by T Campbell and Comickook
Sixty minutes before the invasion, the signal alert had sounded, and Pig-Iron had grumbled into his quadruple-decker sandwich. Pig-Iron hated to leave a refrigerator unfinished.
Forty minutes before the invasion, Byrd Rentals had faked a tantrum, squawking and cursing in what he proudly decided was his best Donald Duck impersonation ever. No one would dare to follow him into his trailer and discover it empty.
Twenty minutes before the invasion, Chester Cheese had a difficult time pronouncing the word hoot.
Funny how much attention we pay to the trivial things. After the invasion began, Pig-Iron, Byrd, and Chester would spend a lot more brainpower wondering whether they’d live to see another day.
***
“Be warned, however,” the alternate Doctor Hoot said to the assembled Zoo Crew, “that the Nasty Menagerie, a malevolent mirror of your esteemed Zoo Crew, has become aware of your existence and will stop at nothing to stop you at all costs, before you can stop them. And rather than ‘stop’ up the flow between universes — in the sense of ‘stopping’ up a drain — they will likely come here and stop you all — in the sense of a boxing-ring knockout, as in Joe Frazorback stopped Marmoset Ali in the final round of–”
Pig-Iron had his hands over his ears. “Stop! Stop!”
The room fell silent as the gravity of the situation sank in. Captain Carrot finally broke the silence. “Tell us what you know,” he said.
“It would take days for me to tell you all that I know,” Hoot replied.
“Well,” muttered Byrd, “he sounds like Doctor Hoot.”
“Doctor who?” asked Chester.
“Give us the Clifford’s Notes, then,” the Captain went on. “Evil counterparts of us — each of us — with all our powers.”
“I’m still thinking of you as the kinder, gentler counterparts of them, but yes.”
“Huh. Like the Crime Critters.”
“You know of them?”
“Oh, yeah. They were the villains in a number of old Just’a Lotta Animals comic-books I drew.”
“Comic-books?”
“Your world has no comic-books? That is evil. Television? Movies?”
“Oh, the opiates of the masses. Yes.”
“No, Doctor Hoot,” Byrd replied to Chester.
“Who?”
“Hoot. Hooot. It’s kind of a rolling vowel, then a tuh at the end. You gotta ee-nun-ciate.”
Chester pursed his lips around his buck teeth and tried. A high-pitched whistle came out instead. Everyone turned to Chester.
“Nothing!” he said desperately. “I was just… admiring your… intelligence, sir…” Chester squatted with his arms around his knees and shrunk down to six inches tall, which wasn’t nearly as small as he wanted to be just now.
At the sight of the shrinking Chester, Hoot blinked owlishly. “That’s… that’s a very interesting variation. You can also grow, can’t you?”
Chester looked up and realized Hoot was speaking to him. “Oh. Uh… sure.” He expanded back to his usual four feet. “Big enough?”
The look on Hoot’s face told him it wasn’t. Hoot began to look more closely at the assembled Zoo Crew, and as he did so, he looked more and more alarmed. He turned to Yankee Poodle. “Where’s your ring?”
“You mean I’m married in your world?” laughed Yankee Poodle. “That’s rich! Who would I marry, anyway?”
“Th’ real stumper,” murmured Timmy-Joe Terrapin, “is ‘zactly who would go an’ get hitched t’ her.” He was learning to say these things just loudly enough so that the others could hear he was saying something, but not loudly enough to hear what. Pig-Iron had set an excellent example.
“Hoot,” said the Captain, “tell us whatever it is you’re not telling us.”
Hoot told them.
And the Zoo Crew’s meeting room — which was usually filled with little whispers or grumblings despite Rodney Rabbit’s efforts to keep order — got very, very quiet.
“You’re telling us,” said Rodney, slowly, “that this Menagerie has all the powers we do, plus the powers of most of the Just’a Lotta Animals…”
“The only one of you who looks to be evenly matched with his double is the one they call their pet!” Hoot howled, pointing to Pig-Iron. He turned to Fastback. “Do you at least carry knives in that shell?”
Timmy-Joe looked at his Captain like a rat caged in a sinking ship, but he received no reassurance from Rodney’s eyes. Rodney knew he was letting the group down by letting his own fear show. But he couldn’t help it. He also couldn’t help but wonder if this Hoot wasn’t evil, after all, and just softening them up for the slaughter. The real Hoot had never done half as much damage to their fighting spirit.
But no. Rodney believed him. Somehow, what Hoot was saying sounded familiar, like a forgotten dream.
“Everyone?” Alley-Kat-Abra said in a quiet voice that nevertheless commanded attention. “Something has crossed over. Something about the size and weight of the seven of us. Something… bestial.” Her words were punctuated by a thunderclap.
The Zoo-Viewer Crime-Puter alarm started whining. Somewhere in the world, a super-crime was starting. Probably, it was this Menagerie’s way of drawing the Crew out into the open. In other words, probably a trap. But they had to go anyway.
Rodney remembered something he’d thought an hour ago, about everything in this job being simple, and chuckled softly. It was good to laugh. It was good to know he still could.
***
Soaring through the skies of Earth-C, Doctor Hoot from Earth-Reverse-C marveled at the courage of the Zoo Crew as he flew alongside the Zoo Cruiser and the gliding Alley-Kat Abra, approaching the scene of the crime. Despite being severely outmatched in power and recognizing it to be an obvious trap set up by the Nasty Menagerie, the Crew’s determination to protect the innocent was as fierce as ever — a trait shared by the alternate universe’s Doctor Hoot.
“Brace yourselves, Zoo Crew,” Doctor Hoot advised, his voice steady over the comm. “We’re invisible to the naked eye, but not to treachery. Stay sharp.”
Before leaving the Z-Building, Hoot and the Crew had taken the precaution of employing the Hoot armor’s built-in cloaking device, amplified by Abra’s magic, to render them all invisible. An element of surprise was their only chance at taking the Menagerie unawares, since their imminent arrival was expected.
Below, the Nasty Menagerie was orchestrating a heist of epic proportions, targeting a train carrying a fortune in gold bullion. Katastrophe unleashed a tempest of dark magic, severing the gold-laden train cars with a crackle of energy. Ultra-Rabbit, muscles bulging, soared with a car in each paw, his heat-vision carving through metal like butter. Slashback, a blur of malice, rifled through the passengers’ belongings at breakneck speed. And Fantastidrake, with a flick of a switch, trapped the area within an invisible force-field in the shape of a dome.
Unseen and undeterred, the Zoo Crew and their unlikely ally closed in. Doctor Hoot’s armor, a marvel of inter-dimensional engineering, detected the dome’s presence.
“Hold up, team,” Hoot commanded, halting the Crew with a raised wing. “We’ve got an invisible barrier ahead.”
With a deft movement, he launched a glowing energy disk toward Fantastidrake’s device. The machine sparked and fizzled, its dome dissolving into nothingness.
“Only one guy could’ve outsmarted my ingenious stealth-field removal dome so easily,” Fantastidrake sneered, his eyes narrowing. “That meddlesome do-gooder Doctor Hoot must’ve crossed over to this universe, too!”
As she unleashed a bolt of mystic energy into the void, Katastrophe’s laughter echoed through the air, a sound as chilling as it was triumphant. “The energy of my counterpart calls to me like a homing beacon,” she cackled. Her spell struck true, dispelling the stealth field and revealing Hoot and Zoo Crew in all their heroic glory.
The blast was fierce, but Doctor Hoot’s armor bore the brunt of it, shielding Alley-Kat-Abra from the worst. Yet, the element of surprise had slipped through their paws.
Captain Carrot, ever the optimist, rallied his team. “All right, Crew, the jig is up! Let’s show these nasty knock-offs what the good guys are truly made of!” His voice was a beacon of confidence, even as doubt gnawed at him.
But Katastrophe was quick to respond, cackling madly as her magic conjured a force-field that ensnared the Zoo Cruiser, slowly constricting around it like a noose.
Swanky Poodle, poised to strike the death-blow to the Zoo Cruiser with a dazzling display in the form of a stars-and-stripes blast combined with a giant power ring-created energy-cannon, was thwarted by Alley-Kat-Abra’s own deft mystic blast. The feline sorceress, her focus split in twain, managed to target both Swanky and Katastrophe simultaneously.
Shaken but not deterred, Swanky Poodle arose cursing a blue streak as she aimed her next attack at Abra. Yet the clever cat had already vanished, leaving behind a conjured-up device that redirected Swanky’s own power, causing it to instead strike her grudging accomplice Katastrophe, who was still trying to recover from Abra’s previous attack.
Reappearing behind Swanky Poodle, Abra stripped her of her power ring with a swift levitation spell, following up with a masterful cat-fu kick. But before she could press her advantage, Ultra-Rabbit intervened with a blast of heat-vision and a gust of super-breath, snatching Magic Wanda from Abra’s grasp and encasing the heroine in ice.
As Katastrophe began to recover from Swanky Poodle’s power ring-amplified stars-‘n’-stripes blast, she began to conjure up an attack of her own. A tempest of mystic energy under her command whipped through the air, a maelstrom of magical power that sent Doctor Hoot and the Zoo Crew tumbling like leaves in a gale. As Katastrophe, the Sorceress Supreme, regained her footing, her spells grew wilder, fueled by Swanky Poodle’s ring-enhanced vigor.
“Bravo, Bast-Felina!” Ultra-Rabbit applauded, using Katastrophe’s preferred name even as he looked at her in a manner that she and the rest of the Menagerie knew all too well. Confident that nobody could have survived such a powerful assault, he believed their enemies had fallen as all others had before. “Your talents never cease to amaze. As always, you have served me well.”
Katastrophe, ever the sycophant, bowed low, her eyes glinting with a mixture of adoration and ambition. “Might I propose a retreat to our realm, where I can bask in the glory of your bed chambers, O mighty Ra?”
Ultra-Rabbit’s grin stretched wide, revealing a row of sharp teeth. “Your suggestion is as delightful as it is inevitable, Bast-Felina. Indeed we will,” he replied. The implications of his words hung heavily in the air, a testament to the twisted camaraderie of the Nasty Menagerie.
Iron Pig, the Pragmatic Powerhouse, chimed in with a snort. “Well, we better break out the ol’ card table when we get back home, folks. It’s gonna be a long wait while the Boss rewards the Spooky Sorceress for her loyalty. I’d say it’s gonna take at least four hours. Heck, it sometimes takes up to nine.” His comment drew a round of knowing nods from the rest of the villainous group.
As the storm began to dissipate, with the defeat of Doctor Hoot and the Zoo Crew all but certain, the Nasty Menagerie stood triumphant, basking in the glory of another victory.
“Come on, folks,” began Ultra-Rabbit. “Let’s go back home. This place is hardly worth our trouble any longer.”
Fantastidrake wasn’t so sure, but he also knew when not to interfere with the leader’s plans.
And with that, Katastrophe opened up a mystic portal that would lead the Nasty Menagerie back to Earth-Reverse-C.
***
The wreckage of the Zoo Cruiser lay scattered across the battlefield, a testament to the ferocity of the storm unleashed by Katastrophe. The Zoo Crew, battered but unbroken, emerged from the debris, all save for Alley-Kat-Abra, who remained encased in a block of ice.
Soon Fastback, his legs a blur, generated enough heat through friction to free Abra from her chilly prison. As she shook off the last of the frost, Captain Carrot gathered his team, his voice tinged with both concern and curiosity. “Okay, team, we’ve got one thing going for us. After a tempest like that, our dastardly doubles must think we’re pushing up daisies. But the million-dollar question is, why aren’t we?”
Doctor Hoot, his feathers ruffled yet his gaze steady, replied, “I managed to muster up a force-field at the eleventh hour. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep us from joining the choir invisible.”
Rubberduck pondered their next move. “We’re going to need an ace up our sleeve to deal with those villains. Five of them are males, right? So, why not recruit a certain reformed villainess? Someone who’s sworn to turn over a new leaf?”
Yankee Poodle raised an eyebrow, her stars and stripes shimmering with incredulity. “Hold on a second — are you suggesting we spring Siren Belle from the clink and juice up her powers again, just to give us a leg up on the Nasty Menagerie? (*) Are you nuts?”
[(*) Editor’s note: See Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew: Times Past: Song of the Siren Belle.]
“Why not?” Rubberduck retorted, his beak set in a determined line. “It would be her ticket to a clean slate at her next parole hearing. She could charm Ultra-Rabbit and his cronies, while we draw away the ladies. Then, out of Samantha’s reach, the eight of us could easily take down Swanky Poodle and Katastrophe.”
The Zoo Crew began to mull over the plan, the gears turning in their heads. It was risky, unconventional, and it just might work.