Author's Note: The song featured here is a parody of "The World's Greatest Criminal Mind" from the Great Mouse Detective.

I know that it's too soon to introduce Scarlemagne, but I feel it was necessary to introduce his bounty hunters. I have been thinking hard about it, and while Sleet and Dingo would've been the first choice for an Underground parody, I'm afraid I will not have them. Some of my reviewers aren't Sleet and Dingo fans, and I don't think they'd be a good fit here. The shapeshifting technology they use is too advanced for this setting. I hope you like who I've selected instead. Any and all comments are welcome.

Inside the trunk of a very large tree, there stood what used to be a shopping mall. It has been renovated however by a pack of mute apes of every kind. Their leader, a mandril mute in fine clothes, began playing on his piano. As he played and laughed, several masked figures in fancy clothes waltzed with each other. All the other ape mutes watched and a couple of them vocalized to the music.

"Allegro!" the mandril yelled out. "Allegro, my lords and ladies! Faster!" He kept laughing as he played faster and the masked people danced even faster. The mandril wiped off purple sweat from his brow and let it drip into a small perfume bottle. He played his piano at top speed and laughed his loudest volume psychotically while the masked people danced even more.

Just then, a large, two-headed eagle with a car on its back began to hover down. The mandril snapped his fingers and in an instant, all the masked people stopped dancing and fell into rows.

"We have guests." The mandril said as he stepped away from his piano. "You can come out now, you three. I did ask for you personally."

Out from the flamingo's car, three different mutes jumped out and landed right in front of the host. One was a weasel with purple-and-white fur, a brown fedora, a metal sniper rifle on his back, and a fang sticking out of his mouth. The second was a small, green duck. The last was a large polar bear with winter gloves and boots.

"Ah, the Hooligans. Fang, Bean, and Bark." The mandril greeted. "I trust you had a pleasant transport here."

"We were actually more surprised that you invited us here, Scarlemagne." Fang said. "You never call on bounty hunters like us."

"Well, normally, I don't." Scarlemagne said. "However, I have been presented with a small window of opportunity that's too valuable to let pass."

The duck, Bean, took a whiff in the air. "Hmm… I smell perfume."

"Bean!" Fang yelled at his small partner who immediately had his mouth covered by the silent polar bear.

"No, no. He is quite right." Scarlemagne said. He noticed one of his masked dancers collapsing to the ground, so he picked up a perfume bottle and approached him. "It's a natural fragrance. I made it myself, literally, from my own pheromones."

"You sweat that stuff?" Fang asked when Bark let Bean go.

"Yes. Did you know that mandrils have an influence over other primates? Well, as a mute mandril myself, my pheromones allow me to have complete control over other primates." He sprayed the bottle into the masked man's face and he sat back up. "But I only use it on a certain class of primate, the lesser ones." He removed the mask revealing the controlled individual to be a human man with a forced smile on his face. "Even a monkey has his standards. I renamed him Francis. Hahaha! He just learned the cancan. Go ahead, Francis. Show them." The human renamed Francis did as his master commanded scatting as he danced. All the while, Scarlemagne laughed again. "Never gets old."

"So that's why you're after humans? For a mind controlled army?" Fang asked.

"What else are they good for?" Scarlemagne asked. "My army and my wealthy allies have been delivering stragglers which come just about every other week. At this rate, I'll die of old age before I can have an army big enough to rebuild Las Vistas. Thankfully, I have just recently been given a report from the Mod Frogs saying they had a certain group of people that I have a great interest in."

"They found a group of humans?" Fang asked.

"No. They found… a human from a burrow. If I could get my hands on her, she can take me to the motherload of humans! Unfortunately, it appears that the burrow girl is more resourceful than we think since she managed to escape them."

"So you need us to find the burrow girl and bring her to you?" Fang asked. "Easy enough."

"That's not all." Scarlemagne said. "She is also accompanied by an assortment of allies, but three of them are of great interest to me. Three teenage hedgehog mutes. Two boys and a girl. One's blue, one's pink, and one's green. They're likely to be wearing necklace medallions in the shape of musical instruments. Bring them to me as well. Oh, and if you find an adult female hedgehog, bring her to me too. But no matter what, they aren't to be harmed in any way."

"Really?" Fang asked. "Why?"

"Because I said." Scarlemagne warned. "You have your targets. And I suggest you get to them, because the longer you keep me waiting, the more I'm going to have to make the bounty public. And you certainly wouldn't want competition, would you?"

"All right, Scarlemagne." Fang said. "Three (maybe four) hedgehogs and a burrow girl."

"YES!" Scarlemagne yelled out leaping back to his piano. "If there is a human out there, I want it dancing for me by dawn!" He cackled maniacally again before he cued his human-slave violinists. They played ominous music which the mandril sang his number too.

Scarlemagne:

From the hand that took the Newton Wolves' compliance

And rendered them in my employ granting their science

Tamed the Humming Bombers and the Scooter Skunks

It took a firm paw to handle those wild punks

But of all the creatures that I tame

The humans are my favorite game

One human at a time

Brought to me is all fine

But now, I'm all done thinking small

I want burrow people

And soon, those sheep'll

Help me to rule it all

Nobles:

No one greater, than you, sir

Take a whole army with a few drops of sweat

You're a leader we won't forget

Oh, Scarlemagne

Oh, Scarlemagne

Your praises, we sing

To Scarlemagne

To Scarlemagne

The once and future mute king

Scarlemagne returned to his piano and played a slow tune. "Thank you. Thank you." His face went from proud to both sadness and frustration. "But this kingdom isn't as perfect as I'm trying to make it. I've had quite an annoyance thanks to those thieving Freedom Fighters and their mysterious leader, Arbor." Everyone booed. "For years, those ungrateful rebels have been stealing from me and I can never really pin them down." After a moment of solace from his subjects, Scarlemagne returned to his sinister grin. "But that's all about to change. Once I have my human army, not even the Freedom Fighters will dare cross me again. ALL WILL BOW BEFORE ME!"

Nobles:

Oh, Scarlemagne

Oh, Scarlemagne

You'll find that burrow

To Scarlemagne

To Scarlemagne

Gerard:

To our once and future kind, Hugo

Once Scarlemagne heard that last word, he spit out his drink. Gerart was so caught up in the song, he had no idea what he said until he regretted it. All the other apes gasped jumping away from the orangutan.

"What… was… THAT?!" Scarlemagne asked angrily. "What did you call me?"

"I'm sorry, sir!" Gerard pleaded on his knees. "It was the heat of the moment!"

Scarlemagne interrupted him with his wild ape hoots while flipping backward. He then gripped Gerard by his collar and yelled at him. "DON'T CALL ME THAT AGAIN!"

"I WON'T! I SWEAR!" Gerard cried out.

After a few huffs, Scarlemagne regained his composure and brushed his hair back. "Well, Gerard, it seems you need to be taught a lesson."

"A… lesson?" Gerard asked in worry.

"Of course." Scarlemagne approached the Hooligans he hired. He placed his hand on Bean while Fang and Bark took a step backward. "Bean, would you mind showing Gerard here what you're famous for?"

"Okie, dokie!" Bean said. That's when he reached behind him and pulled out a classic-looking bomb, which was a black orb with a rope-like fuse sticking on top. The top of the fuse began to sparkle which worried everybody. Scarlemagne was the only one who wasn't worried. He took a few steps back while Bean slowly approached the frightened Gerard. "Once upon a time, I was once raised by Humming Bombers. They were fun. That's when I developed a love for boom-booms. But after I left, I lost access to the explosive nectar they harvest. So I had to make my own boom-booms. I have quite a lot of these."

"Don't ask where he hides them." Fang said as he went behind a pillar with Bark.

"W… Wait!" Gerard yelled.

"YIPPEE-KAI-YAY, LEROY JENKINS!" Bean exclaimed before he launched the bomb like a volleyball.

BOOOOOOOM!

After the explosion ended, everyone exited from their hiding places. They saw Bean standing in the middle of an ash-covered explosion site. Gerard was there too, but her was petrified by the impact. Scarlemagne approached him and brushed his shoulder.

"You learn your lesson yet, Gerard?"

"Yes… Scarlemagne, sir." Gerard said with a strenuous tone.

"Good man." Scarlemagne said gesturing for everyone to come back out. "Now, to ensure this incident doesn't happen again, I'll leave the rest of the number to the humans." With a snap of his fingers, the mind-controlled humans sung in the apes' place.

Humans:

WE'RE THE BOTTOM! YOU'RE THE TOP

WE CAN'T DENY YOU'RE OUR SUPERIOR

AND US, WE'RE MERELY INFERIOR

OH, SCARLEMAGNE

OH, SCARLEMAGNE

YOU'LL RULE EVERYTHING

TO SCARLEMAGNE

TO SCARLEMAGNE

THE ONCE AND FUTURE MUTE KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING

While Scarlemagne took in the end of that song, Bean clapped his hands. "Wow! You can't deny he's got class."

"Let's just go, boys." Fang said readying his sniper pistol. "We got three hedgehogs and a burrow girl to nab."

"All right." Kipo said gazing out of the crater that used to be her burrow. "The Oracle said we gotta follow the mega-monkey. Simple."

"Simple?" Manic asked. "Dude, this monkey must be a bazillion feet tall! There's no way we can catch it."

"Yeah. We're gonna need an army for that." Tails said.

Clank!

Clank!

The gang stopped their conversation to look at the other edge of the crater. There, they saw a bunch of large figures covered in fur. They were large cats wearing lumberjack clothes and tapping their ax blades on the rubble.

"Well, there's something you don't see every day." Sonia said.