"Attention everyone, can I have your attention please?" the LAX public address announcer tried to say over the din of stranded flyers in the terminal, "Can I have your attention? Would you please pay attention…people, can we have…EVERYONE SHUT UP!" Once the terminal had gone silent, he said, "Due to an unexpected winter storm approaching Los Angeles, we will be shutting down the airport in ten minutes. All passengers not wishing to be stranded here for days on end should leave by then."
Alicia jerked her head up from the prostrate position she'd been lying in for the last hour or so to see with shock that Los Angeles, of all places, had unexpectedly become a winter wonderland, with the snow coming down hard—so hard, in fact, that the runway could barely be seen at the moment. "Just my luck!" she groaned, slumping back down.
"Miss?" came a new voice. Bobo was standing over her in a security uniform, his own suitcase in hand, "Miss, you'll have to get ready and leave, we'll be shutting down soon, in case you didn't hear."
"I know," she sighed sadly, "But I have nowhere to go. I'm flat broke; paying for this ticket back east used up the last of my funds, and I already checked out of the apartment complex. How did things come to this?"
"Who knows?" Bobo stared longing at the snow outside, "You never can control what happens in life. If I knew I'd get stuck in that trunk back in Maine I wouldn't have…well, it's a long story, and I guess you don't want to hear it. Anyway, the bathrooms will still be open if you'll be staying, but the coffee shop will be shuttered until Boxing Day, so you'll have to look around for breakfast. Anyway, merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas," Alicia told him glumly as he lumbered off. She closed her eyes and tried to think of happier times to get her through the misery of the present. It would take a miracle to be home for the holidays now, but what kind of miracle could come out of this?
"Come on, come on!" Gonzo tapped his foot impatiently back east. The line to the checkout had moved a grand total of about five feet in the last twenty minutes.
"Don't tell me this is how things usually run with these checkouts as you call them," Gobo asked the whatever from his perch with Robin atop Big Bird's shoulder, "Because this is ridiculous."
"Even unbearable," Fozzie lamented, "But at least I think the cashier is just as impatient as us."
He pointed up the fake mountain. At the top, a clearly stressed-looking Santa was ringing up an old woman's groceries very rapidly. "Thank you for shopping with us, HOOOO HOOO HOOOO," he said in rapid succession, tossing the goods into paper bags without any concern for their breakability, "And here's your receipt, come back soon." He leaned toward the elf next to him and muttered out loud, "Get her out of here, I'm not working a minute of overtime!"
The elf forcefully dragged the old woman to a plastic slide on the other side of the "mountain" and shoved her and the groceries down it. "Next, next, HOOOO HOOOO HOOOO!" the Santa half-bellowed to a young boy who was the next one in line with a box of cookies. This caused the boy to immediately start screaming in terror. "Oh, we've got a screamer here, get rid of him, HOOOO HOOO HOOOO!" the Santa grumbled to the elf, who tossed the boy down the slide without the cookies.
"You guys still waiting here?" Jenny and Sarah had arrived, their coats on and purses in hand, "I guess I should have mentioned there'd be only one guy on checkout duty tonight."
"Well we've got bigger problems than that, Jenny," Kermit informed her, "Something terrible's gone on back at the farmhouse, and we're stuck waiting when we could be helping." He glanced at Yoda. "Couldn't you do something to make them move faster, Master Yoda?" he asked him.
"Under the circumstances I cannot," Yoda said, "Unnecessary infringement on their free will it would be; a Jedi does not take away another's free will for personal gain."
"Well whatever your moral stance is, it's not moving this line at all!" Gonzo started shouting crazily, "If something terrible has happened to Camilla, I'll never forgive myself!"
"Well we're just as worried as you are, but there's no need to get hysterical, Gonzo," Kermit told him.
"I'M NOT HYSTERICAL!" Gonzo shrieked in the frog's face. After a moment, he grumbled, "All right, I am hysterical! I'm hysterical, I'm hysterical, I'm…!"
"Keep your shirt on, weirdo, I'll get this line going. MOVE IT, MOVE IT, MOVE IT!" Piggy plowed like a running back through the other customers, karate-chopping those who resisted down the stairs. Everyone followed her through the increasing gaps in the line until they'd reached the register. "That's the Santa Claus that lives at the top of Outer Space?" Gobo frowned at the Saint Nick behind the counter, "Wait a minute, how can you be here if you're supposed to be getting ready to fly around the world to deliver presents?"
"Hang on a second," Big Bird snapped his wingtips, "Maybe THAT'S how he gets down the chimneys; Santa can bi-locate and be in two places at once!"
"Yeah, yeah, that's great, bird, now can Santa have your groceries so I can get out of here?" the "Claus" grumbled at him.
Here you go, Mr. Santa," Fozzie strained to push all the groceries toward him. Santa pressed the cash register buttons and swiped off Fozzie's Bearican Express card. "Keep the change, bear," he told him, oblivious to the fact that change wasn't necessary, "Now beat it so I can get going too, HOOOO HOOOO HOOOO!"
The elf picked the bear up and started to toss him down the slide. "Wait, wait, wait!" Fozzie jammed his legs against the sides of the slide, "I forgot to buy honey Popsicles! I've got to go back and…!"
"You'll rot your teeth out, bear," the Santa told him, "Merry Christmas. HOOOO HOOO HOOOO!"
He stomped down on Fozzie's head, sending him tumbling down the slide and through the front door of the supermarket out on the street. The others joined him in a heap in quick succession. "Boy, if that was his cheerful side, I'd hate to come by on his bad days," the bear remarked.
"There no time to waste; to the Xmasmobile," Kermit struck a heroic pose of sorts before leading the charge back to the sleigh, where Buster and Leroy were sound asleep and snoring. Everyone piled on board (except for Yoda and Cantus, who continued to hover by Force power off the rear bumper). Fozzie leaped into the driver's seat. "Ride like the wind, Bullseye!" he yelled at Buster and Leroy before realizing, "Whoops, wrong story. No toys here."
Neither the horse nor the donkey woke up. "Come on you guys, we've got a crisis at hand!" Fozzie pleaded, snapping the reins to no avail. "Oh, I knew we let them eat too much at dinner!" he lamented, "They always conk out when they eat too much. Now how will we get going?"
"Now that we've got the food, we're going to have another snack when we get back," Robin called out loud. In seconds Buster and Leroy snapped awake and took off running. "Works every time," the small frog said with a smile.
"Wow, I would have never thought that would have done the trick," Fozzie turned to congratulate him, "I think…"
"Watch the road, fuzzball!" Piggy yelled, pointing at a snowy figure that had trudged into the middle of the street. "And so Kermit and the others began racing back to the farmhouse," he was saying out loud to no one in particular, "Not knowing what horrors would await them when they returned."
"Move, move, move!" Fozzie waved his paw frantically at the snowman, but to no avail, as he was rather violently run over by the sled and crumpled into a million particles. "Hey, is that any way to treat Joe Snow, your narrator!?" he called after them.
"How many times do we have to tell you?" Gonzo yelled back at him, "We don't NEED a snowman narrator, you Burl Ives wannabe!"
"No, but I think we DO needs seatbelts!" Robbie clutched the back of the sleigh hard, looking uncomfortable with the high rate of speed they were going at, "Not even Mom gets this bad when my brother has to…hey what's that up there?"
The sleigh was now driving straight toward a sign reading BRIDGE OUT: GO BACK UNLESS YOU'RE NUTS. "What is this doing here!?" Robbie protested, "We didn't pass by a broken bridge when we came in! Is this supposed to be here!?"
"If the author thinks it adds drama, I guess so," Robin told him.
"But what purpose does this serve even for plot purposes!?" the dinosaur rants onward, "There's no reason for us to have to go through trials like this just to get back to our loved ones!"
"Too late, we're going to have to," Fozzie snapped the reins. Buster and Leroy accelerated toward the broken span. The sleigh's odometer quickly rose from SLOW to FAST to TOO FAST to YOU'RE CRAZY! as they hit the edge of the bridge and went airborne. Even though it was only a short bridge, no more than eight hundred feet from one end to the other, they had to strain to get to the opposite side for whatever reason and barely landed safely. "That was close!" the bear breathed a large sigh of relief. Then he noticed something out of the ordinary. "Hey, where'd the animals go?"
"Hey Foz, what are you doing up there?" came Buster's voice form the back of the sleigh, where he and Leroy were now trailing behind and running hard just to avoid being dragged along.
"Hold still for a moment you will," Yoda told him. A look of intense concentration crossed his face. The next thing anyone knew, the sleigh was levitating in the air, allowing the donkey and horse to charge forward back to their normal positions. Yoda returned the sleigh back to earth. "Never done my job is," he asided to Cantus.
"Neither is this game," Cantus was apparently the only one not fazed by their wild pace. He mentally directly his biggest piece to capture Yoda's biggest piece.
"Whoa there!" Fozzie yanked on the reins, bringing Buster and Leroy to an abrupt halt in the middle of the road. Everyone watched as the Swedish Chef chased Pepe across the road. "Talk about your running gags," Gonzo remarked, "How long has that been going on now?"
"Well, it does mean we're almost there," Kermit said, "In fact, I can see it now. And look, here comes..."
A strangled cry cut him off. Sam was running up the road on his wings and talons, the Baby on his back. The child was slapping the eagle on the rump very hard and repeatedly. "Ride 'em, buckin' bronto!" it was shouting in gleeful malice.
"That does it!" Sam rose up, "You have driven me to wit's end! It's time I enforce corporal punishment!"
He seized the Baby and hurled it hard into a tree. "Again!" the infant shouted in delight. Sam staggered over to the sleigh. "Kermit, thank God you made it back!" he moaned, "This child has driven me to the edge of sanity! I can take no more of…!"
Kermit wasn't paying attention. He had noticed the smoke ominously bellowing from the front windows of the farmhouse, now visible in the distance. He led everyone else on the sleigh on a panicked charge toward the building and up the front steps—everyone slipping on the icy patch again as they did—to find everyone inside the farmhouse lying on the floor moaning in agony. Just about everything in the house had been overturned, and most of the presents had been either completely or partially torn up. "Are you guys OK?" the frog asked, running first to Doc Bullfrog and helping his uncle up, "Is anyone hurt? What did they set on fire?"
"Nothing!" snapped Charlene from inside the closet, where she was hunched over a small campfire on the rug, "I've got to do something to stay warm! What's so wrong with that?"
"Well you know, Charlene, you had us all worried someone had been burned up!" Robbie scolded his sister, "Is staying warm really worth that?"
"Well at least no one seems to be hurt," Fozzie said with a large sigh of relief.
"OH NO!" Gonzo shrieked, running into the kitchen, where a roasted chicken was sitting on the table. "Oh Camilla!" he howled, throwing himself about it, "They cooked you alive! I'm so sorry! I should have stayed and protected you!"
"Don't rumple it up, I want to cook that tomorrow morning," Emily staggered by, looking rather dazed, "Your chicken friend took refuge behind the couch."
Gonzo turned slowly to see Camilla rise up from behind the sofa, perfectly intact. "Uh, I knew that," the whatever said quickly.
"Sure you did," Emily said with a tinge of sarcasm, "But I am glad you and the lizard got back here."
"Frog," Kermit corrected her, "Do you know who did this to us?"
"Of course I do," Emily said with distaste in her voice, "It was my thieving nephew and his gang of hooligans, plus their human goons. But what they were after, I don't know."
"I think it might have been this," Zachary called from the tree. He held up the half-unwrapped Baseball Diamond as his father rushed to him and embraced him. There were gasps of awe as everyone gathered around to look at it. "What is that wondrous thing?" Wembley asked.
"Let me take a look," Sherlock Hemlock pushed his way forward examined the diamond with his magnifying glass, "Egad, I've got it," he proclaimed, "This is a large chunk of ice that has managed not to melt, certainly very valuable on the market."
"No, it's the fabulous Baseball Diamond," Floyd Pepper picked it up, "I'd recognize this thing anywhere. But what's it doing here, and who would want it this badly?"
"Uh guys," Kermit said slowly from inside the closet, "I think I know. We're dealing here with a foe who with his every appearance on television dumbs down the minds of everyone who watches him and tries to turn them into mindless zombies."
"You mean we were attacked by Bob Saget?" Scooter asked.
"No, far, far worse," Kermit told him. He held up a crumpled wrapping paper labeled DOC HOPPER'S FRENCH FRIED FROG LEGS, which brought about numerous loud gasps. "Him?" Grover was shocked, "What could he possibly want with that?"
"I don't know, but I do know his goons'll be back," Rowlf admitted, "They'd still be here if Doglion hadn't scared them when they threw open the closet door. They'd said they'd be back with more guns and men."
"Then we've got make sure they don't get the diamond," Kermit mused, "It rightfully belongs to Lady Holliday. Now if Doc Hopper were sending goons after you to get it, who are you going to call?"
"Hopperbusters?" Fozzie proposed. Kermit groaned.
"But what can we do?" Telly asked nervously, "We're not armed! And the phone lines are still down, so we can't call the cops! We don't have a chance to stop them!"
"Actually," Kermit stood up on a chair to address everyone, "I think there is something we can do: we can do like they do in the movies and turn this whole house into a war zone, so when they come back, they'll find the going a bit tough. In the meantime, we'll work on getting the phone lines back up and running so we can call the police, and they can come and catch Hopper's thugs red-handed. Are there any questions?"
Ernie's hand shot up. "What color are their hands now?" he asked. Kermit slapped a flipper to his face. "Rowlf, how soon ago did they leave?" he asked the dog.
"About fifteen minutes ago," Rowlf said, "Given the shape of the roads, we probably have about twenty more minutes before they get back here."
"Well then, we haven't got a moment to lose," Kermit announced, "Let's find everything we can and get set up; it looks like from the damage they inflicted here we'll have to work overtime on this. Who's with me?"
Pretty much everyone cheered in excitement and bustled about in determination to keep the unwelcome intruders from returning. Among the chaos, Big Bird waddled over to Oscar, who was staring out the cracked back window. "Aren't you going to help us too, Oscar?" he asked the grouch.
"Ordinarily not if your life depended on it," Oscar told him, "But when people like them attack me," he pulled a metal army helmet out of his trash can and plunked it down on his head, "They ask for it. And nobody ruins the misery of Commando Grouch. Let's go people!" he shouted rather rudely at the others, none of whom seemed to care, "We've got a lot of work to do here! Telly, go check the bathrooms for anything that might knock a guy senseless! Fraggles, go back down your hole and find as many of your friends you can! Hold it a minute," he waved the Two-Headed Monster over to his can, "You go up to the roof and secure a way for us to get out of here in an emergency, and you go down the basement and look for more traps."
The monster started shouting at itself as it tried to obey both of Oscar's directives and found itself running in different directions. Oscar managed a very small grin. "Maybe I will like it here after all," he said to himself.
