chicago.
"Mom, look at this," said the rabbit boy, thrusting the comics page in front of his mother's bespectacled face. "Cathy has a nose, but she doesn't have a mouth."
"That's very funny, dear," Bitzi replied. In her lap was laid the front section of the newspaper, whose headline read, CRIME RETURNS TO ELWOOD AFTER 10-DAY ABSENCE.
Harry sighed wistfully. "Coming back here reminded me of how much I love this place," he remarked. "If the new job weren't so essential to my career, I'd move back in an instant."
"I like it better here, too," Buster added.
Harry grinned and playfully rubbed his stepson's scalp with his knuckles. "What was your favorite part of the vacation?" he asked.
It didn't take Buster long to decide. "Being turned into a half-boy, half-girl two-headed monster with Fern."
As he laughed along with his parents, a voice came over the speaker system: "United flight 562 from Philadelphia is now disembarking at gate C-12."
Buster glanced idly across the terminal, where gates C-11 and C-12 were located. An old lady, a woman with two toddlers, and a fat bald man were seated in chairs, expecting a flight to Newark. He watched with amused interest as the toddlers, both boys, waddled about and played with their Bunny League plush toys.
A minute later the door of gate C-12 opened, and passengers began to stream out. Among the first were a pair of long-haired hippies, a man and a woman, who looked around the terminal with intrigued smiles.
"This is it, man," said the male hippie. "The real city of brotherly love."
"But nobody's smiling at us," observed the female hippie. "I thought everybody here was supposed to, like, smile and wave as we go by."
"#$% hippies," Buster heard his mother grumble.
Then Buster saw something very, very odd. His eyes went wide.
Emerging from the gate door between two teenage blond girls was a man with a strange head. Scaly, green, hairless skin, a bulging forehead, glowing red dots for eyes, a swaying tentacle for a nose. It was the weirdest alien mask Buster had ever seen in his nine-year life. He gaped in wonder.
"Mom! Dad!" he blurted out, pointing at the man. "Look at that guy!"
"Don't point," said Harry, pushing the boy's arm down. "It's impolite."
The masked man wore a navy blue business suit and well-shined black shoes, and gripped a brown leather briefcase in one of his hands, which Buster noticed were also green and scaly.
"He must be an actor in a space movie, or something," Buster marveled.
"Who?" asked Bitzi.
"The guy with the mask," answered Buster, pointing again.
"I don't see a guy with a mask," said Bitzi, adjusting her glasses.
Buster couldn't take his eyes off the man, who was starting to walk away from the gate, swinging his briefcase.
"I want a mask like that, Dad," Buster pleaded. "I want to wear it for Halloween."
"A mask like what?" asked Harry quizzically.
The green alien man passed under the sign directing him to the baggage claim area. Buster wondered why his parents didn't notice his bizarre visage, which was in plain view. Indeed, none of the other passengers in the terminal seemed to pay any heed to the costumed man.
Then a thought occurred to him...
Leaping from his chair, he quickly uttered, "I'll be right back," and started to walk hastily after the mysterious man.
"Buster, where are you going?" Bitzi called after him.
Glancing over his shoulder, Buster noticed that his mother had left her seat and was pursuing him anxiously...but he would not be deterred. He acknowledged that it might be an elaborate April Fools prank, that he might never live down the embarrassment of falling victim to it. On the other hand, if his parents and the other passengers were truly blind to what he clearly saw, then it could mean only one thing. Aliens in human form...the vanguard of an invasion of Elwood City...
The green man was strolling past the Cinnabon outlet when Buster approached him from behind. Just as Bitzi laid a stern hand on his shoulder to stop him, he glimpsed a name embossed in gold letters on the edge of the man's briefcase.
Dr. Portinari.
----
The first thing Mrs. Nordgren noticed when her son George returned from school was a pink hair ribbon tied around the end of his left antler.
"Hi, Mom," he said as his mother began to snicker. "What are you laughing at?"
She covered her grinning lips with one hand, and pointed at his antler with the other. George reached up, felt the ribbon, pulled it off, and cried out in horror.
Mrs. Nordgren giggled uncontrollably as she tried to resume her ironing.
"One of the girls must've snuck this on me," George grumbled, tossing the hair ribbon into the garbage basket. "This is what I get for not having nerve endings in my antlers."
"You have to admit, it was clever," said his mother.
"Not as clever as the stunt Beat, Van, and Binky pulled," answered George, now smiling. "They all drank a gallon of carrot juice yesterday, then they came to school with orange skin, and told everybody it was a virus."
"That was a good one," said Mrs. Nordgren.
"Yeah, I ran halfway home before I realized it was a trick."
As George pulled off his backpack, the telephone rang and he picked it up. "Hello?"
"George, it's Buster."
The moose boy's face lit up. "Hey, Buster. Did you have a good trip?"
"Never mind the trip," came his friend's worried voice. "I called you because you're the only one who'll believe me. There's a space alien in Elwood City."
George's jaw plummeted.
"He flew in from Philadelphia," Buster went on. "I guess he looked human to everybody else, but to me he was all green skin and scales. His nose was like an octopus arm. He had a briefcase, and the name on it was Dr. Portinari."
George could only stammer in response. "A-a-are you s-sure...?"
"He's gotta be an alien," Buster continued. "I've never heard of an Earth person with a name like that. Portinari. It rhymes with Alpha Centauri. And the doctor part means he's some kind of scientist. I'll bet he was exiled from his own planet, and he's come to Earth to carry on his diabolical experiments."
Terror filled George's frozen pupils.
"George?" came Buster's voice. "Are you there?"
The moose boy clenched his free fist and summoned up courage.
"Yes, I'm here," he said in a confident tone. "I'll always be here. The future of Earth is in the safest of hands!"
TBC
Disclaimer: I don't own Arthur, but I've written so much about him, I probably should.
----
AGF VIII is the final installment of the Arthur Goes Fourth series. If I continue the series after this, it will be about Arthur and his friends in fifth grade, and I will call it Arthur Goes Fifth, or Arthur Pleads the Fifth, or Arthur's Fifth Symphony, or something equally silly.
If you're new to the AGF series and don't want to read it from the beginning, here's some background so you won't get lost (SPOILERS!).
- AGF VIII starts where AGF VII left off, at the beginning of April.
- Buster and his parents, Bitzi and Harry, moved to Chicago in AGF II. They flew to Elwood City for a vacation in AGF VII, and are still there.
- There are four new kids in Arthur's fourth-grade class, which is taught by Bud Wald. Beatrice "Beat" Simon is a brainy half-rabbit, half-aardvark girl from England. Van Cooper is a wheelchair-bound duck boy who comes from a family of six children. Mavis Cutler is a hamster girl of above-average intelligence who formerly attended Uppity Downs Academy. Adil Faruk is an exchange student from Turkey (you may remember him from the episode "Dear Adil").
- Alan (Brain) advanced to fifth grade and is now in Prunella's class. They are taught by the recently hired, rather annoying Mrs. Krantz.
- Sue Ellen and her parents moved away in AGF V/VI. Ostensibly it was due to Mr. Armstrong's emergency diplomatic assignment to the war-torn republic of Karjakistan, but it likely had more to do with the fact that he is secretly a CIA agent. Oops...did I say that out loud?
- As a result of an experiment by the late inventor Andrew Putnam, Francine now has a copy of Sue Ellen's memories and personality in her brain. This has led her to fall in love with Arthur, but he does not return her feelings.
- Three characters introduced in AGF VII will play a role in AGF VIII--Dudley Proctor, Augusta Winslow, and April Murphy. Dudley was once known as Dolly Proctor, a 17th-century witch girl who was transported through time to the present day. Augusta was formerly known as Angus Winslow, an alchemist (and high-school friend of Dave Read) who tried to exploit Dolly's powers to realize his vision of a perfect world. His efforts backfired, however, unleashing a force of evil that was only stopped by a desperate stratagem on the part of Prunella--but not before Dolly and Winslow became magically gender-switched. While Dudley (Dolly) struggled with the loss of his girlhood, Augusta (Angus) embraced the change and the magical powers that came with it. Which brings us to April, who is actually the twelve-year-old Sue Ellen. Two years in the future she will fake her death from AIDS and assume a new identity, and her parents will be murdered by enemy spies shortly thereafter. Heartbroken, April will seek out Augusta and become her acolyte, using the alchemist-witch's magical inventions to travel into the past in hopes of preventing her parents' deaths--by assisting the present-day Augusta in her newest scheme to eliminate all evil from the world. What is that scheme, you ask? Read on...
----
It was April Fools' Day, and many comic strip artists had agreed to observe the holiday by drawing each other's strips. Buster chortled with glee as he read Cathy drawn by Scott Adams and Dilbert drawn by Cathy Guisewite. His parents, Bitzi and Harry Mills, sat on either side of him, waiting for the arrival of the jetliner that would carry them from Elwood City to their home in Chicago.
"Mom, look at this," said the rabbit boy, thrusting the comics page in front of his mother's bespectacled face. "Cathy has a nose, but she doesn't have a mouth."
"That's very funny, dear," Bitzi replied. In her lap was laid the front section of the newspaper, whose headline read, CRIME RETURNS TO ELWOOD AFTER 10-DAY ABSENCE.
Harry sighed wistfully. "Coming back here reminded me of how much I love this place," he remarked. "If the new job weren't so essential to my career, I'd move back in an instant."
"I like it better here, too," Buster added.
Harry grinned and playfully rubbed his stepson's scalp with his knuckles. "What was your favorite part of the vacation?" he asked.
It didn't take Buster long to decide. "Being turned into a half-boy, half-girl two-headed monster with Fern."
As he laughed along with his parents, a voice came over the speaker system: "United flight 562 from Philadelphia is now disembarking at gate C-12."
Buster glanced idly across the terminal, where gates C-11 and C-12 were located. An old lady, a woman with two toddlers, and a fat bald man were seated in chairs, expecting a flight to Newark. He watched with amused interest as the toddlers, both boys, waddled about and played with their Bunny League plush toys.
A minute later the door of gate C-12 opened, and passengers began to stream out. Among the first were a pair of long-haired hippies, a man and a woman, who looked around the terminal with intrigued smiles.
"This is it, man," said the male hippie. "The real city of brotherly love."
"But nobody's smiling at us," observed the female hippie. "I thought everybody here was supposed to, like, smile and wave as we go by."
"#$% hippies," Buster heard his mother grumble.
Then Buster saw something very, very odd. His eyes went wide.
Emerging from the gate door between two teenage blond girls was a man with a strange head. Scaly, green, hairless skin, a bulging forehead, glowing red dots for eyes, a swaying tentacle for a nose. It was the weirdest alien mask Buster had ever seen in his nine-year life. He gaped in wonder.
"Mom! Dad!" he blurted out, pointing at the man. "Look at that guy!"
"Don't point," said Harry, pushing the boy's arm down. "It's impolite."
The masked man wore a navy blue business suit and well-shined black shoes, and gripped a brown leather briefcase in one of his hands, which Buster noticed were also green and scaly.
"He must be an actor in a space movie, or something," Buster marveled.
"Who?" asked Bitzi.
"The guy with the mask," answered Buster, pointing again.
"I don't see a guy with a mask," said Bitzi, adjusting her glasses.
Buster couldn't take his eyes off the man, who was starting to walk away from the gate, swinging his briefcase.
"I want a mask like that, Dad," Buster pleaded. "I want to wear it for Halloween."
"A mask like what?" asked Harry quizzically.
The green alien man passed under the sign directing him to the baggage claim area. Buster wondered why his parents didn't notice his bizarre visage, which was in plain view. Indeed, none of the other passengers in the terminal seemed to pay any heed to the costumed man.
Then a thought occurred to him...
Leaping from his chair, he quickly uttered, "I'll be right back," and started to walk hastily after the mysterious man.
"Buster, where are you going?" Bitzi called after him.
Glancing over his shoulder, Buster noticed that his mother had left her seat and was pursuing him anxiously...but he would not be deterred. He acknowledged that it might be an elaborate April Fools prank, that he might never live down the embarrassment of falling victim to it. On the other hand, if his parents and the other passengers were truly blind to what he clearly saw, then it could mean only one thing. Aliens in human form...the vanguard of an invasion of Elwood City...
The green man was strolling past the Cinnabon outlet when Buster approached him from behind. Just as Bitzi laid a stern hand on his shoulder to stop him, he glimpsed a name embossed in gold letters on the edge of the man's briefcase.
Dr. Portinari.
----
The first thing Mrs. Nordgren noticed when her son George returned from school was a pink hair ribbon tied around the end of his left antler.
"Hi, Mom," he said as his mother began to snicker. "What are you laughing at?"
She covered her grinning lips with one hand, and pointed at his antler with the other. George reached up, felt the ribbon, pulled it off, and cried out in horror.
Mrs. Nordgren giggled uncontrollably as she tried to resume her ironing.
"One of the girls must've snuck this on me," George grumbled, tossing the hair ribbon into the garbage basket. "This is what I get for not having nerve endings in my antlers."
"You have to admit, it was clever," said his mother.
"Not as clever as the stunt Beat, Van, and Binky pulled," answered George, now smiling. "They all drank a gallon of carrot juice yesterday, then they came to school with orange skin, and told everybody it was a virus."
"That was a good one," said Mrs. Nordgren.
"Yeah, I ran halfway home before I realized it was a trick."
As George pulled off his backpack, the telephone rang and he picked it up. "Hello?"
"George, it's Buster."
The moose boy's face lit up. "Hey, Buster. Did you have a good trip?"
"Never mind the trip," came his friend's worried voice. "I called you because you're the only one who'll believe me. There's a space alien in Elwood City."
George's jaw plummeted.
"He flew in from Philadelphia," Buster went on. "I guess he looked human to everybody else, but to me he was all green skin and scales. His nose was like an octopus arm. He had a briefcase, and the name on it was Dr. Portinari."
George could only stammer in response. "A-a-are you s-sure...?"
"He's gotta be an alien," Buster continued. "I've never heard of an Earth person with a name like that. Portinari. It rhymes with Alpha Centauri. And the doctor part means he's some kind of scientist. I'll bet he was exiled from his own planet, and he's come to Earth to carry on his diabolical experiments."
Terror filled George's frozen pupils.
"George?" came Buster's voice. "Are you there?"
The moose boy clenched his free fist and summoned up courage.
"Yes, I'm here," he said in a confident tone. "I'll always be here. The future of Earth is in the safest of hands!"
TBC
