Sneezer had been watching from the door the whole time. Clad in a smart little black vest, a button shirt and slacks, he looked twice as mature as he'd been originally. He almost looked cute, if I were into that sort of thing...which I wasn't...I think.

Upon seeing such an impressive display of fighting prowess, his eyes turned into Valentine hearts, his body drifting across the room without touching the ground until he landed in front of me.

"Wow," he breathed.

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah. Wow. Now that you know what I'm capable of, you might want to keep your hands to yourself."

Sneezer swallowed hard.

My sister put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sure he, she's only joking."

"Am I?" I said, sounding a lot less certain than I meant to be.

"Amanda..." I scolded.

"What? You'd make a cute couple."

I was about to say `what about us,' but I wasn't sure I wanted to go down that road, either.

I decided to pretend this little scene didn't happen.

"Dad, what about guns?" I asked. "I'd feel more comfortable about this rescue if I had some guns."

"Do you even know how to fire a gun?"

"Not exactly," I said. "But it won't matter at close range."

"You do realize you're in a comic book world."

I said, "Why does that matter?"

He crossed his arms. "If this place deems that you are a PG type character, you won't be able to kill anyone with a gun, even if you can knock a fly off of a beer bottle a mile away. Plus, regardless of whether that is your curse or not, some villains are immune to bullets. Pull out a machine gun, and you can blast an outline of their body into a wall and never once hit them. The best you'll be able to do is maim them."

"I don't care," I said.

Shrugging, he led me down a paper screen hallway to a door flanked by a pair of open mouthed monkey statues with chemical symbols on their bellies. A circular stained glass window above the door depicted a zodiac.

Dad reached into one of the mouths, pushing a sequence of buttons arranged to look like the periodic table.

"Seriously?" I said. "What happens if you forget a formula?"

Dad pushed buttons in the other monkey's mouth. "Then I'm drunk or really tired, and shouldn't have a weapon."

I frowned. "That makes sense...I guess."

He pulled one of the monkey's paws upwards, changing the rotation of the zodiac.

"Some people have safes and combination locks," I said.

"That's great in the real world," Dad said, typing in another formula. "But everyone in Cool World knows how to crack safes. Nobody knows the chemical equation for bleach or a fatty acid.

"Whiskers clued me in on this after my armory got robbed a few years ago. In Cool World, any science above high school level is indistinguishable from magic, meaning that the average animated scientist doesn't know the first thing about doing science for real."

"You only have a GED," I pointed out.

"A lot of famous people through history have been self taught. Frankly, that's the only education I can get here. I study so my brain doesn't turn to mush. It's kind of like I left one prison for another."

"Then why don't you go back?" I said.

As if in response, he turned into an animated clown. "`Yes, sir. I take your banking products very seriously indeed.'" And then he honked his nose.

"`I'm sorry to inform you of this, madam, but the tumor in your husband's brain has spread. We're not sure how long he'll last in this condition.'" He honked his nose twice.

He gave me a frown. "That's why."

He cleared his throat. "Abraham Lincoln was self taught. So was Bill Gates."

I sighed. "`To thyself be true.'"

"He showed me the Land of Lost Stuff," Amanda said.

Dad solved a quadratic equation, and the wall opened up, revealing a metal chamber full of guns.

"Don't tell the FBI," Dad joked. "Felons aren't supposed to be armed."

The weapons looked fancy and strange, some resembling six shooters from cowboy films, if the cowboys had been punk rockers, mad scientists or space aliens.

I saw gatling guns, rifles, flintlocks, uzis and chainsaws, but they all looked super artsy, like something a kid from The Art Institute would take down to a rodeo, probably while wearing a rhinestone vest and leather pants.

"Awesome," Dane said, pulling down a sawed off shotgun ornately decorated with skulls in a Dia De Los Muertos motif.

Dad grinned, letting her keep the gun.

I grabbed a pistol, stuffing it in my pocket before realizing the mistake.

"Shit," I said.

Dad frowned. "What is it now."

I pulled out a long string of colored handkerchiefs. "The gun's gone."

"What? What do you mean, gone?"

I told him about Hammer Space.

He didn't seem too terribly upset, probably because the guns were drawings, more or less. Instead he just stared at me. "You actually went there?"

I said, "Yeah? I thought I already explained how I got to the factory where they're holding Extra..."

"I thought if someone went in there, they'd be crushed to death by bowling balls or boats or some other random objects."

"No..." I replied.

Dad shook his head, handing me a small automatic pistol in one of those police type strap holsters. I strapped it on the back of my kimono, figuring the Conceal part of Conceal and Carry wasn't possible.

"You might want a silencer." Dad pulled one off a rack, screwing it onto my machine gun.

Without a word, Amanda casually stripped down to her rabbit suit.

Dad shook his head in disapproval, but I found myself staring.

Looking indifferent, my sister strapped on a strange kind of gun belt that pointed both barrels at her crack, shoving a couple large guns with silencers into the holsters.

"Are you going to wear that to the battle?" Dane asked.

Amanda shrugged. "Why."

The other girl only smirked. "No reason."

"Would you wear something different?"

Dane chuckled. "I guess not." And then, "You think I could get something like that made for me?"

"No," I said, but Amanda told her, "I think that can be arranged."

I cringed. "Let's do that some other time."

I examined a rack of samurai swords. "Dad, what do we have to cut chains and handcuffs with?"

Amanda pulled a device resembling a pipe wrench off the wall. "Will this do? It's a carbon laser torch."

She demonstrated its use by slicing a piece of metal like an apple.

I chuckled. "I hope!"

She handed me the cutter, secured in a handy carrying holster.

"Wait," said Dane. "Remember that scene from Roger Rabbit where he gets out of the handcuffs?"

I thought about it a minute, turning the holster over in my hands.

"If they could do that," I said. "Why aren't they already out?"

Shreve popped out of my dress. "Miss Terious has put Humor Dampers on all our restraints."

I narrowed my eyes. "Humor Dampers?"

The bird nodded. "Each cuff has been laser engraved with in-depth thoughtful analysis of several jokes, explaining why they are funny."

"Blah-ffy Taffy," I groaned.

"Can't you just tell a different joke and break them out?" Dane asked.

Shreve shook his head. "Many have tried, but the cuffs have been made in such a way that you can't possibly break free unless you come up with funnier versions of all the printed jokes, and they're mostly inside the cuff where you can't even see them anyway."

"I don't get it," I said. "How does Miss Terious unshackle them? You know, to kill them, or move them to a different station?"

"She uses a key."

Giving my head another vigorous shake, I said, "And you're certain this carbon torch thing will work."

"Your guess is as good as mine," Shreve said. "Sometimes magpies have been able to pick the locks. Some lucky ones were even able to escape, but twice as many get caught."

"So.." I said. "The only special thing about them is the jokes?"

"I believe so."

"I hope you're right."

"What other types of weapons do we got?" I asked Amanda.

"Well..." she said. "The Owlmobile has a handful of interesting explosives, a very weird anti-theft alarm, and a secret compartment full of Owl Vibrators."

I stared at her. "I'm not sure I want an explanation."

"Yeah, I don't get that last one either," Amanda said. "They're really scratchy. Even the feathery ones."

Dad and I exchanged uncomfortable looks.

"Okay," I stammered. "At least there's explosives."

"The most direct route to Extra is from the back entrance," I told Amanda as we were walking out. "But I don't see how we can get there. I had to go to Hammerspace and have Miss Terious drag me further down, or in, or wherever it was."

"The Owlmobile can fly," Amanda said.

"So...just fly over the roof, then?"

She nodded.

And so we marched on down to the garage, climbing into the feather duster on wheels...and wings.

"Leave the vertical stabilizer out," Dad said through the open window as we were getting in. "Also, I think there's a break in the power steering line. It's okay in the air, but I wouldn't recommend driving it on the street too much. It turns, but you really got to fight it."

He shrugged. "Even in Cool World, Luminas are a piece of junk."

"But they're so roomy!" my sister said.

Dad sighed. "That's why it's yours."

Amanda didn't react, so I assumed she already owned it and just kept it in dad's garage for safekeeping or something.

He wasn't lying. Amanda had to put effort into wrenching the steering wheel to the left, just to avoid hitting the side of the garage, and even then, she broke off the passenger side mirror.

"That's not passing inspection!" Dane remarked.

We drove at an angle through the desert, our course not straightening out until we became airborne.

The Owl Mobile swooped over the rooftops of twisting buildings, busy streets and factories.

The giant rotating kookoo on the roof came into view, with its innocent looking storefront framed on one side by a grandfather clock.

When we passed over the factory, the sky rippled like we were flying through a wall of water.

Dane stared. "What's that?"

Amanda steered the vehicle lower. "We're crossing into Hammer Space."

I heard a rumble, and the sky grew dark.

"Uh-oh. That's not good."

We'd run into a storm, but it wasn't you run of the mill precipitation. Instead, I saw a shower of suited men in bowlers, exactly like that painting by Rene Magritte. They landed on buildings like limp two hundred pound rag dolls, breaking sky lights and knocking objects off rooftops.

"Great," I muttered. "It's raining men."

A pair of laser cannons popped out of the roof of the Knickknocker place, blasting several of these men to bloody bits.

The kookoo spun around to face us, the laser guns aiming threateningly at our vehicle.

A second later, I saw blood pouring down the windows.

It seemed we had bowler men dropping down on us, and we didn't even know it. Someone in the building had just spared us from a nasty collision.

As Amanda brought our vehicle in lower, a windowless wooden `skylight' slowly opened on the factory roof, and a big kookoo clock emerged from the surrounding building. The whole thing reminded me of some kind of giant Transformer toy.

The hands turned to twelve, and a helicopter landing pad shot out of its door. It reminded me strangely of that scene from Star Wars where they met Billy Dee Williams in the cloud city.

"Should we land?" Amanda asked.

Dane grinned. "Totally!"

"No," I said. "It's either a trap, or a potential trap once they find out we're not Owl Woman."

"What does Owl Woman do?" Dane asked.

I rolled my eyes. "Collect overdue books. More importantly, she's the mother of one of Miss Terious's friends. Land in the back next to the trucks."

Amanda dropped the vehicle lower. "So much for the element of surprise."

The Owlmobile's jet thrusters turned ninety degrees, gently slowing our descent like some kind of fancy VTOL aircraft.

We settled on the blacktop unmolested.

Well, except for the bowler hat guy slamming into our roof. The windows were so red you could barely see out. It was like we'd parked in a vampire car wash.

"Did you say we had explosives?" I said as a flood of red gushed down the window.

Amanda opened a panel on the wall, and a bunch of gray and orange vibrators fell to the floor. "Oops! Wrong one."

She shoved them back in the compartment, but I could hear one of them buzzing angrily behind the closed lid. "I forgot I moved this stuff around."

She placed an owl shaped paperweight in a socket on the floor, then spun it around like she were trying to open a combination lock on a gym locker.

A Stow and Go storage compartment is not a feature of a Lumina APV, but neither are wings and a library kiosk. Inside the compartment, I saw hundreds of what appeared to be large Book It! pins.

"Is she that desperate for free pizza?" I asked.

Amanda didn't get the joke.

"Look," I said. "I don't think telling an evil henchman to read five books in exchange for a personal pan is going to solve anything."

"Really?" said Dane. "You'd think that would actually work!"

Amanda turned one of the buttons over, showing me a rather unfriendly looking electronic device. I could see the black letter C and the number 4 printed on part of it.

"I'm not really sure that's what they mean by `bombard them with literature.'"

"They give you a pizza for reading books?" my sister asked, bewildered, maybe jealous.

"Only if you're in first grade," I said. "When you grow up, you find reading has its own reward, such as a six figure income, when you've studied enough to get a Masters Degree in Medical Science, or Biochemistry. Anything medical, in fact."

"What about art?"

I shrugged. "You can win the Daily Double on Jeopardy."

She clipped a handful of them to her gun belt.

"How do they work?" I asked.

"You just stick them to something and push down."

"What if they stick to your pocket?"

She shrugged. "They don't." And she pointed to the buttons on her belt.

"Right," I said, "Cartoon logic."

I stuck one in the pocket of my Harry Potter costume I suddenly wore, again forgetting how unreliable my pockets were. I tried to pull it out again, but only ended up with a bag full of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Jellybeans, and only the grass, earwax and sweaty feet flavored ones. I threw it away. "Here's the plan. I'll try the lock, and if Miss Terious has changed the combination, you use one of these bombs. Once we're in, I'll try to free those birds. I'd like you to set some bombs on those machines once the birds are clear so the villainess can't set up operations again."

"What about me?" Dane asked, waving her gun.

"You can cover me," I said, then gave Riffraff a sideways glance. "Your pet can help."

"Hey!" Riffraff protested. "I'm not anyone's-"

The girl smiled at him.

"Okay, so I agree with the plan, but don't nobody say she's my owner. We're just friends."

"What will I be doing?" Sneezer asked.

I frowned. "I guess you can sneeze on some of the machines or something."

Amanda handed the mouse a container of pepper.

"Uh..." he stammered. "About that..."

"What now?" I said with a sigh. "Did growing up make you lose that amazing superpower or something?"

"Yes and no," he said. "It's still sort of like before, but..."

"It's weaker," I guessed.

"Not really. It's...hard to explain."

"Fine," I said. "Just sniff your pepper around those machines and...cover them with snot or blow them up or something."

I opened the sliding door. "Let's do this thing."

The moment I said this, another bowler hat man hit the pavement in front of me.

Making sure to look up at all times, I rushed to the back door, typing in the sequence of numbers Extra had taught me.

Despite my helpful suggestion, nobody had changed the security code. The door clicked open.

I silently waved for Sneezer to hold the door as I darted behind an assembly line for the manufacture of door frames carved by a pair of owls, a crow and a handful of assorted birds from the corvidae family.

Breathing in calm, controlled breaths, I knocked out the faceless blue guardians with a few snap kicks, hammerfists and a chop. A second later, I was freeing the owl and a row of birds.

The laser cutter performed its task exceptionally well, despite nicking the prisoner a couple times. They had no difficulty with the anti-joke locks. I supposed the words `It's Kind Of Funny' printed on the handle had something to do with it.

As I dashed to the kookoo clock assembly station, the owls sang the chorus to Miss You by The Rolling Stones. Appropriate, since the original singers already sounded owl-like.

Amanda darted through the door, whipping out her silencer pistol. She felled another guard in a smooth point and click motion. A pair of newly freed birds joined in the chorus.

For a few minutes, I ceased to be me. I was a Saturday morning cartoon about a Kung Fu French maid rat, slow motion kicking ass as a flock of emancipated birds flocked around me and sang Miss You.

Amanda slapped Book It! bombs on the machinery, the log sawing station exploding silently as Sneezer, by means of the black pepper, blasted a cluster of poor birdies free from the circular saw.

Okay, so the birds may have been magically transformed into creepy looking mushroom people, but at least they were free. I'd have to have a little chat with Sneezer about his nasal sorcery later.

I beat up the Space Jams bullies, freeing Extra. The bird nuzzled me, then dove into my dress as I set the other prisoners free.

Station after station exploded.

I thought I was doing good until I reached the last assembly stage in the building, where a grandmotherly looking bird and two chicks worked between a pair of sorry looking sparrows, crafting dresser knobs.

The moment I touched the cutter to Granny's cuff, a knife edged throwing star made of bone came flying at my hand, cutting me as it knocked my tool to the floor.

The music stopped.

I spun around and saw a tall pale figure in a long black robe crisscrossed with chains.

It looked like a lop eared albino rabbit, except it had two sets of eyes, no nose or hair, and its mouth looked like something that belonged on a cockroach.

He had appeared out of a cloud of smoke, from who knows where. "Someone's going to have to pay for these damages."

"I would," I replied. "But I don't approve of animal cruelty."

"Judge Myxo!" Amanda gasped.

She fired more than a dozen rounds at the creature, but they all missed, probably because he was the minor henchman.

"So you're my sister's arch nemesis," I said.

The creature grinned. "She has a sister? How interesting!"

I picked up my torch, cutting Granny free.

Myxo threw another bone suriken, but I caught it expertly between my fingers, flinging it back.

The weapon embedded itself in Myxo's robe. He uttered a curse.

"You have no idea who you are messing with!"

I shrugged. "Probably not. But, considering the fact I've seen a dozen movies that use that same line, and the line is normally said by a woman..." I resumed work on freeing the bird chicks like he wasn't there.

I flickered human for a minute, whistling Miss You until I turned into a doodle again.

Instead of turning into Ninja Maid, I looked down and saw I was one of the Gummi Bears. Furry, yellow, clad in sort of medieval-esque peasant rags. I doubted I had any Gummi Berry Human Growth Hormone cocktails in my pockets, so this form didn't seem all that useful. Still, it was animated.

"Stop ignoring me!" Myxo yelled, throwing another blade weapon.

I tried to block, but being some sort of simple minded female bear, I ended up with a blade stuck in my arm. When I pulled it free, I was real, and bleeding from a real wound.

It's strange to think of singing songs that really annoy me as a survival trait, but I was now protecting myself with Mamma Mia and Do Wah Diddy Diddy.

Judge Myxo suddenly let out an evil laugh.

When I looked back to see what was so funny, I saw him reading from a card: "And the mystic Egypt tossle dangling down," he read. "Old sleeper man, shish, don't wake him. Up one hand broom star was an obi man revered throughout the bone knob land."

I stared at him like he'd grown another nose. "What?"

"Don't listen to him!" Amanda shouted, but it was too late.

"His magic black purse slit creeped open, let go flocks of them. Shish sookie singabus, snored like a red merry go round horse..."

"Don't listen!" my sister repeated. "He's using the Magic Band of Beefheart!"

The next moment, I was completely human.

The illogical juxtaposition of the poetry did it. While Mamma Mia was brainless enough to make me animated, the magically psychedelic lyrics forced my brain to attempt comprehension, which disrupted the thoughtlessness.

Myxo's skeletal hand flashed out, and I had a real looking bone blade sticking through my non-animated chest.

"Splendid," the creature said. "It works just as well as it did on your sister."

He didn't walk, he drifted closer, like a ghoulish specter or a nun in a comedy film.

"...And an acid gold bar swirled up and down, up and down, in back of the singabus, and the pantaloon duck white goose neck quacked, webcore, webcore."