A/N: Canon welding ahead: this predominantly takes place in the regular LB universe but with some elements of the 2D cartoon grafted in.
The Larry-Cave laid before them in all its majesty. The vaulted ceiling of rock, stalactites, and underground lake contrasted yet artistically balanced out the large-scale touches of technology, the likes of which Bob would never have believed possible outside of a comic book.
"Nice digs," Bob said, more to keep himself from gawking like a little kid at all the gadgets and inventions in sight, not the least of which was the famous Larry-Mobile, with its purple-and-yellow paint job and plunger-shaped wheels.
"Why, thank you," answered LarryBoy as if Bob had only complimented his luxurious mansion just up the long staircase which they had just descended.
He led Bob past a platform which housed the biggest computer which the tomato had ever seen outside of the Bumblyburg Science Labs, but Bob could not study this for too long because LarryBoy went over to a panel on the wall and pressed a button with the edge of his plunger. The rock beneath them rumbled, and Bob instinctively leapt back as a portion of the floor parted, and a table with two chairs rose from an underground compartment. Wearing the mien of a welcoming host at his complete ease, LarryBoy took one chair and motioned with his plunger ear for Bob to take the other, which he did.
"Besides me and Alfred, you're the only other person to ever see the inside of the Larry-Cave. …Not counting Temptation," LarryBoy added after a moment.
"Figures," Bob said with an incredulous smile, gazing at his surroundings. "It's only after The Daily Bumble closes down for good that I get the biggest story of my career."
The creak of wheels drew his attention to the tall, thin figure of Alfred, LarryBoy's clever and faithful butler, wheeling in a cart with cocoa and chocolate-chip cookies from the direction of a small yet convenient pantry-like area. The asparagus peered through his monocle at Bob, and it was evident he had heard that last remark.
"Kindly remember that everything which LarryBoy might say here is strictly off the record, Mr. Tomato," he said in a civil but firm tone.
"We can trust Bob, Alfred," LarryBoy reminded him. "After all, he's a hero now."
Bob winced and did not meet LarryBoy's cheerful gaze.
"I was just at the right place at the right time," he said. "Anybody else could have stopped that creep."
Alfred halted the cart beside the table and placed the plate of cookies between the men. As he poured the cocoa, he said, "You'd be amazed at how many superheroes had their start by simply being at the right place at the right time."
Bob could not completely argue with that. He had interviewed many superheroes over the years, and he had heard several of their origin stories. Many had gotten tired of the ongoing corruption in their respective cities, or they just happened to stop a bank robber, or they rushed into a burning building to rescue a baby without stopping to think about it. Still, Bob's small act of heroism could hardly be compared to any worthwhile story.
After the owners of The Daily Bumble had sold off all their printed newspapers to invest in online news sources, they had taken a handful of their best workers into the modern age, but Bob had been left behind. Jobless, he had moved back to his hometown of Wibbleston, where he had been working for his cousin, Wade the Tomato, who owned an electronics-and-nifty-gadgets store. (Wade had always been eccentric like that, but as the Internet spread across the slowly expanding town, more people needed a tech-savvy genius close at hand, and so the business had been able to stay in the black.)
Yesterday — was it only yesterday? — Bob had been out on the sidewalk sweeping, and he had been surprised to see Larry, the newspaper's former janitor, rushing up to him to say hi. As they fell to talking, the alarm from the nearby bank rang out. Bob had stopped to look down the street, and when he turned back to Larry, the cucumber had vanished — but a familiar shadow had crossed over the street, and Bob looked up to see LarryBoy, plunger ears and all, swinging his way toward the bank.
Although no longer a part of the news world, Bob's reporter instincts flared up, and he had paused only to grab one of his cousin's newly built cameras and rushed off to see if he could snag a few photos to sell to The Wibbleston Gazette. Unfortunately, someone else had a similar idea. Two of the Dill sisters, who worked for the paper, had been out shopping, and they stopped to take photos of the fleeing perp just as LarryBoy reached them. The robber had probably never fought a superhero before, and he clearly had not wanted to try, so he had switched directions and barreled right toward the sisters, snatching up Katrina, the pretty, if snarky, blonde one, and had tried to escape with her.
Although certainly not known for his bravery or his strength, Bob had not hesitated. He had cut in front of the kidnapper, raised the camera, and set off the dazzling "super flash" (Wade's own invention), which was enough to leave anyone blind for an hour. The kidnapper had staggered, releasing Katrina, and Bob had thrown the camera into his stumbling path, causing him to trip and fall flat on the sidewalk. In minutes LarryBoy had grabbed him and hauled him to the police station.
That evening, while Bob was heating up a frozen dinner, LarryBoy and Alfred had both shown up at his apartment and had asked if Bob would spend the weekend in Bumblyburg because they had important business to discuss. Not one to turn down a potential news story, Bob had packed his bags and joined them at the local airfield as planned, but to his surprise, he had been directed to a hangar not with the famous Larryplane, but Larry the Cucumber's private jet, which LarryBoy had ushered him on. Once onboard, LarryBoy and Alfred had told him the truth.
The silly, klutzy janitor, the millionaire tycoon and scion of Cucumber Enterprises, and Bumblyburg's brave protector were all the same person.
"Well, 'Larry' is like 'John Smith' among us cucumbers," LarryBoy had explained while Bob had reeled over how he had missed such an obvious connection. "I've never had to use a different first name, unless I'm undercover."
If that had not been alarming enough, LarryBoy and Alfred had the wild idea of making Bob a hero for Wibbleston, and they wanted to start training him here in the Larry-Cave.
Who in the world looked at a washed-up, washed-out newspaper editor who had always been in the background and thought he could be a crimefighter?
"I'm no hero." Bob muttered as Alfred passed him a red mug, "much less a super one."
"Unless you're born with superpowers, nobody really starts out that way," LarryBoy pointed out.
"Even then, those born with powers still have to be trained to do what's right and learn how to use their gifts to help others," added Alfred. "Often, I have witnessed a non-powered superhero take on a powered individual, and win, simply by having the better training."
"Like that time I had to stop little Gail Storm from accidentally destroying the carnival when she had a sugar rush from those twenty cotton candies she ate," LarryBoy remembered with a nostalgic chuckle.
Bob stared at him. "You could do that, but you couldn't bring me a cup of coffee without spilling it all over my desk?"
LarryBoy shrugged. "I was trained to be a superhero, Bob, not an office lackey."
"Then how in the world did a janitor become the caped cucumber crusader of Bumblyburg?"
"Technically, I was already a superhero before I started working for the paper," LarryBoy replied matter-of-factly. "Alfred here said the job would be a great way for us to stay informed about what's going on in town."
Bob looked from him to Alfred, dubious. "But a janitor?"
"It was the only available job that he was qualified for," Alfred answered with a shrug.
"Besides," said Larry, "even before I was a superhero, I was the incredibly wealthy heir of Cucumber Enterprises. I wouldn't be able to be LarryBoy on a janitor's salary — which actually isn't that low, because people will pay you big bucks to clean up messes for them, but you know what I mean."
"But how did it happen?" Bob pressed. "No offense, but I never expected LarryBoy to be… well… you."
"I get that a lot," LarryBoy answered breezily. "Or I would, if more people found out my secret identity."
"So, how…?"
LarryBoy laid his cocoa aside. "Well, off the record, it went a little something like this…"
As golden light from the setting sun fell across his spacious bedroom, Larry the Cucumber rummaged through a box which he had stored in his walk-in closet, pulling out sundry articles of clothing only to toss them onto the carpet behind him.
"Larry the Cowboy?" he considered, holding up the brown felt hat which he had worn for Cowboy Camp several years ago, but he sighed and threw it like a Frisbee onto his bed. "No… Larry the ceiling fan?" — he held up a pair of pompoms and a green handheld megaphone with CEILING written in white letters on the side. "Yeah, right. Larry the World War One Flying Ace?" — he picked up an aviator's helmet and a red scarf, turned them over in his invisible hands, then, sighing again, let them drop by his feet.
"Oh, I'm not going to find anything good to wear at this rate, Alfred!" he complained to his companion, who stood just outside his closet with a feather duster. "What's good is being a millionaire if you don't even have the clothes you really need?"
"How about going as a Bible character?" Alfred suggested, stooping to pick up a curly clown wig which Larry had already discarded. "At the first church that I attended after I moved to America, we were allowed to dress up as Bible characters for our harvest parties — that was our alternative to Halloween," he added in explanation. "One year I went as Jonah and took a plush whale with me. The other church members thought it was quite a lark!"
"But this isn't a Halloween party," Larry reminded him. "This is a Purim party. My first Purim party, ever. It has to be memorable, Alfred."
"I'm sure whatever costume you choose will be fine, Master Larry," Alfred said gently, folding a pair of brown lederhosen which had been tossed onto Larry's bean-bag chair. "Purim isn't about the act of dressing up itself but celebrating how God protected the Jews during the events recorded in the Book of Esther."
Larry stopped his rummaging and spun toward Alfred, wearing a serious mien which he rarely used outside of trips to the dentist.
"You know that, and I know that," he said, "but that doesn't stop everyone from expecting goofy Larry the Cucumber to mess everything up, like he always does."
"I'm sure they don't—"
"They do," he insisted, and frustration strained his voice. "I overheard Tom and Rosie Grape joking about how they should start a betting pool to see how long it takes for me to set something on fire."
Alfred blinked at him, caught off guard, but quickly recovered.
"Tom and Rosie are a pair of young wisecrackers who are always trying to one-up each other. You can't take everything they say seriously. Their father is the one who personally invited you; clearly Pa Grape doesn't think you'll destroy the church."
"He was just trying to be nice," Larry grumbled. "He invited everybody to the Purim party, so he didn't want me to feel left out. If he could get away with not inviting me, he probably would have."
Alfred narrowed his eyes. "You know perfectly well that Pa Grape isn't like that."
Larry looked away. "Not on purpose, maybe."
With a sigh, he turned and hopped over to the large, paneled window, gazing out at the setting sun beyond the treetops which lined his vast property. Deep shadows stretched across the great lawn, nearly reaching the patio beneath. Normally, Larry liked the pretty colors around sunset time; he would watch the changing kaleidoscope of clouds making their way through the sky or admire the golden light falling on his mansion or measure how long it took the shadows to move toward his bedroom or, in the summer, squint for those pinprick points of light which meant the fireflies were out and waiting for him to catch them, but the weight of his troubles distracted him tonight.
A costume party at the church to celebrate a biblical holiday sounded like a lot of fun (as long as nobody popped balloons around him and triggered his childhood phobia). The Purim party had been Pa Grape's idea from the start; he was something which Alfred called a Messianic Jew, or a Jewish Christian, although Pa Grape referred to himself as "a complete Jew who worships the Ultimate Jew." He and his family had joined their church a few years ago, and recently he had started offering to teach Bible classes through the lens of Jewish culture. Last December, he had thrown a Hanukkah party in the church's basement, inviting any interested churchgoers to celebrate a holiday which Jesus Himself enjoyed ("as seen in John 10:22-23," Pa had said). It had been a great success, and so Pa had been allowed to host more parties.
With the Purim party, everyone was encouraged to dress up in fun costumes and enjoy the food and karaoke that would be provided. Rosie Grape, Pa's daughter, had explained that dressing up was tied to the idea of how Esther hid her identity as a Jew after entering the king's palace, although Pa insisted it had to do with how God's miracles can be hidden in the actions of men. Whatever the reason, it seemed like a great holiday tradition, and Larry had been looking forward to putting on a super-duper costume and belting out his favorite Groovy Brothers' songs.
…At least until he had overheard what Tom and Rosie had said about him at the church last night.
To be fair, they had not known he was listening; they had been joking around with their cousin, Esther Green, who had been helping them decorate a classroom in the church's basement for the party. Larry and Alfred had been attending the men's weekly Bible study, and there had been an unfortunate accident involving a bag of Cheetos and the grape soda which the junior pastor had brought for the snack table.
"Only you, Larry," a few of the men had sighed as Larry had hurried out of the classroom to tend to his now sticky, grape-scented, cheese-dust-covered turtleneck sweater in the bathroom. Alfred had offered to help, but Larry always felt funny about letting his butler tend to him in front of his non-rich friends, and so he had insisted on cleaning himself up.
Larry had just happened to be passing by the room where Tom, Roise and Esther were when he heard his name, and he had stopped to listen.
"Maybe we should child-proof everything so ol' Larry doesn't hurt himself," Rosie had laughed. "Bless his heart, but he's likely to trip and cut his head on a table corner."
"Or accidentally stick his fork in an outlet," Tom had returned.
"Or maybe wind up in the punch bowl again."
"Maybe we should buy about ten more fire extinguishers before the party, huh?"
"And have the fire department on speed dial!"
"Well, that's probably why the board of deacons made sure all the classrooms have a phone with an emergency-call button!"
Their snickering speculations about Larry had grown and grown until they were preparing for a full nuclear disaster. At last Esther had cut in to scold her cousins.
"Now, be nice! It's not like Larry can help being like that!"
She had meant to defend him, but to Larry it had felt like salt on a fresh wound. Still smelling of grape soda, he had withdrawn quietly and had hurried home without waiting for Alfred.
He had first thought to hide under his bed for a whole year, but he soon realized that the best way to prove Tom, Rosie and the rest of his friends wrong was to wow them at the party that weekend. The first thing he needed, in his opinion, was a good costume, something that looked cool and made him feel cool, and which would not trip him up and send him hurtling into the punch bowl. Something that made his friends go, "Wow, is that Larry? He's a swell guy!" Once he found that one perfect costume, then he would have a real chance at getting through the party without embarrassing himself.
"But how can I find a cool costume in all this?" he exhaled aloud, tearing his eyes off his spacious lawn to glance wearily over his shoulder at his closet. "Everything I own is just… silly."
"You don't have to change yourself just to please others, Master Larry," Alfred replied, tidying up a pile of shirts. "If God made you silly, then embrace it and use your silliness to bless others. Why should you fight against the real you?"
"It's a Purim party, Alfred," Larry retorted. "You're supposed to hide the real you."
He slumped against the window, resting his green head against the cool glass.
"Why can't I be like the Scarlet Pumpernickel in the movie we saw last week?"
"That's Scarlet Pimpernel," Alfred corrected.
"To-may-to, to-mah-to," Larry pouted. "He could hide the real him super easy, but the real him was somebody cool. Everybody thought he was just an empty-headed dandy who couldn't speak French, and even his wife was fooled, but the real Pumpernickel Bread was a daring hero who rescued aristocrats from getting guillotined in France."
But I'm the opposite, Larry said to himself. The real him was still a silly cuke who acted more like a kid than an adult, and everyone would keep laughing at him if he did not find a way to stop them.
Spinning (and leaving behind smudges where his face had rested against the window), Larry charged for his calm butler.
"Alfred, you got to help me! You just got to! I need a fresh slate to show that I'm more than just a goofball. Out with the old cuke who crashes into the party snacks, and in with the new!"
Alfred leaned back, considering his desperate plea. "Well… within reason… I suppose we could come up with something adequate. Each of us amount to more than just a few quirks, so perhaps we can draw out your other outstanding attributes."
Larry leapt with grateful delight. "Now you're talking! So, where do we start?"
Alfred hopped over to store the freshly folded costume shirts into the chest of drawers, and he spoke while he worked.
"My rule of thumb is to work from strength to weakness. Instead of focusing on what you can't do, Master Larry, turn your energy to what you can do, and what you like to do, and then slowly branch out from there. When I chose to go as Jonah, that was because his story is one of my favorite books in the Bible. Since I have a talent for sewing, I made my costume to be as historically accurate as possible, and I used a plush whale from the gift shop at the local aquarium, where I had an annual membership pass. You see? My strengths led to my costume."
Larry deflated.
"All I'm good at is playing arcade games," he complained, "but in the real world nobody cares about skee ball and shooting mini basketballs."
"Perhaps," Alfred said slowly, stopping in his work to give him an appraising look, "but now that you bring it up, you do have a proclivity for such things… I've often noticed your distinct toxophilite-like acumen for propelling diminutive projectiles and striking the desired target with mechanical precision."
Larry stared at him. "Pardon?"
"You have a good aim," Alfred translated, putting away the next shirt.
"Oh, yeah." Larry shrugged. "Comes from playing Tiddlywinks with my dad, back in the day."
"You're also fairly athletic," Alfred mused, leaning back.
"Me?" Larry stared at him. "I'm the second clumsiest cuke on the whole planet!"
"Only when you lose focus on your surroundings," Alfred countered, "but when it's something quite important, I have seen you step up to the challenge on more than one occasion."
"Yeah, right. Keep dreaming."
Alfred smiled. "Remember when that baby buggy rolled down the hill last month? You exercised a remarkable amount of speed and agility for the occasion."
Larry gave him a flat look. "But the mom had already taken the baby out before she lost the buggy. I was just chasing after an empty carriage without realizing it."
"Exactly, Master Larry. You heard a cry for help and jumped into the fray. You could have been called a hero under different circumstances."
"Goofy Larry, a hero," he scoffed, but a smile wiggled and stretched on his face despite himself. "The Green Pumpernickel."
"Pimpernel," Alfred corrected.
Being a hero sounded kind of nice, and he almost wished he could have been one, but that sort of thing was just a pipe dream for a silly, accident-prone cucumber, even one with millions of dollars..
Larry shook his head, pushing those frustrations aside. "How's all this helping me find something to wear for Purim, Alfred?"
"Perhaps we could design an original costume that will play to your strengths," Alfred suggested, going over to pick up an astronaut helmet which had rolled against Larry's bookcase full of comic books. "Something that uses your good aim and your athletic skills, like a circus performer or a policeman or Robin Hood or uh…"
He paused, searching for a fitting option. In lifting the astronaut helmet, he accidentally bumped into the bookcase, and the issue of Captain Berry which Larry had left out on one shelf slipped off and plopped onto the floor.
Glimpsing the brave berry on the cover, Larry lifted his head, a sudden idea rising.
"Hey! I know! How about" — he picked up a throw blanket and swung it around his shoulders, letting it hang like a cape — "a superhero?"
"Well!" Alfred brightened. "That could do nicely."
"I can't believe I didn't think of it from the get-go!" Larry laughed, spinning so that his cape fanned out. "Superheroes are so cool!"
"And you could make it part of your character to have good aim and to be athletic," Alfred put in.
"Great idea!"
Excited, Larry sprung toward the electric fan on his night table and turned it on, pretending he was up on a tall skyscraper, looking over his city while the wind whipped out his cape.
"And I'll have a cool name like Cucumber Man or Captain Cuke or Green Thunder or Cuke Storm or how about" — he struck a dramatic pose, wearing a confident smirk — "Super Larry?"
"Well, we have plenty of time to find a good name," Alfred said. His eyes glinted, getting in on the fun. "I could design a few toy gadgets for you to use — nothing dangerous, of course. You could do a few party tricks to amuse the other guests."
"Or impress them," Larry grinned.
He spun and leapt back, pretending to fight a bad guy — and he landed on the hem of his blanket. The floor slipped out from under him, and he struggled to keep his footing, but that only made him topple faster, and he crashed onto the floor.
"Ow!"
Alfred rushed to his side and helped him to sit up. "We'll work on your spatial awareness before the party."
Larry slumped forward, gazing at his nonexistent toes.
"Oh, who am I kidding, Alfred? Even if I do everything perfectly at the party, the moment I make one mistake, everybody will go, 'Oh, that's just Larry being Larry again,' and my cool costume will mean nothing."
Although usually formal, Alfred crossed over to sit on the edge of Larry's bed, placing himself across from his employer. He gave Larry the sympathetic look of an older brother who had always looked out for his younger sibling (which was basically what Alfred had always been to Larry).
"You can't control what people think or do, Master Larry," he said kindly. "All you can control is yourself. As long as you're trying your best and trying to please God, then you're in pretty good shape, no matter what anyone says about you."
"Maybe," Larry sighed. "But if I'm going to dress up as a superhero, then I don't want to blow it like I always do. Superheroes are supposed to be cool, not silly."
"There are a few superheroes with a silly theme, like Harlequin Boy and Clown Girl."
"But I want Larry the Superhero to be somebody worthwhile," Larry returned, leaning back until he plopped back onto the floor.
He stared glumly at his ceiling, wishing he could take some kind of pill that would make him suave and charismatic, like everyone would expect a real superhero to be. Once he showed up at the party, everyone would be keeping an eye on him, waiting for him to mess up, and that would make him nervous, and he would be sure to mess up then.
"Maybe I need a costume for my costume…" he cracked to himself — and he catapulted back up.
"That's it!" he cried, jumping to his feet. "Alfred, I need another costume!"
"So, that's a 'no' for being a superhero?"
"No, no, no! I'm definitely going to be a superhero. That is" — seeing Alfred's confusion — "I'm going to wear two different costumes! First, I'll show up in a regular costume, the kind everyone would expect silly Larry to wear, but then I'll change into my hero clothes!"
"What good will that do?"
"Don't you see?" Larry beamed, beginning to dance. "If nobody knows that Larry the Superhero is Larry the Cucumber, then it won't matter if I make a mistake! And if I do manage to get through the party without blowing up the church, then I can tell everybody the truth afterwards, and they'll see that I'm not such a goofball after all!"
Alfred stared at him, looking pale. (It was probably a good thing that he had remained sitting this whole time.)
"I am trying to think of all the ways this will possibly backfire," he said.
"No, no, this will be a win-win!" Larry laughed. "Two costumes, two different Larrys! And nobody has to know the difference."
Alfred let out a long breath. He looked like he really wanted to argue this, but he seemed to change his mind and reluctantly nodded.
"All right then, Master Larry."
Grinning, Larry started for the door. "Then let's go to Stuff-Mart and get to work!"
A/N: Wibbleston — Just as Bumblyburg and Puggsleyville are first mentioned in The Toy that Saved Christmas, Wibbleston is mentioned during the scene where Mr. Nezzer is trying to get rid of the heroes.
Ceiling fan — I can't take credit for that pun, haha. I saw a costume for that joke on Pinterest before, and it seems like a pun Larry might like. (It might make for a great silly song.)
Although we don't really have an idea of Esther's established character "behind the scenes," I like the idea of her being actually related to the Grape family in real life.
According to Wikipedia, the tradition of dressing up for Purim was originally influenced by the similar tradition of dressing up for Shrove Tuesday (Carnaval, Mardi Gras, etc..), but it was also linked to the themes of the Book of Esther, such as hidden miracles, hiding one's identity, etc.. On the AI Overview from Google Search, four different reasons are given, one of which is "The holiday celebrates a miracle that was disguised as natural events in the story. Dressing up can represent the idea that God's work is hidden in the actions of men."
Whatever the reason, it's pretty fun. My dad's bible college had been invited to a Purim party one year, which I got to attend, and the rabbi (I think) dressed up as one of the Things from The Cat in the Hat.