Episode 5:1- World War Three
Previously on Calvin Who...
[Mr Green] pulled his head off, flooding the room with green light. At the same time, the manicured woman did the same thing, and the police officer at the Tyler flat removed his head too.
Three bulbous green aliens with three long green fingers emerged. The Mr Green alien pressed a button. Three long beeps sounded.
"Thank you for wearing your name tags. They'll help us identify the bodies!"
Via the name tags almost everyone in the room was wearing, electrical shocks were emitted. Everyone but one collapsed to the ground.
"We are the Slitheen!" shrieked the manicured woman. "And we are unstoppable!"
"Yeah, about that," tutted Hobbes, standing up suddenly. "It's a bit of a pity that I'm a tiger, and therefore couldn't pin a name tag onto myself, huh?" He stooped to the floor. "It's also," he continued. "a bit of a pity that you happened to leave some rubber gloves lying around!" So saying, he slipped on a pair of gloves, scooped up a name tag, and pressed it to the rubbery, mucus-colored skin of the Slitheen. It screamed and collapsed. Hobbes took the opportunity to run out of the room. "ROSE!" he yelled.
"In here!" came a faint call. Hobbes turned a sharp left, and found a door where thumping was coming from behind.
"Back, you slimy alien thing!" yelled a woman's voice. Another crash. Hobbes tore open the door to reveal a very odd scene.
Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North, stood on a wooden table with a chair leg held aloft, hitting wildly at another Slitheen. Rose stood nearby with two other chair legs, wielding them like dual katana. The other chair leg (plus the body of the poor dismantled chair) was held slackly by a man in a business suit that stood gaping rather uselessly at the scene. Hobbes paused.
"Uh, actually, you have it mostly under control," he admitted.
"No, we don't!" screeched Rose, hitting out wildly. "Do something! Use the Transmog-thingie!"
"Transmogrifier Gun, and no, I can't! Out of charge!"
"Great! Just bloody brilliant!" Rose dealt the monstrous alien a sharp rap on the head.
"Gimmie that!" Hobbes snatched the table leg from the man in the business suit, and jabbed at part of what I assume was the Slitheen neck. It's hard to tell with all that blubber, you know. The Slitheen roared, and staggered back a few paces.
"Run!" yelled Hobbes. Rose and Harriet did as he suggested, and dashed out of the room.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, a phrase that I will hopefully never use again. Just to clarify, 'meanwhile, back at the ranch' means, in this case, 'meanwhile, back at Jackie Tyler's house'. And now, meanwhile, back at Jackie Tyler's house, the Slitheen was approaching. The only reason she wasn't committed to a ghastly and terrible (with squishiness involved) fate was the fact that Mickey Smith happened to come in at that very moment.
"Jackie!" he yelled, slightly panicked, and grabbed the first item that came to hand. Which was, predictably, a big heavy blanket that was situated on top of the couch.
Okay, so, short freeze frame here for a bit of info.
Did you know that you can get concussed from having a blanket land on your head? There can also be internal bleeding if you're unlucky enough. Or, in Mickey's case, lucky.
Mickey Smith was not an anatomy expert, so he didn't know any of this. In this example, he simply... got lucky.
Which has nothing to do with the song by Daft Punk.
He somehow managed to knock the Slitheen out with no prior training, grab Jackie, and slip out the door. Oh, and he managed to take a picture of it on his mobile phone. Why, I don't know. It might make sense to the plot later, I'm not sure.
Rose crashed out the front doors of 10 Downing Street. "Aliens!" she yelled. "Aliens just killed the alien experts and the Prime Minister."
People turned to look at her for a moment, shrugged, and turned back again. Rose growled. The police arrived.
"Aliens," Rose said shortly, pointing inside. "Inside the meeting room. Real aliens."
They followed her. "Brilliant," she muttered.
When they all actually followed her into the room, they were confronted by the sight of roughly a score of dead people. Rose paused.
"Ooh," she admitted. "This doesn't look exactly good on my behalf, does it."
A pause.
"RUN!" she yelled to no one in particular and dashed out of the room.
Meanwhile, Hobbes had pulled a phone out of nowhere, and was dialing the Time Machine, desperately hoping that Calvin had snapped out of his temper tantrum by then.
"Calvin!" he yelled into the phone.
"Oh, hey, Hobbes."
"Have you snapped out of your temper tantrum yet?"
"Yes. No. Maybe."
"Calvin, Rose and I need you here right now! There's big bad trouble, involving farts and slimy things."
"Seriously! I'm working on the Time Machine! How bad can it be?"
"Well, a group of aliens that call themselves the 'Slitheen' have invaded the British government, killed and impersonated the Prime Minister, killed the world's top alien experts in the space of one minute, and are chasing Rose down the hallways."
There was a yell from downstairs.
"Scratch that. The police are chasing Rose down the hallways. And the aliens are right behind me, so I'm going to go hide in a cupboard for the moment being."
"No, that was a rhetorical question," said Calvin as Hobbes threw open a closet door and ducked inside. "Of course it's that bad, with the slimy girl with you. Seriously. How accident prone can you get?"
"Pretty accident prone. In the last few adventures, she's spent most of the time being kidnapped and/or attacked by aliens."
"..that was another rhetorical question. Where are you?"
"10 Downing Street," Hobbes said as casually as he could.
"Of course. You're at 10 Downing Street. How could I be so stupid? Just what have you gotten yourself into this time?"
"Just pointing out, this is kind of normal for us. If you wouldn't mind landing in the first closet on the right hand side of the staircase of the third floor?"
"No problem. Just coming across now."
An immense swirling of air, and a rip in reality signified the arrival of the big brown box that was their transport. Calvin sprung up from the middle of it, grinning wildly.
"Hello, fellow chaos makers!" he cheered, then peered around the cupboard that was actually quite dark. "Wait. You're the only one here. Where's the slimy girl?"
"Getting chased by a), the British police, b), the aliens, c), all of the above."
"Knowing her, probably 'c'."
"Right, them, shall we form a council of war?"
"We shall." Calvin clasped Hobbes's paw firmly, and made a complex gesture that seemed to be some kind of handshake. They then bounded into the Time Machine. "War Mode," Calvin directed at the roof. The room shook, and furniture folded back into the walls, leaving a table with two hard hats on it sitting in the centre of the room. Two duo scooped up a hat each, and placed them reverently on their heads.
"Plan?" Hobbes asked.
"Dash in screaming and hope something works."
"Great plan."
"I think so."
With that settled, the room reverted to its normal mode, and Calvin dashed off down the narrow hallway that led from the control room. Soon after, he reappeared, riding a red wagon with big wheels and a black handle.
"Oh my gosh!" Hobbes gasped. Calvin grinned proudly.
"Yep. I figured if I could make a time-and-space machine work, I could fix the wagon."
"But..." Hobbes ran his fingers along the varnished paint of the main body. "It smashed into pieces when we were on Sneer Hill!"
"And I travelled back in time to pick up the pieces before they fell into the ravine. What do you take me for, an idiot? If I have a time machine, I'm going to find all the loopholes I can and use them as much as possible."
"We've got the wagon back!" Hobbes yelled in ecstasy. "But how do we get it out of the Time Machine?"
"Garage Mode!"
Part of the main control room opened up, and it appeared that it led to the outside via one of the cardboard flaps.
"All aboard," said Calvin, wiggling his eyebrows. Hobbes jumped in behind him.
"Do we need the turbo?"
"Nope."
A sound suspiciously like an engine revving bounced through the endless corridors of the Time Machine, and with a loud zoom Calvin and Hobbes raced out of the closet, screaming as loud as they could.
Behind them, the cardboard flaps of the Time Machine closed.
"Spaceman Spiff rockets courageously throughout the cosmos!" Calvin narrated, dodging back and forth between obstacles. "He has but one thought in his mind- to find the alien invaders known as the Slitheen and rescue another alien organism known as only a Girr-ulgh from them!"
"Turn left!" yelled Hobbes, clinging on for dear life. Calvin turned left.
"Ahead, our hero sees a steep cliff face looming in front of him! Its rocky architecture is too dangerous for Spiff to navigate! IS THIS THE END?"
Hobbes grabbed the handle from his friend and steered the wagon over to the banister of the spiral staircase, which Calvin had seen in his mind as a cliff. With pinpoint-perfect timing, the wagon leapt up onto the banister, and began to pinwheel down. As they hit the ground, a large shudder shook the frame of the wagon, but it didn't break, and instead kept going at rocket speed.
"No! With the help of his trusty assistant, our hero manages to find a rift in the dangerous straits of this odd planet called...Britain... he continues for the Girr-ulgh, who is up ahead!"
Rose was running from c), all of the above, when she heard loud screaming and crashes that could only be from one person. Two people, in fact. One human and one tiger, if you want to get specific.
"Turn left! Turn left!"
"Spaceman Spiff blasts through the air!"
"TABLE! Look out!"
A smash, and a door adjacent to her burst open with force.
"The Girr-ulgh has been found!" yelled Calvin- er, Spaceman Spiff, who was wearing a hard hat and clutching on to the handle of a little red wagon.
"Hi, Rose!" Hobbes screamed. "Care for a lift?"
The wagon collided with her, and she was thrown into the back of it. Although the wagon was tiny on the outside, it seemed to fit all of them without it getting too cramped.
"Smooth," Rose commented. Calvin drove the wagon towards a wheelchair-access ramp and flew straight over the heads of the police. He burst into the meeting room where the dead bodies of the people who had been killed by the electrical blast were situated. Hobbes slapped Calvin hard in the face.
"Spaceman Spiff is under attack!"
"Hey!" Rose complained. "Don't I get a turn?"
"Be my guest."
Rose slapped Calvin as hard as she could. He appeared dazed for a second, then shook his head to clear it.
"Okay. Okay, I'm back. I'm not speaking in italics anymore. Whew. Haven't done that for a while."
"Done what?" Rose asked curiously.
"Slipped into fantasy world," Hobbes supplied. "This time, he was Spaceman Spiff."
"Right," Rose said, not actually getting it at all. "So, what do we do next, spaceman?" This was directed at Calvin, who shook his head.
"Oh, no, nonononono. Don't call me that. It's going to be a full three seasons until someone will call me 'spaceman' genuinely, and you aren't the one that calls me that. Now shut up. I'm thinking."
There was a beat.
"Barricade the door!" yelled Calvin suddenly. "The police and aliens are coming! Quick, get the Transmogrifier Gun!"
Hobbes had a shifty look on his face. "Uh... it might be slightly out of charge."
"Really." Calvin folded his arms across his stripy shirt. "What could you possibly have done to it to make it run out of charge?"
"Um. Broke open several doors, made two highly-advanced hovercars, turned myself into an invisible flying penguin, stopped several people from killing me, and... made... myself...a cup... of coffee?"
"Coffee? You're a tiger! Tigers don't need coffee!" Calvin stormed. "Now what're we supposed to block the door up with?"
"...furniture?" suggested Rose, who had been doing precisely that for the last few minutes while the tiger and boy were arguing. The door was now blocked in with tables, chairs, and heavy items that won't be named at the moment.
"Good job, slimy girl," said Calvin grudgingly.
"Brilliant!" Hobbes enthused. "And now we can use Calvin's watch to find out what these 'Slitheen' are."
They all gathered around in a corner. "Computer," Calvin said grandly. "Tell us all you can about the alien species known as the Slitheen."
"Do you really have to speak so formally?" Hobbes asked him.
"No. It just makes me sound cool."
"Like a bow tie?" Rose wondered. Calvin and Hobbes stopped and stared.
There was a long, long silence.
"...what's so cool about bow ties?" Hobbes asked.
Rose shrugged. "I don't know. I guess it just sounds right. You know, bow ties are cool."
"NO THEY AREN'T," Calvin decided loudly. "BOW TIES ARE NOT COOL."
Meanwhile, the computer on the wristwatch had been making puzzled beeping noises, and had come up with a question mark on the screen.
"Slitheen not found," said the pleasant female voice. "Please check piranha and try again."
"Piranha?" Hobbes wondered.
"The bleep of the square cosine equivalent variable is not available in elephants at this time. To rectify your problem, stand firmly on your head and twitch your right big toe up and down to the tune of 'Pokerface'." At this point, the computer began playing the symphony orchestra version of Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way'. Calvin hummed along absently. Rose dug an elbow into his ribs, and he stopped abruptly.
"What's the matter with it?" she demanded. Calvin shook his wrist up and down. The computer hummed a bit, stopped playing Lady Gaga, and began to project, holographically, the Lord of the Rings, backwards at high speed.
"Well, the computer on this thing is connected to the computer onboard the Time Machine, and since I haven't fixed that yet, it must still be malfunctioning."
"What do we do now?" asked Hobbes. None of them had an answer. The wristwatch continued playing the movie, displaying the bit where the Ring levitates from the volcano and into Frodo's hand, before he starts walking backwards down Mount Doom. "Shut that up, will you?"
Calvin pressed a button on the side.
"Cynthia, you don't love me anymore!" the computer squawked, before shutting down with a pleasant beep.
Please go outside and whistle at koi to recharge, said the screen. Calvin sighed, and shook it again.
Go please whistle recharge koi at to and outside, it said instead, which wasn't much of an improvement.
"It's useless," declared Rose. "To actually find out what those things are, and what they're doing, we need to sneak out and spy on them."
"We've still got the wagon," Hobbes pointed out. It creaked as if in recognition of that fact, before the handle fell over from its upright position, which wasn't all that reassuring. Rose glanced warily at it.
"It'll be fine," Calvin assured them. "I upgraded it a bit while I was fixing it."
"Upgraded?" Hobbes asked suspiciously. Calvin rolled his eyes about a bit.
"Uh... think Hagrid's motorcycle in Deathly Hallows crossed with the Argo II."
"Oh. Um, I might just wait this one out..." Hobbes backed away from the wagon. Calvin grinned.
"Get in, you big sissy!"
Rose and Calvin bundled the tiger into the little red wagon and squeezed in behind and in front of him, respectively. Calvin twisted the handle, and a sound like a race car revving came from underneath the vehicle. Rose peered under it, but there was no sign of anything like an exhaust pipe.
"All hands inside the vehicle, ladies and tigers," Calvin announced. "Flight 012FD is ready for clearance."
"'FD'?" Rose asked, holding Hobbes back from jumping out of the wagon.
"'Flow Dab'."
"Where did that come from?"
"Someone graffitied it on the handle of the wagon," Calvin said, pointing. "Wonder what it means?"
"What does this button do?" Rose asked, reaching along to tap a big red button engraved into the inside edge of the wagon. Calvin's eyes widened, and Hobbes curled up into a ball at the bottom of the vehicle. And every little boy and girl knows what the big red button usually does...
"No, don't-" Calvin began, but was cut off by a loud blast of air and sound that occurred as the back of the wagon spat out blue flames, and managed to break the sound barrier in the space of three seconds. Rose's scream was forced back into her throat, and the wagon blasted through the thin wall beside the barricade, proving that the door isn't always the place you should focus on when blocking a room off.
"BANZAI!" yelled Calvin, whooping a bit in glee. "Stupendous Man zooms across the sky in his Stupendous Mobile, looking for crimes to fight, and good deeds to do-"
"Calvin, shut UP!" screamed Hobbes and Rose in perfect unison. They smashed their way through another depressingly thin wall that led them to where Harriet Jones (MP for Flydale North) was listening at a wall.
"Shh!" she hissed at them. "I'm listening at this wall."
Calvin hit a green button, and the wagon abruptly stopped moving forwards at rocket speed. In fact, it stopped altogether, and all three passengers fell out.
"Gahh..." Calvin gasped. "Did someone get the number of that mutant hippopotamus?"
"BW1254," supplied Rose, flopping her arms wildly.
Hobbes recovered first, and sat up, pressing his ear to the wall (that was extremely thin, actually). His feline eyes widened. "Ooh, now this is interesting."
"What?" asked Rose, moving next to him. Hobbes looked at her with wide eyes.
"Raxacoricofallapatorians."
(A/N:
Welcome back to the world of Calvin Who, which is what I'm calling this 'show'!
Thank you to A Drama Queen, for beta-ing, and showing me that I'm not actually as smart as I think I am. And this time, there are not just one, but two Bad Wolf references. Find them, and spot the references.
I will be back next week with dramatic action!
~Kitty)