"Cheers Mr. Beaks." Grizzle announced as he raised a cup of water in the air. "We have done it, the Care Bears are humans and there's nothing they can do about it."
"What about that girl sir?" one of Grizzle's robots, UR2, inquired. "The one that they call Claire. What if she gives them ideas to come here and reverse the ray's effects?"
Grizzle glared at the robot evilly.
"Who built you?" he asked.
"You did sir." UR2 responded, sounding as if the question was asked often and was a bit rehearsed.
"Who is turned the Care Bears into humans?"
"You did sir."
"Who is the genius here?"
"You are sir."
"Therefore, you have no right to say whether I now what will happen or not."
"Of course sir."
However, turn in Care-a-lot, Grumpy was working on cloud cars that could support their new weight so they could do just that.
"Can you hand me that wrench Claire?" Grumpy asked from underneath the cloud car.
"Sure." Claire said, as she reached over and got the wrench. Claire turned around to give Grumpy the wrench but ended up looking at Oopsy (who was helping Grumpy by cleaning out the work area where ever it needed cleaning). Oopsy and Claire looked at each other and blushed. Ever since their kiss, they had been embarrassed to be around each other. Claire, absentmindedly, let go of the wrench and it fell onto one of Grumpy's knees with a terrible crack.
"Burned crumpled bumbleberries!" he cried as he came out from the cloud car. Claire snapped out of her trance and quickly bent down to help Grumpy.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"Do I look like I'm okay?" Grumpy asked in pain. Oopsy peered over as Grumpy lifted his pant leg over his knee to reveal an ugly and black bruise. It was nearly the size of a baseball. Claire and Oopsy groaned in disgust and moved back a bit.
"Is everyone okay in here?" Funshine asked as he came over.
"Does this look like okay to you?" Grumpy asked, showing his knee to Funshine. Funshine's reaction was the same as Oopsy and Claire's.
"Maybe this could make it better." Funshine said, rubbing his stomach in the place his Belly Badge would have had been. "Oh." he said in dismay when he was reminded that he didn't have a Belly Badge at all.
Claire rolled her eyes at the ignorance, while Oopsy couldn't help but snicker a bit.
"You were saying?" Grumpy said, still irritated at the pain he was experiencing with his knee.
"Sorry." Funshine said with a sideways smile and a shrug. Grumpy gave Funshine a nasty glare.
"I'll get some aloe and some ice." Claire said as she got up on her feet. She then rubbed a charm on her bracelet that looked like a house, and she was gone in a blink of an eye.
"That bracelet is a piece of work Grumpy." Funshine said, staring at the spot that Claire at disappeared at. "It's a wonder that it still works after so long. Even McKenna's bracelet has needed checks since then."
"Yeah, well, at lest Claire's bracelet doesn't have the functions of a Belly Badge like McKenna's bracelet does." Grumpy said, going back under the cloud car again.
"But it would be just as dangerous." Oopsy pointed out. "She could get lost some where else, or not appear any where she could just be... stuck."
"Here you are Grumpy." Claire said, reappearing next to Funshine. It scared all three of the guys. "Sorry." Claire said before she went over to Grumpy and nursed his knee.
"If only we had included some kind of warning before she appeared." Grumpy said to Funshine and Oopsy while he winced in pain. Claire secretly smiled to herself, even though she didn't know what they were talking about during the time she left.
"I can't believe it!" Grizzle shouted as he looked through his telescope. He watched and Grumpy, Oopsy, Claire, Funshine, and Cheer carefully got into a new and improved cloud car.
"Told you." UR2 said, quite proud of himself.
"Don't speak unless you are spoken too!" Grizzle shouted at the robot.
"Of course sir." UR2 said, rolling his eyes.
Then there was a knock at the front of Grizzle's house. Grizzle gave UR2 an evil look, and the robot went to answer it. The next thing Grizzle heard was the sound of a somewhat familiar voice,
"Is Grizzle home? I need to file a complaint." Claire stated.
"What do you want?" Grizzle asked as he came to the door.
"I WANT the Care Bears to be bears again. I WANT my life to return to normal. I WANT you to reverse that ray gun over there, zap the Care Bears, and then dismantle it!" Claire ranted.
"I can't do that for you." Grizzle sneered, getting close to Claire's face.
"Why not?" Claire asked, getting angry.
"I don't wanna." Grizzle told her with an evil grin on his face. Claire got so angry at Grizzle that she jumped onto his suit, and unlocked the hatch that kept Grizzle in his suit. Grizzle fell on the ground with a thud and Claire almost jumped on him as she got off of his suit.
"Claire don't hurt him!" Cheer said as she came into Grizzle's lair.
"I'm not going to hurt him," Claire said, "I'm just going to crack his skull." and she raised her shoe and hovered it above Grizzle's head. Before she could make impact, or lower her foot for that matter, Claire was dragged in one direction by Grumpy, Funshine, and Cheer while Oopsy and Share dragged Grizzle in the opposite direction away from Claire.
"What is wrong with her?" Grizzle asked, his voice now more high pitched.
"You made her mad." Oopsy said, pointing out the obvious.
"Let me get that little punk!" Claire demanded as she tried to wiggle out of the grasp of Grumpy, Funshine, and Cheer, "He deserves it! Claire smash! Claire smash!"
"You made her really mad apparently." Oopsy then added, observing Claire. After a few more seconds of struggling, Claire finally gave up but kept giving Grizzle extremely nasty glares.
"Grizzle," Cheer asked nicely, letting go of Claire, "Can you please reverse your ray gun so we can be bears again?"
"Uh... no." Grizzle told her.
"Why not?" Funshine asked, letting go of Claire too."
Grizzle chuckled evilly.
"Do you think that I, Grizzle, would want to turn the Care Bears back into being bears after I had been the only one to turn them into any other creature but bears?"
Claire smacked her forehead.
"Here we go, the evil villain banter." she said.
"For years I have wondered what to do with you bears. My first attack on you was simple, if you take away the Belly Badge, you take away the Care Bears caring power. But you," (Grizzle pointed to Oopsy,) "Made them believe that you didn't have to be a Care Bear to have a Belly Badge. After several months I couldn't think of anything that would REALLY get rid of the Care Bears, not until you came along." Grizzle looked at Claire. Claire returned his look with a deadly one, and Grizzle recoiled.
"I began to watch you, and see what you had in common with those bears. I noticed things about your relationship with them too. Then it hit me, why not turn the Care Bears into humans like this girl? Of course, I needed your DNA. I needed that one little strip of DNA that made you human, so I could make the Care Bears human. Lucky for me, you fell into that rose bush and a bit of your hair came out, and even better then that, when I was working around that one piece of hair, you were sick and out of the way."
"So, you're saying that we all have Claire's DNA?" Grumpy asked.
"Precisely."
There was a moment or two for the different reactions everyone had when they understood that. It was more then a little creepy for all of them. Claire and Oopsy were the most freaked out by the news.
"And there's no way to reverse it, because you need the DNA that makes a Care Bear a bear." Grizzle sneered.
Oopsy started to move toward Grizzle like he was going to attack him, but he was held off by Share and Grumpy.
"You have the DNA." Claire said to Grizzle. "You have the Care Bear DNA!"
"What are you talking about?" Grizzle said. Claire smiled big and wide.
"You're a Care Bear."
"I am not!" Grizzle pouted.
"Yes you are. You have the head, the belly, heck, you even have that birthmark on the right side of your butt! The only problem is, you're a genetic mistake like Oopsy!"
"Hey!" Oopsy said, although he knew Claire was trying to make a point and didn't mean it personally.
"I do not!" Grizzle argued. But everyone else looked for what Claire had pointed out.
"It's true." Grumpy reported.
Claire couldn't stop smiling.
"Any one have a pair of scissors?" she asked. "I think Grizzle needs a little off the top."
"Hey Claire! I found some scissors!" Oopsy announced.
"Throw them over here." Claire said.
"Don't throw scissors!" Share warned. Oopsy and Claire looked at each other.
"Would you like to do the honors then?" Claire asked Oopsy.
"I'll pretend to be insulted if I didn't!" he said.
"What! No! No!" Grizzle said as Oopsy got closer to him.
–-
"Well, that was fun." Claire decided a couple days later. She and Oopsy were having a little picnic in Rainshine Meadows.
"Let's never do that again, and say we did." Oopsy agreed.
"Are you sure?" Claire asked, giving him a sideways smile. Oopsy looked at Claire confused.
"When you weren't looking," Claire explained, "I told Grumpy to confiscate Grizzle's ray gun so the little weasel wouldn't use it again. At first, Grumpy agreed because he had no idea what I was going to do. When we got the ray gun into Grumpy's workshop, I told Grumpy my real reason why I wanted him to take the gun. At first, he was really mad at me, but he understood why though (gotta love the fact that you guys are Care Bears), and now I have a surprise for you."
Claire whistled like he was signaling something, then Oopsy was zapped by an unknown source.
"What?" Oopsy asked, looking at himself after he was zapped. Oopsy was now a human.
"Best of all," Grumpy said, "It's your own DNA, not Claire's."
'And you were given gorgeous genetics." Claire gushed. Oopsy blushed, and then leaned in to give Claire a kiss, but he was stopped by Grumpy.
"Now wait a minute," he said, "Before you two get to busy we need to set some rules first."
Claire and Oopsy looked at Grumpy and awaited the rules he set out to plan.
"First off, the effect of the ray will only last an hour or two at the most." Grumpy announced. "Second, (this one everyone besides you two had to vote on) the only time Oopsy can be a human after this time is on Christmas."
"What about my birthday?" Claire asked, finding it strictly unfair that she could only see Oopsy human one day of the year.
"Or on my birthday." Oopsy added, thinking the whole ordeal was unfair too.
"The rest of us will have to take a different vote on that." Grumpy told them.
"Darn." Claire and Oopsy disappointingly said together.
"Anything else?" Oopsy asked.
Grumpy looked at Claire and Oopsy's eager faces to know if he was done yet. It was such a longing face that Grumpy didn't want them to keep staring at him. It was a bit sad, especially since they weren't going to be like that until Christmas, which was more than six months away.
"No." he said.
Quickly, Claire and Oopsy ditched their picnic and had the best hour together then they would have in a long time.