Once Calvin came to, he saw that Odious was looking over him, worrying and drooling.
"Odious, get out of my face," he said, waving his hand around.
"ARF!" Odious barked happily.
"He's awake!" added Nermal, who was nearby.
Calvin looked around. He could see Pooky was sitting next to him.
"What happened to the rest of Pet Force?" he asked.
"Apparently, you've become Pet Force," said Garzooka.
Calvin arched an eyebrow. He then looked down. He did a double-take. He was wearing a dark purple jumpsuit with a yellow lightening bolt down the front, as well as a white cape, white gloves and white boots, not to mention a white string bandana.
He quickly and carefully stood up, unable to speak for a brief moment. He reached out and touched the chair with his fingers as carefully as he could, and it immediately turned to ice.
"WAHOOOOOO!" he cheered. "I'm a Pet Forcer! Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES!" He ran around in circles, laughing and whooping.
"It seems his pester-power has kicked in nicely," Starlena commented.
Garzooka rolled his eyes.
Calvin was finding it hard to stop himself from talking. "This has gotta be the coolest thing that's ever happened to me! I could freeze Susie in her tracks! I wouldn't have to worry about her fighting back! I could possibly be saved from Moe for good! And I think my voice is stuck. I can't stop talking."
Suddenly, he felt a surge of electricity fly through his veins.
"Ouch!" he cried.
He turned around and saw Hobbes. At least, that partly what he saw.
Hobbes still looked like himself, but he had on yellowish sunglasses, a red helmet with a red TV set on top that had a neutron symbol on the screen. But what really stood out was the fact that he was in a cool hovercraft that was blue on the sides, but with a yellow stripe down the front with a paw print on it. Two electrical wires were snaking back into the craft.
"Hello, Calvin. Feeling smarter?"
"Hobbes? How'd you get that thing on your head?" he asked.
"I don't know."
"Wait! Compooky is supposed to have super-intelligence! How could you possibly not know?"
"I don't know."
Calvin slapped his forehead, only for it freeze over.
Garzooka quickly applied a special defroster that they'd been given during their first adventure when Abnermal had frozen one thing too many.
Once his hand was freed, Calvin looked himself over in a mirror.
"Well," he said, and for the first time, he was unable to speak.
As for Hobbes, he was having troubles of his own. Despite having a super-brain now, he still didn't know how to keep his hovercraft under control. He was spinning madly like a top, and he couldn't stop until he spotted the STOP SPINNING button.
"I don't get it," Starlena said. "How is it that when Nermal and Pooky got those powers, they were able to handle them, but these two losers can't do much about them?"
Calvin, not letting his gaze leave the mirror, simply reached behind his head and with the point of his finger, blasted Starlena in an ice block.
Garzooka tossed Odious the defroster, who thankfully knew how to use it, and turned his attention to the stunned Calvin and the giddy Hobbes.
"Apparently, being the runner's up in this whole thing, you two aren't able to control your powers just yet," he said. "Just give it time and try not to go crazy with it, okay?"
Strangely, despite now having Abnermal's pester-power, Calvin wasn't exactly talking.
"How's it that Pooky could handle this thing and knew all the answers when he got his new brain, but I can't?" Hobbes asked.
"I don't know. You're second-best to Pooky. Besides, no offense to him or anything, but he didn't necessarily have any brains to start with, so he had plenty of room. As for you, you had a brain in there, so it's probably having trouble welcoming in the new one."
Hobbes looked up at the brain that was stored in his big monitor. He looked at himself in the mirror that Calvin was still staring at.
"I look so cool!" he said.
Garzooka sighed.
"What do we do now?" Calvin finally asked.
"Well, Vetvix fled the Fortress," Starlena said. "She left in one of her ships, so my guess is we go after her."
"Right," said Garzooka. "She could very well be waiting to drain us as well."
"Then wouldn't the smart thing be to run away?" Calvin asked.
"When you're in Pet Force, you don't run away," Garzooka said firmly.
"Feh," scoffed Starlena. "As Pet Force, sure, but back home, you run and hide when it comes to booster shot time. In fact, you won't come out of bed unless it's not Monday."
Calvin chuckled. "That's lame."
Garzooka said nothing as he sat down behind the controls. "We have to get back to Vetvix. We went aboard the ship and the machine that took Abnermal and Compooky's powers was removed and taken with her. If we're going to make things right, we need to get out there and beat her."
Calvin and Hobbes sighed and agreed.
"Still, does this mean we get new names?" Calvin asked.
"I dunno," Hobbes said. "Comphobbes and Abcalvin don't exactly sound right."
"Yeah, well, at least it wouldn't be a like a bunch of bad puns. That's what the other names are like."
He then noticed everyone was glaring at him.
"Well, it's not like it isn't true," he said.
"Let's just keep our regular names," Hobbes said. "I prefer mine over a name with comp in it any day."
Garzooka took no notice of this, as he was concentrating on catching up with Vetvix. That's why he was the only one who noticed when the communicator came on.
"Emperor Jon speaking," a familiar voice said. "Come in, Garzooka."
"Garzooka here," the Pet Force leader said.
"Have you found Abnermal and Compooky yet?" asked Emperor Jon.
Garzooka sighed. "In a way, I suppose."
"What do you mean, in a way?"
Garzooka leaned back and showed him Pooky. Nermal started jumping up and down, trying to talk to the emperor, but, lucky for Emperor Jon, he didn't speak cat, so Nermal's cries came through as a bunch of "Meow".
"What has Vetvix done?" the emperor demanded.
"She's drained Abnermal and Compooky, turning them back into their normal selves."
"Well, how do we get them back to normal?"
"I think a better question would be how we get them back to not normal," said a voice.
Hobbes hovered into the scene.
Emperor Jon looked at him closely. "Odd," he said. "He looks so familiar."
"I'm Hobbes, sir," said the cyber-tiger. "You remember? The handsome and already smart enough tiger from earlier?"
"It doesn't ring a bell," the emperor murmured. "I've never met anyone like that."
Calvin immediately fell to the floor laughing, holding his sides. His hands immediately froze to his ribs, and he was stuck in fetal position. Odious quickly applied the defrosting stuff.
"And who's that?" asked Emperor Jon, looking past Garzooka at Calvin. "And why's he wearing Abnermal's uniform?"
"Because that's Calvin, and he's got Abnermal's powers. It's the same with Hobbes."
"Hobbes has Abnermal's powers too?"
"Yes. No. NO!" Garzooka said, loosing patience. "Hobbes has Compooky's powers."
"Ah. That makes better sense."
Pet Force groaned.
"The only way we can fix this power mess is to catch up with Vetvix, who has the technology to transfer the powers back," Garzooka went on. "We need to track her down, but she destroyed the tracker on her ship."
"Don't worry. I'll get Sorcerer Binky on the job at once. Good luck, new Pet Force," he said, and he signed off.
Calvin sighed. "Well, I'm officially bored now," he said.
It was time for another long ride.