Sarah frowned at the missile shooting through the Nevada sky. "What am I supposed to do about that? What can anyone do, for that matter? This is the real world. We can't just throw a giant glove up there, or call for Superman..."
"So we're toast," I said. "It's just going to blow us to pieces, and that's that."
Extra flew out of my shirt. "Master, perhaps not."
I stared. "Do you know something, bird?"
Extra bobbed his golden head. "When Miss Terious wore the Crown of the Queen, the ancients linked minds with her, and you know how little birds talk..."
"What did you learn?" I said impatiently.
"Well, Master...the device is not meant to destroy, but rather convert everyone on the planet into Zorbatronians."
"By jove!" Whiskers cried. "The Forge of Zorbatron! Of course!"
I furrowed my brow. "That's the Forge of Zorbatron?"
"See Strange Mysteries from Beyond #111 - Ed."
I rolled my eyes. "You want me to order it from Amazon or something?"
Whiskers gave me a sheepish grin. "Sorry. It's a bad habit I've picked up from this place."
He cleared his throat. "The forge is a special throne, one which can transform everyone on an entire planet into creatures of Miss Terious's species. The throne, as you may have guessed, requires a considerable amount of power."
"Do we know what this...weapon is targeting?"
Extra opened his mouth to speak, but Whiskers spoke first. "She intends to strike the Old Man Changing Colors, otherwise known as the Kansas City Power and Light Building."
"That's a strange choice. Why there? Was she unhappy with their service or something?"
Whiskers shook his head. "I'm afraid this will require a flashback."
"Do we have time for a flashback?" I asked, but a large cloud was already forming above his head, depicting himself as a bald little German, non animated, clad in khaki clothes.
The man climbed a mound in a darkened quarry, following a cloud of smoke.
"I deduce you already found out about my history," he said in a dramatic voice over. "Therefore you should not be surprised to learn about my involvement in the V2 Program with the Reich.
"What you may not know about is my involvement with Miss Terious."
The little man crossed a ridge, approaching a crashed UFO. It made me think of the ship from The Day the Earth Stood Still (the old version), kind of a generic flying saucer saucer design, but colorful and glowing like the one from Killer Klowns.
The professor climbed through a section of the ship's destroyed wall.
The inside looked just about as generic as the outside, apparently modeled after the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, the only difference being the five mechanical cocoons, containing five non-animated squid-like creatures.
The fifth pod, standing alone before the rest, had been shattered by the crash. The professor could see a woman's limbs poking out from beneath an adjacent pile of debris.
"Oh Lord!" he cried. He had actually said this in German, but such is the nature of a cinematic flashback.
The scrawny German figured out to use various objects around the ship to wedge the victim loose.
She was pretty much the same Miss Terious I knew, though she had been impaled by a piece of ceiling debris, and flickered into a glowing squid as the blood poured out the wound.
Whiskers sawed the debris away from the wound and covered her with a blanket, carrying her back to his Swiss cottage, where he proceeded to apply the most lifesaving first aid he could muster.
Once satisfied that he had done all he could, he tucked her into a bed (the man lived alone), and called the SS to retrieve the debris from the crash site.
"Wouldn't they notice the missing body?" I asked.
Whiskers shook his head. "This wasn't CSI. They didn't know what I did, and had no evidence. On the report, I only listed four aliens. I moved some debris to get a better look at one of the pods, to see if it could aid the Fuhrer's agenda. That was my story, at least."
The flashback showed Whiskers studying crash debris in a lab, Goebbels hovering over his shoulder like a vulture.
The four captured creatures lay in special tanks. Whiskers spent many hours staring at them, drawing blood, doing various tests on the samples. Mengle tried to come in and inject dye into the creatures' eyeballs, but he shooed him away.
When night came, Whiskers would sit by Miss Terious's bedside, putting cool towels on her head, brushing her hair back and gazing at her. I suppressed chuckles as I watched this.
One day his patient awoke. The first thing she did was draw a laser gun out of hammerspace and point it at his head. "Who are you! Where is my crew!"
The professor introduced himself, explaining the rescue and how he had prevented the four other creatures from being harmed. "Would you like some dinner?"
They ate quietly, steak and potatoes, wine, some chocolate. He put a record on, and they danced. She allowed herself to be called "Emm," for her original name, "Empty" had negative connotations.
He showed her his inventions, groundbreaking in their day and age, an automatic paper shredder, a typewriter that types images automatically, a mechanical lemon peeler, an energy saving toaster.
When he showed her his prototype microwave, it was clear she wasn't as interested in it as she was the mind who created it. She pushed the invention aside and kissed him.
They slept together.
He fell asleep in her arms, but when he woke up, he found himself alone, and he heard alarm sirens were going off all over town.
"I found a strange silver necklace dangling around my neck," Whiskers said. "Showing me, I suppose, that I had been more than generously repaid for my act of kindness."
Following a hunch, he raced down to the lab and discovered that all his specimens were missing, along with some large pieces of equipment.
"I knew the Fuhrer to be rather unreasonable when it came to failures of this sort. For that reason, I decided to make a quick exit to the States.
"I fled with very little. Some clothing. Books and paperwork, and the necklace of course. It was easy enough to forge the necessary documents.
"A couple brown shirts tried to stop me on the way to the boat, but it seemed the necklace had supernatural powers. I merely touched the men and they transformed into rubbery skeletons dancing to Mr. Ghost Goes to Town.
The scene in the flashback changed to Whiskers standing on the upper deck of a steam ship.
As he fingered the locket on his necklace, Emm's head appeared in the air above the ocean, smiling at him. "I cannot thank you enough for the kindness you have done. I apologize for leaving in a hurry, but I feared for the safety of my crew.
"Please, do not follow us. We are traveling to a freer land, one that does not suppress things like the distribution of Negro music and Cubism, a nation which can nurture our people until we acquire a power source strong enough to turn this world into a second Zorbatron, my homeworld."
"For awhile, I did just that," Whiskers narrated. "I joined the U.S. Department of Defense, sharing with them the secrets of the V2 program.
"The necklace actually aided me in some of my most important discoveries. It was actually the key ingredient in the `Bubble Bomb' I tested at White Sands. My original intention was to merely open the damn pendant with a tremendous explosion. I only wanted to see how the thing worked. The spikes were only an unfortunate side effect.
"Now, I had never actually given up on finding Emm. Over the years, I had collected a number of newspaper articles about strange and unusual happenings. One in particular interested me a great deal, people vanishing from a train carrying five immense German beer casks. The incident occurred on the way to Kansas City.
"I visited that city as much as I could after that. My work for the Manhattan Project, by that time was done, so I stayed in town some time, checking the various breweries for signs of Emm. Renovations were made to the KCPL building, but I didn't have permission to go into the tower to see what was being done.
"However, I could clearly see something belonging to Emm up there, for, at night, the topmost windows lit up with the same supernatural light I'd seen coming from her craft. "That proved to be enough incentive for a little breaking and entering."
I watched Whiskers pick a lock, sneaking around in various computer-less offices filled with rotary dial telephones, dodging security guards as he darted up staircases.
At the top of the building, he found Miss Terious seated on a throne inside a cocoon, absorbing energy from giant cables running up from the floor.
"Emm! At last!" he cried, rushing to her.
She looked horrified. "Heinrich! How did you get up here!"
When he told her, she smiled and said, "My, you are a genius."
She brought him close, kissing him. It proved to be literally electric. Whiskers turned animated, collapsing on the floor.
He awoke in an underground room, pretty much a cinder block of concrete, surrounded by giant wooden casks with German writing on them.
Miss Terious opened one of the casks, showing the professor an alien cocoon. "My crewmembers are still in stasis, but my pod charges every day with enough energy to bring them to life. In fifty four years, they will all be placed on top of a new convention center as `sculptures', and power from my command chair will restore them to me at last! The residual energy will be used to convert the entire population of earth into Zorbatronians, allowing my people to become the great nation it once was!"
She paused, staring at him. "You think it will work?"
"Your guess is as good as mine," Whiskers said. "But that might not be enough power."
"You're right, she said, snatching the necklace off his neck.
She touched the object, twisted its shell a few times, but it did nothing. "What did you do?"
"I told her a half truth," Whiskers to the court. "That bomb depleted the power. She got so upset that she knocked me unconscious. This time I found myself slumped over a bench in the train station.
"This, you see, is the reason why I hid the spikes. I couldn't let Emm take them."
The cloud over the professor's head vanished.
"Then why would she blow up the building?" I asked.
"Who said anything about blowing it up? I believe Emm intends to capture the full extent of the weapon's explosive energy and channel it into her throne."
"Still, it's a missile. It's not like any of us can jump up there and stop it."
"Master, you are the Bird King," Extra said.
I shook my head. "I can't demand that of my subjects. Who knows that that thing will do to their cute little bodies?"
"Perhaps you don't have to," Whiskers said, turning toward Sarah. "Your office exists on the border of two realities. Do you have any control over the location of this facility?"
Sarah paused and thought. "No. It is only present at this location."
"That's not entirely accurate," said a strangely familiar voice.
I saw a shimmering in the air, and a floating German shepherd in a red robe appeared out of nowhere.
"You again!" I said. "You're always...messing with everything!"
"Only because you meddled with it first."
"We need transportation to the Bartle Hall Convention Center," Whiskers said.
"Ah," the German shepherd said. "There is already a U.S. Bank conveniently located across the street from this edifice. Depart from the Legal Action Matrix and travel down the right corridor. Cross the plot hole, open the door to room 130 and you will be in the main lobby."
I stared at the dog in disbelief. "Did you just say `plot hole'?"
The `green guardian' nodded. "There are countless inconsistencies and continuity errors in Cool World. Many are large enough to drive a truck through. This building exploits those plot holes to cross great distances in space and time."
I wondered how many of those I had already encountered, but wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer.
"Ms. Botts," Whiskers said. "If you please."
She shook her head. "There's still the matter of the two hundred thousand dollars that needs to be addressed."
Whiskers took a stack of cartoon bills out of his pocket, slamming them on the prosecution desk.
Sarah counted these by ear. "That's nice, but the front of the building is real."
He set down another stack of money, this one dull and highly detailed.
I gawked at him.
"I have a diverse portfolio," he explained. "I leave Cool World to check it from time to time."
"That could have saved me a lot of problems earlier."
"Probably so, but then I wouldn't be able to pay for all of this."
Riffraff snatched a stack of cartoon bills off the pile. "That's for demolishing my car!"
Sarah looked nonplussed, so he snatched two real bills as well. "Their noid world equivalent."
I didn't have the heart to tell him it would barely buy a computer monitor.
The courtroom illusion vanished, and I and my companions hurried past the double staircase, down a corridor lined with faux marble to a giant black wall that said the following in glowing white letters:
MISSING DESCRIPTION
NO EXPLANATION ABOUT HOW CHARACTERS GET TO NEXT SCENE
I paused there, staring at apparently nothing, but Whiskers pointed to it and shouted, "There! Keep going!"
On the other side, I found a row of office doors. Whiskers turned the L shaped handle on the one marked 130 and we were looking into the lobby of an actual bank.
It was dark. The customers and staff had gone home, the check writing stands and desks unoccupied.
"Guys..." I said as I stared at the blinking security lights along the walls. "This probably isn't the best place for us to teleport."
"What's the matter, Drew?" Sneezer said beside me. "Afraid of the dark?"
He took one step into the room, and the alarms all went off at once.
I rushed to the entrance, but of course the door had been locked on both sides. After all, we'd set off a `don't let the burglar out for any reason' type of alarm.
Whiskers uncapped a tube of lipstick, drawing a circle on a nearby wall. Once the shape had closed, I could see the street outside.
"This way!" he said, climbing through. "Hurry!"
Me and my own personal `Justice League' stumbled out down the sidewalk, staring up at the cityscape.
Directly ahead of us stood the convention center, that long flat box of a building, its sides decorated with interlocking triangular shapes, big square windows, its roof topped with four enormous concrete pylons, with Misty's glowing turnstile looking things at their tips, capped with airplane `no fly' lights.
"They look like hair curlers," Riffraff muttered.
"Yes," Whiskers said. "I believe that is their common designation."
In the distance, I could see KCPL, a tall Gothic style tower topped with a glass prism that changed from red to green to yellow and back again.
As I gazed at these structures, a glowing streak shot over our heads, colliding with the prism in a spectacular explosion of illumination.
When the light faded, I could see the tower, intact as it had been since probably the 1930's, but now the prism was gone, replaced by a big glowing almond shaped machine.
A bolt of lightning erupted from this object, striking the closest hair curler. The thing lit up brilliantly against the night sky.
"We must hurry!" Whiskers said. "We may already be too late!"
"The KCPL building isn't even close," I said to the professor.
"We don't want to be there," he answered. "What we need is to disable those...hair curlers to prevent her plans from coming to fruition!"
Michelangelo asked if Fruition was a yogurt, but we ignored him.
Crowds of pedestrians on the sidewalks outside stopped to stare at me and my animated friends, mostly due to the burglar alarm.
Within the building, we got stares, because Comic Con wasn't for another month.
We had to cross a busy intersection, pass through a glass and concrete lobby, and take an escalator.
Security guards came running for us because we didn't buy tickets for the RV and Boat Show, but Whiskers shot them with a freeze ray.
Police sirens wailed in the distance, but as these things go, you can't always be sure they're coming your way. You're never the only crime victim, criminal or donut shop in town.
I rushed to a crosswalk at the corner. Sneezer, to my annoyance, broke into song, crossing in the middle of the street, and a car knocked him down the avenue. No one else tried that particular tactic.
As I pushed the crossing button on a pole, I noticed a solid blue figure in a curving Martian Manhunter cape descending from the sky.
A humanoid bird in a bra and diaper.
"Cupcake!" I gasped.
She was clearly a ghost. I could see right through her, and she had a monochromatic color scheme.
"My king," her faraway voice called. "I have left the Great Beyond to come see you one last time!"
I swallowed. "That's great, Cupcake. I'm sorry you had to die. I really miss you."
She descended to my level, pressing her beak to my lips, but it passed through. "Damn. I've heard sometimes it works."
"Maybe if we meet Constantine or animated Whoopi Goldberg?" I suggested.
Whiskers glanced at me impatiently, pointing to the glowing `walk' sign.
"Um, look, Cupcake. Um, I'm sure we'll meet again in the Great Beyond or something, but we're about to get arrested and Miss Terious is trying to turn everyone into aliens, so we kinda have to go."
"Oh? Where are you going?"
I pointed to the top of the convention center.
She paused and thought for a moment.
"It would be boring and time consuming for you to climb all that way. I will summon my loyal subjects to carry you to the top of the building."
I briefly wondered why she didn't do that for us at the Union Plaza, but I didn't mention it.
"Thank you, Cupcake. I...love you."
And then the Kool -Aid Man smashed through a nearby window, yelling, "Grape Beyond!" with a purple pitcher in each hand.
When he noticed us staring, he sheepishly climbed back into the bank.
Cupcake smiled at me and disappeared.
A moment later, all the remaining windows in the bank shattered, a great cloud of cartoon birds pouring out the window frames. The birds swept me and all my friends up into the air.
Although I'd flown up the side of a building before, it still unnerved me. The birds deposited us gently on the rooftop.
I straightened my shaky legs, attempting to get my bearings.
The glass skylights made me suck in my breath when I looked down. Although they had a show going on, with cars, boats and RV's here and there to break my fall, the height might still kill a person, and the rest of the roof was nothing but slick unforgiving metal.
A floating cartoon jukebox hovered high above me. I wasn't sure what that was doing there, but I guessed the apocalypse had a soundtrack.
That, and a musician abducting spaceship could probably find several worthy candidates in a giant all purpose civic center, if it waited a few months for, say, the Tri State Varsity Battle of the Bands.
Whiskers rushed to the nearest concrete pylon, climbing up its ladder. "Guard this pillar! I'm going to make some adjustments to the device!"
I saw a burst of light, and the professor went flying off.
A glowing bikini clad figure floated down from the pylon next to it, chuckling as her feet gracefully touched down on the rooftop.
Whiskers literally turned white. "Emm!"
"Heinrich!" she purred in an oddly amplified voice that sounded like the foggy effect they used on TV to illustrate telepathic communication.
The turtles charged for her with weapons raised, but Miss Terious just flung the heroes away from her, Leonardo and Donatello to opposite corners of the roof, Michelangelo slamming into a pylon, Raphael flying off the building.
Master Splinter kept a wary distance, sizing up his enemy.
Hurling my sister and the cat Vikings aside, Miss Terious floated over to the professor, flashing an unpleasant smile. "You always were a bad liar."
"Please don't get me wrong, Emm," Whiskers said from the ground. "I will always love you. I just couldn't agree to your plan of converting all of humanity into your alien species! Such an action would make us no better than the bigots we left Germany to escape! Where would our blues music and Pablo Picasso exist in such a world?"
"That's what you never understood, Heinrich. My devices will only change your peoples' bodies. Removing your physical differences will create worldwide harmony while at the same time promoting the freedom and individuality we both cherish. It is no different than a Catholic school requiring everyone to wear the same uniform. The individual personality will remain intact."
"Your reasoning is flawed. All mothers know quite well that even a dress code does not fully prevent students from being picked on."
"But it helps."
She suppressed a smile. "Damn. We should have had kids."
Miss Terious knelt down next to him, gesturing to the pylons. "Honey, this is what I stand for. This is me. If you truly love me, you'll let me do this."
"If that is you, I, regretfully, cannot love you anymore."
She shrugged. "Then you will die."
The alien blasted him with a blinding explosion of energy.
The moment her attack stopped, the little labcoated guy rose into the air like a robed Green Guardian, blasting her back with energy bolts of equal intensity.
"I never should have given back that necklace!" she growled.
"And I never...!" Whiskers began, but then he faltered.
"You what."
Whiskers reddened. "Nothing. You made me a very happy man. We wouldn't be fighting at all if it wasn't for this mad plan of reshaping the world into your master race."
"Is that why you avoided me for so many years? Because you loved me?"
"I had to! You said it yourself, I'm a bad liar! I couldn't let you know that the spikes existed! If it hadn't been for that damned cartoonist-" He shook his head. "If you've found someone else, I don't blame you."
"I have. His name is Sleezington. My butler."
"Well I'm happy for you." He sighed. "Please. Don't do this, Emm. Just wake up your crew, and repopulate the planet the old fashioned way."
"What, and let my world, my culture, and everything just fade away into this insipid melting pot?"
"That doesn't sound like a Catholic school uniform type of situation, Emm." He returned to the ladder.
She shot him again, knocking him to his back. The little guy probably could have fought her off with energy blasts of his own, but I guess he was still too much in love.
Miss Terious snatched the necklace off his neck. "Don't you ever learn?"
She decorated her throat, her illumination brightening with the added power.
I now heard the first sirens of cop cars actually sent to investigate the break-in. "Took them awhile," I muttered.
A bolt of electricity shot out from KCPL, striking the furthermost sky station, its power traveling through a secondary bolt to the next station over, both hair curlers glowing white like atomic cooling rods ready to cause a meltdown.
Suddenly, Cupcake's ghost appeared in front of me. "Drew, you must defeat Miss Terious!" she said in a faraway voice. "You are the last remaining ruler of the Bird Kingdom. All my armies and greatest warriors are at your disposal. Do not be afraid to summon them in this dire emergency. They will hear and come to your aid, even in this mystic place."
"Just think about it or something?"
She nodded. "Focus your thoughts on how much you love birds."
I laughed. "Okay?"
"Or...if that doesn't work, think about how much you love me."
"So I focus on things that sexually confuse and disturb me."
Cupcake shrugged.
"Maybe I should just focus on caring."
"That will work too."
I adjusted the signet ring on my finger, thinking bird thoughts.
Seconds later, I heard shattering glass, shouting, and it was like I had summoned the final scene of Stephen King's The Dark Half, a giant cloud of black birds fluttering around me.
Focusing my thoughts on how wrong it was for Miss Terious to kill Cupcake, and torture little animals, I marched up to the glowing alien and pointed. My cinematically dramatic bird swarm knocked her across the roof, unconscious.
"Go!" I yelled to Whiskers.
"But my pendant!"
I glanced at nervously at Cupcake. She only smiled, indicating, perhaps, that I could handle it. Her confidence was contagious. "I'll send it up to you! Now go!"
He stared at me in disbelief for a moment, but then, after Ghost Cupcake gave him a thumbs up, he decided to trust me, rushing back up the ladder.
I focused my thoughts on stealing the pendant back, and a cluster of crows and magpies flocked to Miss Terious's supine form.
Without warning, one of her hands shot up and squished one of my servants into a splatter of black goo.
Her left hand squished a second one, and when a third one darted to her breasts, her tongue shot out, frog like, sucking it into her mouth. A fourth she crushed between her thighs, and then something like a giant snail burst from her crotch, killing one more.
I knew those birds' names. They had lives and families. This information came to me telepathically. It made me mad.
Blinking tears out of my eyes, I clenched a fist, hitting her with more birds than she could possibly kill at once.
She killed every bird that touched that necklace, but the birds and I knew the play. This wasn't Steal the Bacon, this was basketball, and my team was already closing on the goal.
I don't know, I guess I must have developed a bird brain, so to speak, because I found myself mentally coordinating `bird units' like I were playing Madden NFL or something, distracting Miss Terious with `defense' while my `running back' flapped up to the professor on the pylon.
Suddenly Miss Terious jumped to her feet, blasting the distracting birds with her immense power.
While she did this. I willed a roc to throw her off the roof.
Problem solved, I thought.
A blast knocked me across the building.
As I lay groaning on the metal sheeting, I saw a blonde bikini clad figure stepping out from behind a pylon with a sexy swagger. In her hands the dominatrix twirled a fancy looking wizard staff with a crystal ball at one end. "This isn't your fight, Drew. It's not like we're affecting Cool World in any way! Why don't you just give it up and enjoy the ride?"
"Jessica," I said. "You know this isn't right. Without a real world, what would all those cartoons have to make fun of?"
"Other cartoons," she said without even pausing to think about it. "I guess technically it would make everything a drama or a reality show, but it would definitely improve the quality. You could animate for no money at all! Disney would go bankrupt!"
She straddled my lap, pressing me against the roof. "C'mon. Let's forget all this fighting. I know you want to get laid by a real woman, so why don't we just...let Misty do her thing and do it right here?"
"I'm sleazy, but not that sleazy."
"How about downstairs, then? There's a bunch of mobile homes and campers with really nice bedrooms in them. Of course, it's not exactly an original idea, so we'd have to knock first..."
"No thanks. I already have someone."
"Yeah," she sneered. "And you both have the same father."
Miss Terious returned from her fall. All around me, I heard the sounds of battle.
I willed the birds to throw her to the other end of the building, where the turtles and other friends fought off her energy beams with their swords, axes, and other weapons.
I sighed. "I admit you have a point, but..."
Jessica put her hands on her hips. "But what?"
I fumbled for words.
"Tell you what. I'll give you one final chance. Leave Misty's machinery alone, make love to me, or go home. Maybe all three. In whatever order you choose. Either that, or you can die!"
"Jess. I'd love to sleep with you, but this just isn't the right time. Not while the entire human race is in danger of extinction."
She laughed. "As if! That's why the movie Children of Men was such a joke! There's too damn many people on this planet for them to ever be extinct, even with this weapon! I mean, say if they're underground at the time, or in Antarctica..."
I gave her my best angry parent face. "No. This has to stop now."
"Gee," she groaned. "Here I was, willing and able to give you the benefit of the doubt, and all you did was prove to me what I already knew: That you're a self righteous dick."
She looked down at my crotch and frowned. "Which, incidentally, you don't seem to have. Maybe you never had one!"
"Yeah? Well, you're just an anarchist, like that mask wearing creep from V for Vendetta."
She smiled. "Did you mean to compliment me, or was that an accident?"
"Mostly an accident."
I glanced at the pylon from the corner of my eye. Up at the very top, three hundred feet above the ground, I could see Whiskers doing something to a `hair curler.'
Deciding some sacrifices had to be made for the greater good, I grabbed Jessica by the neck and kissed her passionately, sliding my hands around her costume.
"Oh Drew!" she cried. "You changed your mind!"
She reached under my kimono. "Let's see if I can change the rest of you!"
As she pulled my kimono up over my legs, unbuttoning her bikini bottom, I glanced at the pylon again. The little man was climbing back down, prepared to work on the second device.
When she saw what I was looking at, Jessica's face did that thermometer effect thing you see in cartoons, complete with steam escaping her ears. "You sneaky little bastard!"
She picked up her staff, twirled it, and in one quick shot sent the professor tumbling to the roof below.
I heard the shattering of glass, and the angry honking of a car alarm.
Jessica wrapped her hands around my throat. "You know what's going to be great about Misty's new empire? No more goody goody paper pushers like you!"
"Oh yeah?" I gasped. "Ask Misty about the Negro music."
She scowled. "So you're not only a dick, you're also a bigot."
"Those aren't my words. Ask Misty."
"That's it!" Jessica snapped, pulling a real policeman's handgun out of her bikini. "I've had enough of your stupid games! It's time for you to die!"
Jessica pressed the barrel to my head, then frowned. "No. That's not classy at all. I know it solves a lot of future problems, but I'm not some lousy street thug..."
She shot a large window out of a skylight, dangling me over the opening.
"There. That's better. Now when you die it will be spectacular, and everyone will know what a terrific villain I am."
"Wow. Now there are some lofty aspirations!"
She fought down a grin. "Oh yes. I forgot. You prefer things being a little down to earth!" and she gave me a shove.
As I fell, I heard her muttering, "Yes! I successfully employed a killing phrase!"
You know how a cat stretches itself across a tub to avoid getting wet? I did this with the broken skylight.
Jessica sighed. "Damn, Drew. Why do you have to make yourself such a pain in the ass? You don't even know how to die gracefully!"
"From you, I'll take that as a compliment."
She leaned over me, placing a hand on my chest. "Drew, I have a confession to make. You probably know this already, but trashing your apartment was kinda my idea. Misty wanted to get revenge, so I sort of told her what would really hurt you without killing you. I really didn't want you to die. At least, not until now.
"You struck me as sort of a stick in the mud. You needed to loosen up. I figured maybe if I freed you from your tidy little world, you'd go out there and have some fun, maybe get yourself a real girlfriend, or maybe an animated one that isn't your sister. I guess I was wrong."
It was the psychological equivalent of getting kicked and having step on my fingers. The reality of her statements broke my animated character, turning my thoughts to the day to day things of ordinary life.
I resumed my human form.
A noid body is not as flexible as a doodle's. It cannot, for example, stretch itself out like a trampoline.
I fell through the hole. "You bitch!"
To illustrate the height I had fallen, one could, with little difficulty, change a light bulb on the lowest part of the convention area ceiling by balancing a stepladder on the roof of a monster truck.
I fell from the highest part.
In other words, painful.
Especially considering the fact I fell through the ceiling of a demonstration model bathroom, breaking a cross beam with my back, then banging my head on both the shower nozzle and the bathtub faucet before landing on the hard unyielding galvanized plastic tub bottom.
In my concussed semi-lucid state, I temporarily became a new organism, a one hundred percent noid-doodle blend, where my face was an animated mask and makeup on a human face that stretched, werewolf-like into the mask.
Vaporous bunny ears dangled in my face. My hands became like swollen mittens. I had on a ghostly waistcoat, through which I could see my naked chest. One of my legs was bent in an unnatural position, sending searing jolts of pain through my entire body.
I gasped for air as I arched in pain, staring pleadingly at a ceiling as broken as my body felt. I screamed.
...Interrupting a lecture on said demonstration model bathroom.
"...One of the first mobile shower units to successfully employ both rhino lining and Couplertec electronic rustproofing..." A middle aged woman in a slutty business dress was saying before a handful of people in a crowd of folding chairs.
Suddenly noticing the noise, she spun around, staring at me in horror. "What the hell is that."
Her audience stood up and started clapping.
This is it, I thought. This is how I'm going to die. In a bathtub with a broken leg and skull, to the applause of eight people.
Was Jessica a doodle when she knocked me down here? I wondered. If so, would it grant me cartoon immortality? Or would I be caught on a technicality due to her not actually touching me at the time?
If I die, what then? Would I end up joining Cupcake's diaper party? I was pretty sure the real version of the afterlife didn't have sex at all.
The only thing I really knew was that I was in a lot of pain.
I didn't die.
Still, the pain made it impossible to move.
In such a brain fog, I couldn't fully appreciate the shapely legs and derriere descending from a rope above me. My eyes traveled up those garter boots with the idle detachment of a baby staring at a mobile.
My sister uncapped a thermos, holding it out for me to drink. "Here. Have some of this. You need it."
I frowned at the open mouth of the container. "More old coffee?"
She shook her head. "Not this time, I'm afraid. It's the real deal."
"No," I stammered, pushing it away.
"Your leg is broken. There's no way you can do anything without a little outside help."
"Amanda," I said, sitting up. "I'm part doodle."
"That's what worries me."
To my annoyance, I saw the crowd of folding chairs developing into a real crowd.
"It's all mind over matter," I said. "Like the coffee. I just need to think happy thoughts..."
I tried to stand up, but only screamed when I made the attempt.
"Drew, please." Amanda offered the thermos again. "You'll be able to walk once you drink it."
"At the expense of my humanity. No. There has to be a better way."
And then I had it. I would completely lose myself in a role. Pretend I never was human. My mind raced to establish a fictional history for myself, one to account for all the things that made me doubt I was animated, imagining the other me to be fictional.
"I'm Empress Drew Kwan of the Bird Nation," I told myself. "I was born into a royal family. Assassins of Miss Terious came and wiped out my kin, so I was left on Jack Deebes' doorstep.
"I'm adopted," I muttered as I reset my leg. "That's really what happened."
The penguin from Fight Club suddenly popped its head out from below the bathtub.
"Slide," it said, scooting across the display on its belly.
I screamed as the pain returned to my leg. At least it was set now.
I ignored the penguin. I had to `go into my cave' if I were to successfully transcend this pain. "I'm the Bird Empress!" I shouted, jumping to my feet.
I held out my signet ring, thought hard about my love for birds, and a cloud of flapping wings swept I and my sister back through the skylight, to the roof.
I discovered Whiskers floating in the air, circling a pylon adjacent to the one he'd finished sabotaging, shooting light blasts from his hands as Jessica and Miss Terious shot back.
The turtles knelt with their weapons out in front of them, heads tucked into their shells. Master Splinter sat on the roof with his back against a pylon, clutching his chest.
You know how in certain movies, knocking a superhero or a god unconscious can change the weather? I had a cloud of birds in a holding pattern, seemingly affected by my every mood.
Sneezer, Riffraff and Cleo huddled behind makeshift shields, technically demonstration custom painted car hoods they'd stolen from a display somewhere.
Imagining my leg to be uninjured, I rushed to Splinter's side. "What happened? Are you all right?"
He gave me a stoic smile, showing me a large burn on his chest.
"I...climbed the pillar, and tore the machinery open with my claws and teeth, but after I pulled the wires out, they shot me, and I fell." He coughed. "I'll be fine. You must stop Miss Terious."
I cast him a worried look, but he was right. Splinter was animated, and a very real world needed saving.
I ran (again, mind over matter) to the pylon Whiskers circled, blasting Miss Terious and Jessica back with two simultaneous walls of birds.
The Old Man Changing Colors fired a burst of energy at the pylons. A sky station erupted in flame, presumably the one Splinter tore up.
A sudden explosion knocked me down. I had to pretend extra hard to get back into a standing position again.
I raised my ring, willing the birds to fling Miss Terious over the convoluted highway system nearby, into the muddy river at the edge of a casino.
This took a great deal of concentration (like Bravestarr, I had to see with the eyes of a hawk to figure out the unfamiliar geography). Jessica took advantage of this distraction by blasting me backwards with her power staff.
As I lay groaning on my back, trying to return to a standing position, I suddenly noticed a cluster of birds flocking around my limp outstretched hand, a dark cylindrical object descending into my palm through the cloud of feathers.
I blinked, staring at it in disbelief.
It was Cupcake's trident.
Admittedly, it was damaged. It looked like someone had glued and soldered it back together, but it looked useful enough as a defensive weapon.
I used this to prop myself up on my feet, then twirled it with my ninja rat skills, gesturing to Jessica with the Asian sign for, `Here, doggy,' the one they always use in Kung Fu movies.
She charged at me, and we had a staff battle.
It started out well enough, me and Jessica striking and blocking each other's strikes while Whiskers half floated, half climbed up the next pylon, but then Jessica started fighting dirty.
"So," she said, bashing her staff against my trident. "I never found out. How much is left in your bank account?"
I flickered human, struggling not to feel my broken leg.
"Ooh! That looks nasty! You should really get someone to take a look at that!"
I tried to ignore her barbed comments, singing Abba's Head Over Heels.
She laughed. "Damn, you have a lousy taste in music!"
She struck. I blocked.
"When's the last time you went to work, Drew? Did you call work and tell them about the unexcused absence yet? I wonder what lie you'll come up with to cover this one!"
I flickered real, and she knocked my legs out from under me with a swing of her staff.
"Focus!" Splinter cried.
"You hear that, Drew?" Jessica mocked. "He said focus!"
She knelt on my broken leg. "I hear they kicked in your door and stole everything. How are you going to get everything re-established?"
Then she made a mock gasp. "Oh no! When's rent due?"
Jessica hit me in the side of the head, and I blacked out.
"And stay down!" was the last thing I heard her say.
As consciousness returned to me, I saw a body in a pair of garter boots and a thong kneeling beside me. A pair of gloved hands offered me an open thermos.
Bunny ears dangled over me, bouncing in a way that reminded me of my first sexual experience. My head injuries framed the face in an ethereal nimbus. "You're hurt too badly. You're not going to be able to walk. This is the only way you'll be able to face down Jessica."
I groaned in pain. "Can't you...just give me a niacin tablet and say it's doodle essence?"
"You have a broken leg, and that woman knows how to get under your skin. You've already proven you can walk, if you're animated, but as a human, not so much."
"I've also proven that I can use mind over matter to overcome my weakness."
She just sadly shook her head, bouncing the ears. "You need full use of your mind to command those birds. The pain distracts you. Cupcake's ghost told me."
My head was throbbing. Probably a hairline fracture, maybe something worse. I had to admit that it required a considerable amount of focus to both pretend I was not injured and control my birds. My humanity was becoming a liability.
"Whiskers got knocked off the pylon again," Amanda said. "We're losing time. Those remaining sky stations may still be enough to transform a quarter of the planet. We need the Bird King...Or queen. I hate to say it, but I think you'll need to make a sacrifice."
She was right. My back hurt so bad that I couldn't get up any more. Even when I imagined myself to be Superman, Count Duckula, Max from Goof Troop, or any other cartoon, I was still paralyzed.
I stretched out a trembling hand toward the thermos, brought it to my lips, drank the sludge to the last dregs.
The stuff tasted, well, like ink. Kind of medicinal. But the more I drank, the less I tasted, period.
I lost the last vestiges of my humanity to the tune of the Popeye song.
I sprang to my rodent feet gracefully spinning the trident as I eased into a fighting horse stance.
The turtles lay on their shells with burn marks on their chests. Splinter looked dead.
That left Sneezer, Riffraff and Cleo to fight Jessica and her friend away from Whiskers.
Jessica swung her staff, blocking Riffraff's battle ax.
Cleo would have stepped in to help, but she was too busy shielding her husband from Miss Terious's energy blasts, the alien lady having somehow flown back from the Missouri River.
Sneezer borrowed Donatello's staff, swinging it at Jessica's head.
"Sneezer, honey," she said as she struck the staff with her own. "Are you a virgin?"
The mouse gulped. "Maybe?"
"She blocked another ax swing, lowering her voice to a low husky tone. "Would you like me to de-virginalize you?"
The mouse nodded vigorously.
"Then put the staff down so we can negotiate terms."
He tossed the bo aside.
"Traitor!" Riffraff shouted as he took a swing at Jessica.
She blocked, hit back.
I groaned. "Seriously?"
Jessica disarmed the cats, and Miss Terious suspended them in the air with her evil powers, choking them like Darth Vader.
I rushed to their aid, brandishing my trident. "Put the cats down!"
"They're a couple eighties rejects that weren't popular enough to have their own show," Miss Terious said. "That good enough?"
"I meant let them go!"
"Make me."
And so I gave her a bird barrage.
My bird army threw Miss Terious through a skylight, and my friends were free.
"Did you have someone take care of that leg?" Jessica asked.
I frowned at her.
"No? Were you aware that Misty had someone call your job and tell them you were quitting? It seems you found a new job...allegedly."
I leapt and knocked her sideways with a slap shot to the head.
Jessica popped back up with a staff attack, and our weapons clashed for a few minutes.
"When do they generally start evicting people?" said Jessica. "Do you know? I bet you've got some really great backup plans for that, don't you. Go back to mommy, live rent free for awhile...bet she'll really love that...Who knows? Maybe she wants an extra pair of slightly muscled hands around the house..."
I didn't change. Her eyes widened in amazement. "Why Drew! If I didn't know any better, I'd assume you've suddenly grown a pair!"
Our weapons clashed again.
Sneezer cowered behind a pylon, watching us fight. I guess he intended to side with Jessica for keeps.
"How did you do it, Drew?" Jessica asked. "How did you make yourself one hundred percent doodle?"
I smirked. "Stop those machines and I'll tell you."
She reddened. "No way, Jose. The deal is as follows: You tell me what I want to know, or I'll beat it out of your dead body."
"Then the answer will die with me."
"God. Forget it. I'll just torture the information out of your sister!"
I screamed and charged at Jessica with a flurry of trident attacks. Jessica laughed, as if this were her plan all along, coming back with her own barrage.
The moment I launched my counterattack, Miss Terious came flying out of the convention center, blasting me in the shoulder. I flew sideways, sliding off the edge of the roof.
My faithful servants pulled me back up at the last second, but Miss Terious was right there, throwing down another burst of energy.
Crack!
The moment the beam of energy came my way, my sister stepped in its path, swinging her blue baseball bat.
I guess it was insulated or something, or maybe it was rubber, for the moment she swung, the beam went sailing right back, into Miss Terious's chest. The alien arced backwards with a shriek, falling to the street below.
The thing that bothered me was how well Amanda hit the `ball', like she hadn't been trying in our game against Riffraff, and now, for the first time, she applied herself.
No matter. I had more important things to address at the moment.
I picked up my trident and charged at my ex-girlfriend, but the weapon broke the moment it blocked her staff. Not surprising, considering how the birds appeared to have put it back together with suet, duck tape and shiny things, and I had put it through a lot of abuse.
"I wouldn't have believed it before," Jessica mocked. "But you've actually made yourself more pathetic than ever before."
"This is coming from a fangirl who stalks my loser dad."
She hit me in the head, knocking me on my back.
Jessica raised her staff to run it through my skull. "You slept with your sister."
I clenched my fist, raising the signet ring. "And you promote animal cruelty!"
I blasted her back with a hundred beating wings and pecking beaks.
I jumped up, and doing my best Green Lantern pose, sent her another angry flock.
Miss Terious flew back up from the street, raising her hand to zap me, but at this point, another sky station exploded, indicating the little professor's success.
She roared and flew at the saboteur, but as she zoomed through the air, a red beam knocked her into the roof, and I saw an airplane-like Robotech robot floating down on rocket boosters. A second one followed, then a third.
Through the window of the first machine, I saw a figure in a fuzzy white bikini.
Miss Terious groaned and got up, setting about bashing it to scrap.
I guess I should have been paying more attention. As I watched this display, Jessica's staff `rang my bell.'
With doubled vision, I willed the birds to my aid, knocking her to the end of the roof, where she balanced precariously on the edge, windmilling her arms, doing that thing cartoon characters do when they're about to fall off a cliff.
Instead actually falling, she laughed and straightened, pulling Cupcake's crown out of her cleavage. "Two can play at that game!"
When I saw her placing it on her head, and recognized what the object was, I gasped.
She transformed into a squirrel in a magician's stage assistant costume, you know, the type that's all business on top, no pants on the bottom. "Don't be so surprised, Drew. It was thanks to Misty and this crown that you're standing here right now."
She launched a flock of birds at me, raising both hands so that I flew back several yards, landed on a skylight and cracked it.
A string of explosions told me that Sarah's robots only served to mildly inconvenience Miss Terious. Whatever I did to help save the world, I would have to do it fast.
I tried to get up, but birds swarmed around me, thick as a cloud of flies on a dead body. I swatted at them, shouting that I was the bird king, but magpies got their beaks around my ring, lifting it from my finger.
The glass cracked more. I quickly crawled onto a metal roofing piece, making a hasty retreat.
"Goodbye, Drew!" Jessica shouted. "Good luck on your future endeavors!"
As I neared a maintenance hatch, a glowing blue figure stepped in my way. "Where are you going, my king?"
"It's over. Jessica took my ring, and she has your crown."
"You have Kung Fu skills."
"She can send a million birds at me, to the point where I can't even get close enough to use those skills."
"My king, you do not need a ring, or a crown. You have what it takes to rule inside of you. All the power of the birds lay within your heart. Your love, Drew. That is the key."
I took a deep breath. "Okay, Cupcake. You'd better be right."
"No, Drew. You must believe I am right. If you doubt, you will be lost."
"All right," I groaned. "I'll try."
On cue, a ghostly pointy eared creature in a robe hobbled up to me with a cane.
Not surprised at all, I shouted, "Yoda! I get the point!"
In response, the little mutant looked constipated. "Giving you a chili recipe only I was!" He vanished back into the Great Beyond.
I marched back across the roof, raising my hands out in front of me like a Dungeons and Dragons wizard casting magic missile.
At first, nothing happened. The birds didn't respond. Jessica just screamed at me, creating her own version of Hitchcock's The Birds to throw at me.
"Drew!" said a voice in my head. "The power is within you! A king is not made by his (or her) crown! It is only a symbol!"
I needed no further encouragement. With renewed confidence, I cried, "My beloved people! Pay no attention to this impostor! She and her friend only want to enslave you! Do you wish to spend the rest of your days in a wood shop?"
The birds faltered, looking confused.
"Master!" Extra cried.
"No, no, you've got me all wrong!" Jessica argued. "I will be a fair and just ruler! With this crown, you read my thoughts! You know this! I mean you no harm!"
She willed the birds to attack, but I raised my hands. "My people, you also know my thoughts. You know I love you."
The birds flapped her way, but she raised her hands, and they flapped back.
For an entire minute, we played a giant modified version of ping-pong with birds, and then, for reasons I couldn't completely understand, my feathered friends just got horny and started screwing each other in midair. I guess it was all that mental confusion between the compassionate type of love and the romantic/sexual type, possibly on the part of both I and Jessica.
I even saw Extra getting into the action, boning the tailfeathers out of a plump green female resembling Cocopetal from Mysterious Cities of Gold.
"Sorry, master!" he cried when he caught my annoyed glare.
"What the hell is going on?" my foe shouted in astonished disbelief. She probably would have said the F word, but that would be self explanatory. "What are you doing! Obey me!"
I laughed. "I kind of think that's what they're doing. Freudian slip?"
I think she probably considered accusing me of a Freudian slip, but I guess that was too obvious, so she instead blurted, "I don't know how you did all this without your ring, but I won't let you win. This ends now!"
She pulled out my signet ring, slipping it on her finger.
Immediately her hand turned blue, the wave of color spreading from her finger, expanding to her palm and other digits before traveling down her wrist, her forearms...
Her legs turned orange, her costume disappearing, replaced by a bra and a diaper.
Her Sexy Squirrel face vanished in a wave of blue, and a beak appeared.
Jessica looked down at her hands, her feathery waist, crying out in dismay. "No! What did you do to me!"
I laughed. "How should I know? You're the one with the bright idea of wearing the crown and the ring at the same time!"
"I have returned, my king," she said in a different voice. "I am here."
She clapped her hands over her beak, horrified at what she just blurted.
"Cupcake?" I cried in shocked disbelief.
"Mmmss mmph kimmm?" she mumbled through her hand.
"Cupcake, is that really you?"
The bird took her hands away from her beak. "Really you, as in the bitch is trying to take over my brain? Maybe!"
She clenched her fists in anger. "I want an explanation. Now!"
"Um, maybe the crown and the ring shouldn't go together? How's that for an explanation? You want to know what I did to you? Nothing! You did this to yourself!"
That earned me a look of pure hatred. "If this cannot be reversed, I'm going to kiss you. Kill. I'm going to kill you."
She reached for her ring finger, grabbing the royal signet, but the moment her digits neared it, the ring vanished.
"No! It's not fair!"
She reached for the crown, but now that was gone as well.
"No! This can't happen! It can't!"
She reddened, glaring at me.
I only shrugged. "You think I asked to become bird king?"
"Yes. Because you're a dork." Jessica bounced her breasts experimentally, then stared at her hands.
"Human thoughts! Human thoughts! I left Tiger with the next door neighbor. What if they overfeed him or kill him, or he runs away while I'm out?"
She remained animated.
"Credit reports. Bills. Someone's going to tow my car because I haven't paid this month."
Nothing changed.
"I didn't change back!" Jessica looked troubled for a moment, then turned over her hands, staring at them.
"Yes! Yes! Not the way I pictured it happening, but yes!"
"See?" Cupcake said to herself. "It's not all bad..."
"Yeah? What about Chad? What about my babies?"
Cupcake didn't answer, she just locked eyes with me.
"No!" Jessica said. "Oh God no! Don't you dare!"
"We want the same things, Jessica," Cupcake told herself. "You just don't want to admit them to yourself."
"No. I'm definitely sure I don't want that!" But her legs were trembling. "Mostly."
Without warning, she pulled me into her arms and kissed me with wild passion.
A second later, she pulled away and cried, "Bleah!...Mostly."
She grabbed me again.
"Jessica, Cupcake," I stammered. "Whoever you are, we need to save the world. We can...do this...later."
She nodded. "You're right."
Jessica clenched her fists. "Who said anything about saving it?"
She picked up her staff, raising it to strike me in the head.
Her arms stopped in mid swing, like she were the Tin Man without his oil can. The upper and lower portions of her beak ground against each other.
"I'm having issues," she growled through her beak. "You must stop Miss Terious on your own."
"You touch my friend and I'll kiss you!" Jessica shouted. "I meant kill!"
"Sure you did," I said with a laugh. "Whatever you want to tell yourself."
"Good luck, my king," Cupcake said.
She slapped herself in the face.