So We'll Go No More A-Roving, for Fear of Furry Monsters

newsmanfan

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Those better not be Canadian quarters.

*bell tolls* Yes! Score one for Ed. He only gets the chocolates if he knows the movie, though...

Wanda came in the straight hair wig that was the performer's trademark for a long long time.

Nafrisco must wait...we have a daredevil reality show and a corn maze to get through...mwah ha ha ha ha!

:concern: Hey, that was a pretty good maniacal laugh!

Thanks. I practice.
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The Count

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Dern, the only work I know Joe Bob from is his stint as host of Monstervision late late at night on TNT back during the late half of the 90's when I'd stay up that late out of habit because the wrestling would inevitably go past 11 PM/12 midnight and then there'd be either the TNT Robin Hood or Mortal Kombat series after that back when I was an undergrad.
The stuff I remember most was when Joe Bob was hosting his Monstervision Summer School classes. That's how I powered through the Beastmaster trilogy.
Speaking of trilogies, watched the Family Guy Star Wars parodies all strung together on TBS. *LOL.

Ooh... Maize maze, that's amazing. And we get another episode of Brake a Leg!? *Remembers to tune in since I don't have a tbone to record it.
 

newsmanfan

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Part Twenty-Five (I)

Rosamond ‘Rosie’ McGurk, younger brother to Thatch the Horrible, restrained the urge to pace; if he moved too much he risked spilling eighteen-molar-strength hydrochloric acid all down his back. His fur already had a pale spot where he’d had to douse himself in bleach to counteract an accident during rehearsal, and his topknot was short a few feathers. Worriedly, he gulped another Scrums antacid tablet, grimacing. Though the bottle claimed it was squirrel flavor, all he could taste was chalk.

“Okay! My nostrils are completely coated with Frackeline!” Gonzo announced, joining his assistant in the holding area; although the pen was still swiftly locked behind him, this time the monsters had escorted Gonzo through the corridors to the studio with something like admiration. He took a deep sniff, gasping at the fire along his nasal passages and down into his throat. “Waaaahhh! I love the smell of petroleum products first thing in the morning!” When McGurk looked confused, Gonzo sighed. “Never mind. Ready for your shot at the big time, kid?”

“Yahh, abbabba tibba,” McGurk agreed, trying to sound more positive than he felt. Well, that wasn’t entirely the case: he was positive he was going to come out of this missing at least a limb. Or a head.

“Okay, just remember, don’t put the barrel down, no matter what!” Gonzo cautioned. “Oh, hey, be careful with that. You could put a hole in your costume.”

McGurk stifled a yelp; a stray drop of the stuff had eaten through more than the spangled purple jumpsuit he wore tonight. Gonzo touched a hand to the monster’s trembling shoulder, which uncomfortably supported an old beer barrel full to brimming of the acid. “Don’t spill any more! I have carefully calculated the exact amount I’ll need to neutralize the red-hots! Too much or too little will send the whole thing up in flames!” At McGurk’s terrified eyebulge, the daredevil chortled. “Hah hah hah! Kidding, kidding. It should only flame up where the barrel touches your fur, no big deal, relax.”

“Unngaahhh,” the pink monster groaned.

“Hey! Gonzaga! Your act weel be ze last tonight!” Pew yelled, whirling to point somewhere other than Gonzo, smacking a stagefrackle, who reeled and crashed into John Lamb. “Pay attention when ah am talking to you!”

“Last?” Gonzo’s face fell, but then he realized the advantage. “Hey, that’s great! I bet all the other guys are so intimidated they don’t want to follow me!” He ribbed McGurk; the monster shuffled anxiously, somehow managing not to dribble. “Ha ha hah! The show’s only starting, and already we’ve got our competitors on the run!”

Rosie McGurk sighed, calculating exactly how many minutes that meant he’d have to stand utterly still to avoid any more burns…

“Make sure the cameraguy doesn’t zoom in so close tonight,” Snookie snapped at Pew. “I can’t get rid of these circles under my eyes!” Deep shadows made the host look like a raccoon with yellow felt.

“Eet es not mah fault eef you deed not get your beauty rest!” Pew growled in reply, and stomped toward one of the roof-support posts. “Makeup! Maaaakeuuup! Do somesing about ze eediot who stayed up doing ze parteh!”

“I wasn’t partying!” Snookie shouted as the director narrowly missed a nose-on collision with the post, veering off at the last instant to shoulder aside a sound tech instead. “My cot tried to eat me!” Irritated, Snookie stood still as a tiny goblin stood on the shoulders of another to reach the host’s face and dab some cold cream under his weary eyes. It wasn’t enough that these morons were working him into the ground; now he had to fight off suddenly aggressive furniture as well…

“This’ll be the night I take it all,” Montrose the Mouse claimed, smugly seated atop the small monitor in the holding pen.

“I don’t think so, cheese-breath,” Lamb muttered, flexing his hooves.

“Quiiiiiieet! Places! Plaaaaceeees!” Pew howled, and the crew scrambled to stay out of his way as he charged through the backstage area. The musicians on the sturdy platform suddenly surged into life, thumping and pounding out the theme song on a variety of garbage cans accompanied by trumpet and oboe. “Hey, I deed not say begin! You eediots! Camera one! Camera one! Where is ze host? Go, go, go!”

The studio audience finished finding their seats, cheering and snarling, clearly excited for the night’s performances. Snookie swiftly bounded onstage, grinning as his spotlight picked him out, grabbing a wireless mic from a soundfrackle as the monster scurried past. “Heeeyy! That’s right guys and ghouls, it’s time once again for the only show with a negative FCC rating for gratuitous body counts, it’s – Break a Leg!”

As the theme ended, one of the garbage can lids raised and a dirty orange Grouch protested: “Hey, c’mon! I’m tryin’ ta watch TV down here! Don’t make me come out there with last week’s litterbox scoopings!”

Snookie hurriedly smacked down the can lid, his smile frozen in place. “Heh heh, no comments from the peanut gallery, folks! Let’s say hello to our judges!” The camera feed flipped to the judges’ table as Snookie continued, “The only guy in a worse mood than that Grouch, Beautiful Day! …The world’s worst cheerleader, Behemoth!” Snookie consulted a cue card quickly. “Ah…and sitting in tonight, the world’s greatest glutton, Gorgon Heap! Shakey Sanchez seems to have gone AWOL.”

Something bumped around in the guts of both Hem and B.D., and both burped loudly, looked sheepishly at one another, then burst into chuckles. Snookie shuddered, then presented his game face to the camera once more. “Without further cries for help, let’s get right into the action! And action it is: up first, that master of maiming, John Lamb!” Lamb stepped into a pool of harsh downlight center stage, nodding grimly at the cheers and boos alike, and stripped off his wool coat to show off his well-muscled physique. “As you’ll recall if you haven’t completely destroyed your brain cells with overconsumption of Fwinkies, last time the judges imposed a requirement on all the performers that their acts tonight must include and involve hydrochloric acid and red-hot candies! How they use those elements is up to the individual contestants, but the more dangerous, the higher score they’re likely to receive from our judges! Remember, those of you with phones smarter than you are, vote for your favorite daredevil after their act! Limit of five votes or five hundred dollars per voter, whichever is greater. So! Let’s dive in and see what exactly gets broken! For Break a Leg, I’m Snookie Blyer, and this…is the one and only Lamb!”

“Lamb!” chorused a gaggle of Frackle groupies in the corner.

The sheepfighter went into a defensive crouch as an enormous turquoise-furred Thing with a fat, powerful alligator-tail, a wide-lipped toothy mouth, and gold-lamé boxing shorts jumped into the circle. The eight-foot-tall beast roared, shaking his fists at the audience, which went even wilder; apparently the monster was a known favorite, as the chant of “Tim-my! Tim-my!” echoed through the room. Suddenly, thin jets of fluid spurted up in a ten-foot circle around the two combatants. “The legendary Acid Sumo Ring!” Snookie exclaimed. “Well! By traditional rules, folks, whomever gets pushed out of the ring first…er…loses! And with a continuous spray of acid, courtesy of the fine monsters at Three Limbs in the Fountain, they’ll lose more than the match!” Cheers, catcalls, and whoops sounded from the audience as the fighters feinted at one another a couple of times, then crashed together, muscles straining, struggling to shove the other one back. The Thing’s tail swished too close to the fountain jets, and he roared in pain, thrashing forward; Lamb ducked the swing, tackling the Thing’s fat knees, but wasn’t able to bring it down. “Looks like an even battle! But what about the red-hots?” Snookie wondered. “If Lamb doesn’t figure out a way to work those into this fight, he could win it and still get a claws-down from the…oh.” A hail of tiny red candies poured down on the fighters from above, bouncing everywhere, and immediately the monster skidded, the footing in the ring sweetly treacherous.

“Mine’s better,” Gonzo assured McGurk, the two of them watching the action on the monitor. “I mean, look at that! Do they really think the voters will be impressed with that brash display of raw muscle and stupendous strength?” He shook his head confidently; McGurk eyeballed the Whatever’s scrawny, Spandex-suited frame with somewhat less certainty. “Hah! I’m twenty times as limber as that brawny brute!” Gonzo said, and proved it by windmilling both arms. “See? Flexibility! Mind over muscle! That’s what’ll win this, Rosie, not silly sumo moves! I am limber, I am talented, I am—“ He began windmilling his legs as well to demonstrate how very talented, and promptly went down in a tangled heap. “I am…tied in a knot... Rosie! Grab something and pull!”

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“Rules, everybody, rules!” Emily Bear called out, and the chattering, happy Muppets quieted enough to hear her. “Everybody going in gets one of these…” She held up a modified paintball rifle. “Which is loaded with five shots, so don’t waste them! It’s fluorescent ink, but it washes off, so don’t worry too much about getting hit by your friends. We’ve also modified it so it won’t hurt as much. Now if you get hit three times, you’re out of the game and have to leave the maze! The goal, however, is not to defeat everyone else…the goal is a golden pumpkin somewhere in the maze! First person or team to find it and bring it out without getting completely creamed wins!” She held up her hands at the excited hubbub this produced. “Now, you can enter and work in teams of two…but three hits goes for the both of you in that case, not each! If you get lost and want out, just whistle and shake the corn, and we’ll send the ref in to lead you out safely; but once out, you’re not going back in. Okay, who wants to try?”

The bear was overwhelmed immediately by pigs, chickens, and assorted Muppets clamoring for the chance to enter. Gina tugged at Newsie’s feathered sleeve. “Sounds fun! Want to try with me?”

“Er…what about the bonfire?” Newsie looked back at the pile of logs just now springing into bright and cheery life. Beau shooed everyone away from the edge of the fire, then hastily yanked off his conductor’s cap and stomped on it to put out the flames.

“We can snuggle there after we win! Come on, this’ll be great! Did I ever tell you I used to kick the older neighbor kids’ butts at Lazer Tag?” She grinned wickedly, and the Newsman sighed.

“All right, but I can’t really –“

“Great! Let’s go!” She led him to the haybale-stacked entryway; beyond the solar torches and flickering jack-o’lanterns there, the corn stretched off in near-darkness, with small lights placed at intervals to keep people from wandering into the thick walls of cornstalks. Newsie held tight to Gina’s hand as she accepted a paintball gun from Mrs Bear, passing another over to him.

“Uh…I’ve never shot anything,” he whispered to her as they stood in line; Muppets were being allowed into the maze every couple of minutes. Kermit and Robin stood just ahead of them, Robin without a rifle but with a tiny pad and pencil to track the maze as they went. Newsie thought that an excellent idea, and wished he had his reporter’s notepad.

“You navigate,” Gina whispered back. “Make a little mark at each turn, so we know which routes we’ve already tried. You let me worry about the other guys.”

The frogs bounded off around the first turn, quickly lost from sight and hearing among the softly rustling corn. Newsie stepped forward, wrapped in thought, and jerked back when an enormous hand barred his way. “Ack!” Looking up, he was further startled by the vast, shaggy head suddenly a few inches from his own. “Aaagh!”

“Um…cute costume, Sweetums,” Gina said, trying to figure out what the green pointy ears and green rubber nose were supposed to signify.

“Haw haw haw! Thanks! Uh, it’s okay, Newsman; it’s just me,” the troll said, lifting the rubber nose to show his own enormous pink one. “I thought a goblin would be a good Halloween costume, but I guess it’s a little too scary! Sorry I made ya jump!”

Newsie nodded, self-consciously loosening his hold on Gina’s waist. “Er…uh…you’re guarding the exit?”

“I’m the ref!” Sweetums said proudly, standing tall. “You get lost, you just shake those corns, and I’ll come find ya, haw haw haw!”

“Won’t be necessary, but thanks,” Gina said, smiling. “Ready, cutie?”

Newsie swallowed hard, but nodded, and the troll stepped aside, gesturing at them to enter the maze. Right behind them, Rizzo and Pepe jostled one another for next-in-line status. “Jou couldn’t hit the barn side of a broad already! Jou should go sit on the logs and warm up jour cold feets okay!”

“Cold feet? Who’s got cold feet? At least I can regulate my own body temperature, fishbrain!”

Gina leaned over to murmure to her nervous Muppet, “Stick close, and tell me if you smell anybody.” Together they hurried into the maze, taking the first left turn, then the next right, then the second left. The rows closed in around them, dry leaves whispering in the slight wind, darkness swooping down as they padded cautiously toward the small globe of light up ahead.

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Snookie gulped a glass of tepid water before the show returned from commercial break; he ignored everyone scurrying around him, though he kept an ear cocked for any sound of the crazy director careening too close. Frog, that tastes more horrible than usual. I hope they’re not tapping into the graywater lines now, he thought, doing his best to swallow it anyway. He could tell he was dehydrated: he was almost painfully thirsty, and his felt was dry and scratchy. No sleep, bland food, and now a lack of water…he could tell he was running on pure adrenaline. The surging crowd of slavering monsters just past the stage platform helped keep him alert, but he didn’t know how long he could maintain this pace before collapsing…and of all the places a Muppet did not want to show weakness, this would have to be the worst. He took his mic back as the musicians wound down their fanfare, and steeled himself to face the audience once more.

“And we’re back! Well, for you channel-surfers just joining us, veteran brawler John Lamb may have bitten off more than he could regurgitate as cud when he attempted the acid-fountain sumo match just before the break! Lamb won the fight but earned one claws-down from B.D. for twisting his ankle in the ring!” The cameras cut for an instant to the scowling ram backstage, standing proudly though his hoof must’ve been aching. All the monsters in the studio cheered; Snookie suspected some of them were just happy to see an injury. “Next up: the mold of gold, the fearless fungus, Mungus Mumfrey!” Snookie stayed well back from the feisty fungus as it lolloped onto the platform. “Mungus will attempt to catch every red-hot thrown at him by our expert candy-tossers, while balancing over this two-hundred-gallon tank of acid!” Two lumbering yellow-furred monsters wheeled out a giant fishtank. A few skeletons with fins were rapidly disintegrating. “Uh, guys…you were supposed to empty out the fish first!” Snookie winced as the audience roared its approval. A half-dozen Frackles of all sizes and amounts of teeth lined up facing the tank, and the camerafrackle moved in for a closeup of the fungus as it slithered up the tank and spread itself thin over the open top. The band broke into a low rattling drumroll, and Snookie retreated to the relative safety of the judges’ table.

“Say…is that Gray Poupon you’re wearing?” Gorgon Heap asked the host. Snookie yanked his coatsleeve out of reach, dividing his anxious attention between the judges and the bizarre stunt in the spotlight. He wanted to be far enough away that when the fungus collapsed into the tank, the splash wouldn’t hit him.

The fungus had other plans. It twisted and writhed, contorting itself to catch the candies which the throwers pelted at it; after a few rounds, the Frackles tried throwing far above or out to the side of the tank, forcing the fungus to strain itself to catch each one. When an entire bag of candy had been hurled, Snookie signaled the band, who played a gloriously disharmonious chord. “Amazing! But Mungus, how’re you going to get down from the tank?” The tank, in fact, quivered on the verge of collapse as the acid ate through the sealant holding the glass walls together. In reply, the stretched-thin organism shifted and globbed and incorporated all the candies it had caught into its amorphous body. “Uh, Mungus, buddy, you might not want to eat them all…” Hooting a sound akin to a workday lunch-whistle, the fungus turned bright red, glopped into a ball and shot straight up. Snookie jumped aside as the fishtank collapsed, acid gushing over the stage floor.

“Drainage!” Pew yelled, shoving a long-nosed blue monster toward the mess. Off-balance, the creature went down facefirst into the puddle; with a snorking gulp, he sucked all the acid into his snout. “Next act! Ze rodent es up next! Clear ze stage!”

Snookie shook his head as the sloshing monster was ushered quickly off the platform, his nose unraveling as he tried to hold it all in. “Heh heh, that was Droop, with a reminder from our sponsor, Scrums Antacids! When you need to neutralize your dinner fast, use Scrums! Now available in Juicy Compost flavor.” He looked at the judges while the tiny mouse was released from the holding pen. “How did that act sit with your stomachs, guys?”

“Stomach?” Gorgon muttered, and gave Hem a speculative look.

The large brown monster backhanded the purple-furred one from his chair. “Back off, bignose! --Well, Snookie, I thought it was creative, and even though I was really disappointed that the mold didn’t fall into the soup, I’ll give him a claws-up. He really stretched himself for that act!”

“He missed a couple of red-hots,” B.D. pointed out, grabbing one of the throwers by the arm and yanking her into the air to show off the two candies retrieved from the stage floor. “I say claws-down!”

“Have to agree with Day-O here,” Heap said in a gravelly voice. “I liked the idea of the act, but grubble argha brakka…”

“Can you not eat and talk at the same time?” B.D. demanded. “Savage!”

“Sorry,” Heap muttered, spat out the gravel, and finished: “I’m not happy the fungus wasted two perfectly good candies! Claws down!” He snatched the dangling Frackle from B.D., swallowing the missing candies and the terrified stagehand whole.

“Well, Montrose! We’ve seen two acts so far with technical difficulties shaving points off their scores! Think you can break the streak?” Snookie asked the mouse. Montrose sniffed disgustedly.

“In my sleep! Or rather, in their sleep! Beasties and jugularmen, I give you…the Mouse’s Meanderings of Mumbleosity!” Snookie stared, astonished, as the mouse pulled out a pocketwatch and began swinging it gently at the judges, the audience, and the camera which edged in for a close-up.

“Do you really think anyone is going to fall for that again?” he asked the rodent, who ignored him.

“Wow…that’s…marvelous…” Hem mumbled, eyes whirling.

“I give…the mouse…four claws up…” B.D. mumbled, swaying in his seat.

“Mouse…tasty…” Heap mumbled, drooling all over himself.

In the holding pen, John Lamb smacked the monitor, nearly knocking it off its stand. “Man, that’s cheating! If I was up there right now I’d be makin’ some mousetail stew!”

“Cheeeeateeers…neeevvverrr…wiiinnn,” Wyatt Slurp said, poking one eyeball over the top edge of the stage. His psuedopod maneuvered a pistol onto the platform, and Gonzo saw the snail’s eye narrow as he took aim. BANGTHOCK!

“You didn’t shoot him?!” Gonzo exclaimed, but Lamb laughed.

“Nice shot, little hardshell,” the ram growled, then stalked over to the water cooler to frighten it into purifying the next cupful for him, using a glare he’d taught Chuck Norris. Gonzo rushed to the monitor, relieved to see the mouse still standing…although his watch no longer swung at the end of the gold chain in his paw.

The audience murmured, waking up. B.D. grunted, “What the—hey! You’re not using acid!”

“Or red-hots!” Hem growled.

“Waiter!” Heap called.

A skinny, furry blue creature with a towel draped over one forearm rushed over. “Yes sir! Yes sir! Have you made a selection? The soup is very tasty today!”

“I’ll have the mouse soufflé,” Heap rumbled.

“Very good sir.” The blue monster tucked the menu under one arm, but before he could run off, Heap gestured at the quivering Montrose.

“You can skip the soufflé part. I’m in a hurry; this is a working lunch.”

“Uh, of course, sir.” The monster grabbed Montrose by the tail, running offstage through a swinging door. “Hey Harry! One rodent to go – stack it and rack it!”

“I didn’t know we had a café,” Gonzo mused. “Do you think I could get a walnut-pastrami on a pita with fried avocado?”

“Ubba nah ahdidda,” McGurk shrugged.

“The trick-shooting of the world’s fastest snail, Wyatt Slurp, coming up after the break! But first, a special performance by Gree-Lo Orange! Stay with us!” Snookie said, grinning until the feed cut, and then slumping into a chair stage left, clear of the performance area, while the techs hurriedly set up the audio equipment for the star monster pop singer. He gulped more cloudy water, borrowed a smear of lip balm from the makeup goblin, and glared at the waiter delivering a covered platter which shook and banged to the big purple guy at the judges’ table. “Nice. He gets a catered lunch. What do I get? A dry mouth and a foamache!” Irritated, he looked at his watch, counting down the minutes until this debacle went off the air once more and he could possibly get a few hours of sleep…assuming his cot had been let out to roam free and the floor of his cell didn’t animate next.

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The Newsman crouched at a corner of the narrow pathway, the tip of his nose poking around it. He took a deep whiff. “High or low?” Gina whispered, huddled just behind him with her rifle on his shoulder.

“Low,” Newsie muttered back. “Feathers.”

“Excellent. Stay still.” Gina leaned around the corner formed by the sharp intersection of thick rows of dry stalks, aimed the way her Muppet’s nose pointed, and squeezed the trigger. The thoop of the shot was followed hard by a startled squawk, and then a flurry of protests from a chicken. Gina pulled Newsie back into the corridor of corn, and they hustled away before a return attack could arrive. “You are good at this,” she told him, stopping around the next turn for a breathless kiss.

“We don’t seem to be any nearer the pumpkin,” he objected, though he enjoyed the kiss as well as the praise. Twenty-odd minutes from their entrance into the maze, Newsie had pinpointed four competitors…five now, counting whichever chicken had just been splattered with dye. However, he’d lost track of the turns with all the backtracking and sudden changes in direction that Gina took to keep them away from anyone else armed with a paintgun.

“Trade me?” Gina asked, offering him her now-empty rifle. He was certainly agreeable; he couldn’t bring himself to shoot anything. Of course, it wasn’t as though he could see anything well enough to try…plus, he had the strong suspicion that if he attempted it, gallons of paint would pour out of thin air over him. Gina loaded a paintball into the chamber and grinned at Newsie. “Okay…I estimate we’ve covered about eighty percent of this place. Which means either we’re very close, or someone else beat us to it and is trying to sneak out right now. In which case…” She thumped the side of the gun.

“How can you tell we’ve been through that many rows?” Newsie peered around at the endless, softly shifting stalks; each corridor was little more than a walking path, and taller even than Gina. He was glad he wasn’t alone out here; except for the solar globes illuminating the paths every ten feet, the night above and around them seemed black and ominous.

“Bonfire’s that way, and we keep moving away from it no matter how many turns we take,” Gina pointed out; she could see the glow of the fire just above the tops of the tall stalks. Newsie shook his head.

“Then I guess we keep going.” He sniffed. “I don’t smell any pumpkins, though.”

“Well, Mrs Bear didn’t say it was a real pumpkin. Golden…could be foil-wrapped chocolate? Or painted plastic? Or real gold!”

“I hope not,” Newsie sighed. “I had a really bad day the last time I touched a bar of gold bullion.” He allowed her to tug him along, trying not to let the soft rustles all around them unnerve him…it was probably just the wind…

The low-slung, toothy thing skittered through the corn, careful to stay downwind of the Muppet with the sensitive nose. Slurg had been lucky, back in the farmhouse: that candle had smelled so strongly it negated everything else, but now that the walking piranha of a monster knew the Muppet was sniffing things out, it had to be careful. If only it could figure out some way to separate the unfelted female from its quarry; she seemed too good with that gun to risk a direct assault!

A hue and cry went up a couple of rows over. “Cheating! Hey! Cheating!” The monster froze, gesturing for its fellows to fall back. Sweetums stomped down the vegetative hallway, heading for the commotion.

“Cheating? Who here would cheat?” Walter wondered aloud, lifting his safety goggles to peer around, trying to get a glimpse of the offender. He was promptly splatted for the second time; turning, he saw the Chef waving cheerily at him before vanishing around a bend. Glumly the young Muppet examined the stain on his fleece pullover, then with a chuckle he plucked a packet of candy corn he’d won earlier from a pocket and lobbed it high. Racing to the same turn in the path, he saw the Chef bent over to poke the candy scattered in his way, half-expecting it to give him some trouble. The Swede jumped at the impact of the paint glob on his rear. With a war whoop, Walter scampered away, no closer to the prize but elated at his retribution.

“No fair crawling under the corn!” Sweetums roared, hefting a rat in green overalls high and frighteningly close to his ponderous lips.

“It wasn’t me!” shrieked the rat. “I swear it wasn’t me! It was Rizzo!”

Sweetums, about to hurl the rat out of the maze, paused, tilting his head to squint at the tiny thing wriggling from his thumb and finger. “What? Rizzo?”

“Dat’s right! Rizzo! It was Rizzo! He – he’s da one dressed like dat pirate!” the rat gasped, trying to slow his frantic heart before it popped out of his mouth. “I saw ‘im sneakin’ troo da corn just over dere!”

“Huh!” Sweetums snorted, absently tossing the rat over his shoulder (and over twelve rows of thickly planted corn to land on a haybale at the entry, where he fainted) to go after the actual offender. Rizzo, hearing this, scrambled for dear life, trying to keep ahead of those tromping feet; Sweetums caught sight of him, and pounded an aisle of dry stalks into the ground in his haste. “C’mere, you!”

“Aaaagh mother!” Rizzo screamed, veering into the trail and zipping between Gina and Newsie. Startled, the couple let go of one another and fell to either side as the troll crashed past.

Newsie, suddenly smelling dirty wet fur, panicked. He didn’t have time to consider whether Sweetums was the source; he just needed to get far away now! Gasping, he dove into the corn. Opposite, Gina staggered, tumbling into the brittle stalks; when she righted herself, she couldn’t hear or see Newsie anywhere. “Newsie?” she called softly, unwilling to betray her position in case one of their competitors was near. She moved tentatively along the path, trying to see any movement in the wall of corn. “Newsie? Where are you?”

Slurg elbowed the hefty goblin, waking it from its doze. “He’s alone! Now! After him!”

The monsters slithered, crawled, and lumbered into the thicket of grain the way the Muppet had run.

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Camilla muted the commercials, gazing bleakly at the fuzzy screen while she waited through the musical number by some chunky orange monster with heavy horns and a couple of backup dancers dressed in some kind of white armor. Outside, she could hear distant singing, laughter, camaraderie. Why, oh why wasn’t Gonzo here with them all? He’d have loved the bonfire…she realized she actually wished he was here to fire-walk the highest logs in the pile. Sighing, the chicken lifted the mute to watch that strange snail. There was a new judge tonight; Camilla wondered if that boded well or ill for Gonzo’s status. Whichever way they voted, it still wouldn’t help her honey with whatever horrible stunt he had planned. The last time Gonzo had tried playing with red-hots, he’d burned all the hair out of his nose…and his ears, and his tongue…

The sound of Sweetums roaring, and assorted screams, told her the party was in full swing. Camilla fluffed her feathers against the chilly night, plumping the blanket more over herself, and watched in staid silence while the snail perched atop a dunking platform over a tank of presumably acid, daring a bunch of scraggly-looking monsters to rush up and press the button which would send him to a fate worse than escargot. She blinked, both impressed and worried as every single monster was shot down with a blast of red-hot candies shot from a Gatling gun in the snail’s foot before they could reach the tank. These performers are all good enough to beat him…so he’s only going to go bigger, bolder, deadlier! She shivered, impatiently clucking as the host took the judges’ reactions while the snail somehow escaped the bubbling bath, although his gun fell in and frothed horribly. Oh Gonzo, don’t do this! Just come home!

But the host introduced him, and there was nothing the chicken could do to stop it.
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newsmanfan

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Part Twenty-Five (II)

“Gimme a C, a bouncy C!” Gonzo yelled at the band. Obligingly they played something upbeat and carnival-themed. With a flourish, Gonzo threw aside his cape, revealing the special bodysuit he’d made for this act: hundreds of red-hots had been glued onto the shiny red Spandex from toe to chin. One of the judges had eaten his unicycle before rehearsal, so he’d had to scrap that part of it, but he balanced on tiptoe on a four-inch-square platform high above the stage, two spotlights centering him in their glare. “People of earth, monsters of the underworld, behold! The acid in the barrel atop the head of my colleague below is not just acid – it is eighteen-molar-strength acid, and only a coating of petroleum-fossil-bug jelly is keeping it from completely melting the barrel and my furry assistant right now!”

“Gakk!” McGurk gulped, shaking. A droplet of the acid splashed from the movement, and he winced, doing his best to stay still. His knees quivered.

“I will neutralize the acid with these red-hots! This chemical masterpiece must be exactly calculated and timed perfectly, or I will dissolve when I hit it! Observe, as I begin…the Reaction of Red-Hot Wreckage!”

Back at Bear Farm, Camilla squawked and flapped wildly, zooming around the low-roofed coop, banging her head and landing ungracefully in front of the TV again. Dizzy, she bawked a soft protest, but her Whatever could not hear.

McGurk waited anxiously, trembling, watching as high above, the Great Gonzo tossed a handful of red-hots into the air. With a crazed cackle, he twisted his head almost entirely upside-down to catch each falling candy in his nostrils, then with a mighty breath sucked them all inside his nasal cavity and then repeated the trick for a second and a third time, managing to contort himself enough to catch every red-hot. McGurk fully expected to hear the crack of a broken neck, but that never happened; instead, Gonzo extended his arms like a show diver, bounced up and off the tiny platform, and hurtled toward the barrel McGurk strained to hold up for him.

“Wah-ha-haaahh!” Gonzo cried, heaved a breath, and spat out a glob of half-melted red-hots; it shot down into the barrel with a splash and a hiss. Only then, in his moment of certain triumph, two seconds before he hit the liquid, did he notice some of the candies on his bodysuit had melted under the hot spotlights. “What? Oh no, I needed those! This suit was perfectly calibrated to – whoa-ho-waaaaauuuugh!”

McGurk yelped in pain, the splashes spattering hotly over his fur when Gonzo plunged into the barrel. A thick cloud of steam whooshed up, obscuring the performers. Snookie shielded his eyes, unwilling to see the result. The judges leaned over their table, fascinated. The audience held its collective breath.

“Tah-daaaahhh! Thank you! Thank you!” Gonzo shouted, standing in the barrel; the remnants of his bodysuit fizzled as they dissolved, leaving a naked, joyous, and smoking Whatever. Then the barrel fell apart, and McGurk collapsed with a groan, and a startled Snookie fumbled for words as a stagemonster hastened to throw a blanket over the exposed daredevil.

“I…uh…well! That was positively…revealing! The Great Gonzo, folks!” Snookie stammered, and applause broke out. “That has to be the most painful advocating of nudity onstage I’ve ever seen…looks like his assistant is trying to get more into the act and out of his skin, as well!”

McGurk, with a gurgled shriek, leapt upright and away from the crumbling barrel. Most of his fur was gone. Embarrassed, he threw his hands over front and rear and sidestepped offstage. Gonzo, still grinning and waving at the audience, had to be forcibly dragged off by the monsters; he knew his act had topped them all, even if he’d had to unexpectedly go topless to pull it off…and bottomless as well. “Oh, don’t be such prudes!” he scoffed at the Frackle trying to knot the blanket around him. “Felt is beautiful! Fur is natural!”

All three judges gave him a claws-up. Gorgon Heap even waved a mousetail like a pennant. Gonzo grabbed a shaken Rosie’s shoulders. “Do you hear that? They loved us! No one can touch us! Ahhh ha ha ha ha!”

McGurk stared at the Whatever. Calming slightly, Gonzo nodded at him. “Hey, I really like the haircut, too. Keep the image fresh; good thought!” McGurk reached up a startled hand to feel the complete lack of feathers atop his head; behind him, a Frackle gasped and averted eyes, and hurriedly McGurk covered himself again. Still out of breath but in performer’s nirvana, Gonzo beamed at the other daredevils giving him ugly looks; all he could hear was the crowd still going wild. “Ah, Camilla, baby, I sure hope you saw this! Dream big, dare big, win big! Woo hooo!”

-----------------------
The wolf-nosed thing was ready, and when the goblin jumped up and startled their bird-costumed prey, he stumbled backwards right into the waiting claws. “Hey!” the Muppet protested, but before he could scream, Slurg thumped his head, and the Muppet slumped unconscious.

“Hurry, hurry!” Slurg panted. The goblin and the wolf-thing grabbed limp arms and dragged the partygoer through the hole they’d cut in the corn. In seconds they were out of the maze; in under a minute they’d reached the root cellar beneath the old farmhouse. As Slurg threw open the storm door so the others could drag the heavy Muppet down inside, the wolf-thing began singing happily:

“Buggawuggaboog, tugga zergel bergel, tuggawuggaboog, tugga snergel snort—“

“Hey! Shut up!” Slurg snarled, smacking the wolf-nose. “You wanna give us away? Now move it!”

“Sorry,” the monster muttered low. “I’m just happy; ain’t you?”

“I’ll be happy when we get this load to the boss,” Slurg snapped. “Now heave!” He glanced around worriedly as they dragged the helpless Muppet into the cellar, where a recently dug tunnel provided access all the way to the Hudson, where a garbage scow waited to ferry them all home. No one seemed to have noticed the kidnappers. With a toothy grin, Slurg shut the cellar door.

The spectral dragon’s eyes narrowed to pinpricks of blue light. He’d no idea what those creeps were up to, but clearly they hadn’t been invited guests. “I hate party crashers,” he muttered. Vowing to teach them a lesson if they stuck their noses out here again, he sauntered upstairs to chat with the resident ghost, a charming old sheep who’d died peacefully after the shearing of ‘fifty-eight. She seemed a nice enough old gal, even if her mind was a trifle wooly.

---------------
“What are jou doing! I did nothing! Nothing!” Pepe yelled.

“I’m innocent! I been framed!” Rizzo cried, his voice cracking.

Sweetums scowled at the two tiny pirates, one clutched in each massive hand. “Well all I know is one a’yuh was cheatin’!”

Rat and shrimp immediately pointed at each other.

“Him!”

“It was him okay!”

Snorting in contempt, the troll swung them both over his head and released them; they screamed all the way down, landing near the bonfire. With a low groan, Rizzo wobbled to his feet. Seeing Pepe a foot away, he snarled, “Tanks! Tanks a bunch! I was dis close to da cheese pumpkin!”

“Jou was nowhere nears it! If jou had not messed it all up, I was about to –“ Pepe stopped. “The what pumpkin?”

“Cheese! Cheese! You hoid her: a golden pumpkin! Every rat knows perfectly well what dat means! It mighta been made a’ cheddar, or Gouda, or maybe Cheshire…and now I’ll never know tanks to you and your cheating!” Rizzo slumped, despairing, gazing back at the wall of corn, but Sweetums tromped out, sending a very direct glare their way. Clearly, sneaking back in wasn’t going to be an option.

“Hmf! Cheese, ha! Jou has no ideas what jou are talking about already. And I would have had all that gold in my hands if jou hadn’t been eating jour way through the maze okay!”

“Oh, yeah, sure! Like you weren’t –“ Rizzo suddenly noticed splotches all over the prawn. “Hey, wait a second! You were out anyway! You got hit more dan tree times!”

“I did not!”

“You did so! Look! Dat’s one, two, tree, four –“

“It does not count if the same person hit me more than once, okay!”

“It does too! A hit is a hit!” Rizzo cackled, then, curious, asked, “Who hit ya dat many times, anyway? Who we got dat’s dat good a shot?”

“It was dark. I did not see them, okay?” Pepe grumped, brushing the dirt from his breeches. The pair began to trudge toward the bonfire.

“Dose look like fish imprints! Did Lew smack ya to kingdom come?” Rizzo chortled at the mental image of the fish-flinger beaning the shrimp. “What, did he coat his fish wit’ da paint or somethin’?”

“I don’t know who got me already! Stop laughing!” Pepe noticed several colors of paint coating the rat as they entered the brighter area around the fire. “Wait, wait, wait…jou is accusing me of cheating when jou got hit four, five times?”

“I did not!” Rizzo twitched his whiskers, seeing the prawn grinning at them. “So dey got messed up – ain’tcha ever heard of backspatter? It’s from dis hit!” He indicated the splotch on his chest.

“Then why is it a different color okay?”

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“Newsie? Newsie!”

Hearing her calls, the Newsman struggled out of the corn, grunting when several dry ears broke free of their stalks to hammer him as he worked his way free and into the path once more. “Gina?”

“Newsie!” Suddenly her arms caught him up, hugging him; relieved, he hugged back. “Oh, geez, you had me worried there!”

“Me too,” Newsie gulped, simply holding her tight. “I – I smelled something, and thought –“

“A ha! Tag!”

Gina and Newsie both jerked, startled, when paint splats smacked them both dead center. They looked up to see Scooter and Sara laughing at them before the couple ran down the corn path and took a turn a few yards away. Their giggles and rustles could be heard a few seconds more; then the quiet wind returned, leaving the Newsman and his beloved presumably alone.

“Nuts,” Gina sighed. “That makes three.”

“It’s okay,” Newsie said, embracing her again. “Can we…can we just go get some cider and get warm by the fire?”

“Sounds good,” Gina agreed. She helped him upright fully, and together they headed for the sounds of singing and the smell of woodsmoke. She squeezed his shoulder as they walked. “I’m sorry I let go…Sweetums kind of surprised me, tearing through like that! Are you okay?”

“F-fine.” He tried to regain his composure. “I’m sorry I…I panicked.” He felt awful; how could he have abandoned her like that? What if it had been a real monster! “That…that smell was there, and I…I…”

“Newsie, it’s okay.” Gina paused to draw him close. “I’m pretty sure that was Sweetums; I smelled it too. I guess he took a bath before the party.”

“Someone should suggest soap,” Newsie grumbled. He still felt like a terrible coward. He kissed her hand. “I won’t run again. I put you in danger!”

She hefted the paintgun. “I have this. I’m sure even monsters don’t like paint in their eyes!”

Yells and screams surprised them both; with only a glance at each other, they ran toward the sound, Gina bringing the rifle to bear as they rounded a corner and saw – a four-way battle of paint raging in a large open area. The Chef, Walter, Kermit, and Scooter dodged, rolled aside, reloaded, and shouted wildly, trying to deliver the shot which would put another Muppet out of the game; meanwhile Robin inched toward a large gold-painted pumpkin in the center of the clearing. Gina swore. “We were close!”

Newsie ducked a stray shot as the Chef missed Scooter; Sara popped out of the corn nearby and splatted the Chef, who realized he’d been tagged out. “Voon der poompiekin arn der sploot-sploot!” he shouted, aghast at having failed so close to the goal.

Laughing, Kermit nailed his second-in-command smack in the chest, and it was Scooter’s turn to express his displeasure at losing: “Oh…bubblewrap!” Sara rejoined her husband, the two nearly falling to the earth, out of breath but overcome with hilarity. Kermit whirled, trying to orient on Walter, who caught the movement a second before he lunged for the pumpkin himself. Doing his best Bruce Willis grimace, Walter fired his rifle one-handed, the other outstretched to seize the pumpkin, using his last shot in hope of knocking Kermit out…and the shot instead whacked Kermit’s rifle, sending it tumbling somewhere over their heads into the corn. Walter’s hand and Robin’s flipper touched the pumpkin at the same moment.

“Wooo! Bravo!” Gina yelled, applauding. Newsie joined in, amazed at the lengths the more athletic Muppets had gone to in trying to gain the prize. Walter looked at Robin; Robin climbed atop the large pumpkin.

“We got it first!” the little frog claimed. There wasn’t a splotch on him; everyone who’d considered hitting the peeper had hesitated – and then Kermit had nailed them.

“Oh,” Walter said, crestfallen, panting. “Okay. Good game, Robin.”

His competitive streak giving way to a little guilt, Robin looked at Walter’s fingers on the stem. “Well…maybe we both got it at once.” He looked uncertainly at the others regaining their equilibrium.

The Chef pointed at Walter. “Der foon de poompy-kin furst!”

Scooter and Sara exchanged a look, then shook their heads. “From this angle, looked like Robin to me,” Scooter said.

“I was too busy dodging,” Kermit admitted.

They all looked at the Newsman. “I wish Kazagger was here,” he sighed. “Uh, from over here, it looked like you both touched it at the same time…”

“Are either of you tagged out?” Gina asked. Kermit and Walter examined themselves; each had sustained two distinct paint hits, but only two.

“Then it’s a tie!” Robin said, smiling.

“You sure? I mean, maybe you were a split second quicker…” Walter offered.

Robin shook his head. “Nah. Besides, how’m I going to carry this thing out? It’s huge!” Though not the largest specimen of its species by far, the real pumpkin with a gold makeover dwarfed the tiny frog. Laughing, Walter shook hands with him, then Robin climbed onto the squash, and Walter lifted it (with a little straining and puffing). Proudly, the two of them headed out of the maze, followed by everyone else.

Their exit from the cornfield brought cheers from the rest of the party. Cider and fresh pumpkin cannolis (delivered shortly before by an ape in a bakery van) made the rounds, everyone settled down by the fire, and Mrs Bear awarded the young Muppet and frog their prize: inside, the hollowed-out pumpkin was full of chocolate leaves wrapped in autumn-colored foil. Gleefully they split the hoard, handing chocolates out to anyone who asked, and forcing one into Rizzo’s paws despite his grumbling about lost cheese. When everyone had something warm in their bellies and all had snuggled into fleece blankets around the blaze, Emily stood on a large log and called for attention.

“All right, everyone, let’s hear the costume contest results! Newsman, dear, where are you?”

Newsie hurriedly wiped powdered sugar from his chin and did his best to look professional, though with his mask off and a blanket draped over his raven outfit that proved a bit difficult. “Ahem…uh, first up, Scariest Costume!” The stagepigs had helped Emily compile the results of the voting boxes, although she had to scold them when they kept complaining it was too hard a task. “The winner is...Janice!”

“Oh, wow,” Janice said, running over to accept an orange-and-black ribbon and a toffee apple from Emily. “Like, this is so great, everyone! Thanks bunches!”

“Hey, you can stop leaning your head sideways now,” Rowlf said, “The whole zombie thing is pretty freaky, but I’m sure that must hurt!”

“Like, it rully does,” the guitarist agreed. “But my yoga teacher told me to hold it this way for a week to rebalance my chi!”

“Er…” Newsie tried to return the announcements to a normal level when the groans and laughs died down. “For Cutest Costume: Robin, as Kermit!”

A chorus of “awww” met the young frog, who then tried to out-news the Newsman as he accepted his prize of pumpkin-gnat bark: “This is Kermit the frog, live on the scene, where a yellow Muppet has just spilled cider on himself!”

“What?” Newsie hurriedly checked, then blushed as he realized Robin was teasing. “Uh…no. Um. Next up…Funniest Costume! And the category goes to…Wayne and Wanda!”

“Oh thank you, thank you!” Wanda gushed, rushing past Wayne to grab and wave her ribbon. She gave Emily a kiss on the cheek as the bear handed her a small felt pumpkin full of confetti bombs and bubble-blowers. “See Wayne? I told you this was a wonderful idea!”

“I still don’t see why you got to be Cher,” Wayne huffed, pinning his ribbon on his open-collared shirt. “And I look terrible in this mustache! And why am I wearing a rosary?”

“Those are love beads, sweetie,” Emily informed him. “Go on, Newsman!”

“Ahem…er…for Sexiest Costume…er…” He shot a wary look in the direction of Miss Piggy. “Uh…the award goes to…Rhonda Rat!”

“What?” Piggy growled.

Rhonda twirled once atop a flat log, showing off her sleek thighs under the miniskirt. “Too true, Goldie! Mwah!” She blew kisses at everyone, wrapping the ribbon around her neck as a scarf, and trotted back to her seat with a round of aged Vermont white cheddar.

Rizzo promptly rejoined his date. “Hey, ya know, I voted for ya, babe!”

“Sure ya did. Wanna tell the pig that?”

“Uh…Best Couples Costume…” Newsie announced loudly, hoping to quiet the noise among the log seats in the vicinity of an Egyptian-clothed pig, “goes to Kermit and Miss Piggy!”

“Well, I should hope so,” Piggy declared. She elbowed Newsie aside to stand on his log. “Thank you all so very much! I would like to thank my costumer, and my hair stylist, and the academy for all its goodwill…”

“Piggy,” Kermit murmured in her ear, “wrong awards!”

“Oh…aha, ha, ha! But vous cannot blame me for such a simple mistake!” Piggy cooed; Kermit shook his head, and tied the ribbon to Cleopigtra’s royal staff; they returned to their seats bearing a basket of massage oils. Newsie wondered what would have happened if he and Gina had won…or Bunsen and Beaker…or (he shuddered) Statler and Waldorf…

The hecklers chose that moment to yell at him. “Hey, no fair! We had that locked up! Foul!” Waldorf cried.

“Bawwwk!” Camilla protested, seated near the other chickens, disgruntled at how oblivious to her daredevil’s near-death experience everyone else seemed to be.

“You mean pig! The chicken didn’t win!” Statler corrected loudly, and they took up the chant together: “Pig! Pig!”

Flustered, Newsie checked the name on the next slip of paper. “Uh, for Best Zombies, the Group Costume! Er…I mean…that’s backwards…”

Floyd rasped his usual laugh. “Little dude don’t know whether he’s comin’ or goin’! Hey Newsdude, put them glasses back on your beak!”

Gina smiled at Newsie, shaking her head, and he tried to shrug off the taunt. “Well, uh…I didn’t realize all that shambling was part of your costume; that’s how you guys usually move anyway!” he shot back, promptly dropping the remaining ballot results.

Floyd and Dr Teeth approached to collect their prize; Floyd bent over the dropped papers. “Hey, man, lemme give you a hand – whoopsie!” His fake skeleton-hand plunked to the ground atop the paper, and laughter rang through the crowd.

“Man, I love that joke!” Sweetums roared, clapping Lew roughly on the shoulder. A mackerel went sailing across the circle to slap Clifford wetly in the face.

Clifford waved his proton-stream nozzle at Lew. “Man, don’t make me get all supernatural on your butt!”

When the laughter finally died enough for the Newsman to be heard over it, he continued the announcing: “Uh…Worst Costume…we have a tie! Uh…half the voters cited ‘worst use of makeup’ for Pepe, and the rest claimed ‘worst attempt at squeezing into pirate breeches’ for Rizzo!”

“What!” Pepe shouted, outraged.

“Un-freakin-believable,” Rizzo groaned.

They were only somewhat mollified by the prize of a gift certificate to a prominent costume shop back in the city, and went back to their seats arguing over who should take the sixty or the forty percent of the amount. “And lastly, Best Overall Costume,” Newsie said loudly. “Ahem…this category primarily addresses the qualities of the costume which seem best to suit the person wearing it, more than the value of the costume on its own,” he explained after peering closely at the notes for the category. “And the winner is…er…me?”

Gina bounded up, laughing, wrapping him in her arms. Smiles and nods and happy faces surrounded him. “I…me? Why?” Newsie asked, baffled.

Emily patted his shoulder. “Well, dear, I guess everyone thought you sounded enough like the raven already. It was a close race, though: a lot of people voted for Scooter, and some for Uncle Deadly, and even some for that lawyer fella that was here earlier!”

“Er…thank you,” Newsie managed, and accepted the ribbon from Gina. She pressed something else into his hand. “What’s this?”

“Um…it’s a sugar skull with your name on it,” Gina said, and caught the treat when a startled Newsman fumbled it.

“What would I do with that?” he demanded, looking askance at the iced confection.

“You eat it, dear,” Emily explained. “It’s supposed to be good luck! I bought a bunch of them on my last trip to Cancun. Okay, everyone! Who’ll start a ghost story? We have more cannolis from that nice Mr Fiama, and I’m bringing out a pitcher of pumpkin spice mudslides for the grown-ups!”

Camilla sighed, hunched into her blanket, then decided to go get a mudslide. Her feathers felt frayed and her nerves strung taut, and a little pumpkin-rum-and-ice-cream might be just the ticket if she wanted any actual sleep tonight.

The spooky stories went on until the logs had died to embers, and then a gaggle of sleepy, satisfied Muppets dragged their candy hauls with them to bed on sofas, chairs, tucked into curtains, sprawled in the bathtub, snuggled in the clean straw of the barn-loft, or tucked into bed. Animal snored softly from his chains on the foyer wall, and Uncle Deadly hung upside-down from the highest beam in the barn with some friendly bats he’d met, all cuddled together and dreaming of soaring flights. Newsie blushed at the snicker he heard behind him when he came to bed in his plaid flannel pajamas.

“Thhbbbttt,” Gina offered her best raspberry to Floyd in response, and gratefully Newsie snuggled under the blanket next to her. He heard Janice giggling, the murmur of voices across the room as Piggy told something to Kermit which made him grumble quietly, and then at last everyone settled with their respective loves and the room fell silent. Newsie sighed, feeling the warmth seeping into his PJs beneath the heavy quilt, then started when he felt his love’s arm slide over his midsection.

“Gina!” he hissed, “There…there are other Muppets present!”

“And I guarantee you they’re all snuggling too. It’s cold,” Gina whispered, her breath warm across his ear. “Now hush, my handsome reporter, and get some sleep. I love you.” She kissed his cheek, cuddling close, and gradually he relaxed.

“Love you too,” he whispered back, closed his eyes, and fell asleep free of any fear of scary things under the bed. He knew Gina had brought the paintgun inside, and it stood within easy reach. Comforted by that knowledge, he drifted off despite the growing moan of the wind outside.

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Along the muddy Hudson, a low barge crept downriver. The monsters huddled in a semicircle, picking through a trash bag for rotted scraps of food, but looked up when the canvas sack off to one side began stirring, and a feathery hat poked out. “Whuh…what’s going on? Why am I in a bag? Hey! Let me out! I’ll sue you for unlawful disposal of live Muppets! Hey!”

The goblin unconcernedly whacked the top of the bag, and its occupant slumped unconscious again. The wolf-thing looked worried. “Uh…can he really do that? Sue us?”

“You idiot, this dork’s gonna be in Heap’s lower intestine by the time the courthouse opens in the city! Fuhgeddaboudit!” Slurg chortled, and the other two joined in, relieved.

“So, uh…can we sing now?”

Slurg shrugged. “If it makes ya happy.”

The lupine-nosed creature began crooning, and within a few words, the other two alumni of Scare U. raised their scratchy voices as well for the old school fight song: “Buggawuggaboog, tugga zergel bergel, tuggawuggaboog, tugga snergel snort! Buggawuggaboog, tugga booga bugga, boogawoogawug, tugga boo!”

A disturbingly cheerful garbage load wound its way toward a sleeping Manhattan.
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The Count

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Ah... It definitely helps take away the little grumbles I had earlier to find a heaping helping of fanfic freshly posted.

When the monsters struck in the maizen maze... I thought there might have been some misdirection. No, I wasn't afraid they'd grabbed :news:, for I remembered there were two Muppets in birdlike costumes at Grizzly Farms' party. But were they really after :news: or the bland half of the firm's founding duo... We'll never really know. *Cryptic laughter.

Using Gorgon Heap as a substitute for Shaky Sanchez, good, I like it.
Montros went from top critter to getting chopped thanks to some shootin' slugs from the snail.
*Loved the cameo by :super: as part of the wait staff in the undercity.

Well, at least this time the giant pumpkin turned out to be just that and not another portkey that'd transport whoever touched automatically to... Sorry, I'm thinking of another overgrown maze-like competition. That reminds me, did we ever find out where Mookie-Mookie ended up at?

Excellent choice with both the awards handed out and the assigned sleeping arrangements. :flirt:

Other points to be doled out are references to Johnny's canoli catering industry and good ol' Scare U's fight song. Which leads me to additional speculation as to whethere Dr. Van Neuter studied with Sam's son at rival Stuffs University, maybe not, they'd have been in different class years.

But the star of this update has to be the various acts performed during the show. Seems everyone had some sort of technical difficulties or miscues with their acts, wonder if that'll hurt their voting tallies depending on who actually moves on given the judges' criticisms.

Thanks for this, hope you have a good night.
 

Ruahnna

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A nice muppety Halloween, with enough candy to put everyone into a coma.

I enjoyed all of the costume choices, although I kept thinking of Dora Bruin as Dora the Explorer....yeesh. I was glad to see Deadly out for a haunt, and gladder still to see Walter out for some muppety fun. It was a treat to see Robin and Walter try to out-nice each other.

I got the Sonny and Cher (yes, I am a relic myself--thanks for asking) reference right away, but wasn't here at MC to tell it, so I missed my bag of candy as a prize. (pout, pout)

I liked Sam as Newt. A nice, patriotic touch.

Still disgusted by the monsters. Check. Still worried about Snookie. Check. Still waiting for Newsie to lighten up a little. Check. You're doing great, chicka!

My only quibble, and it is small, is this: I cannot really believe that anyone who loves someone who is glasses-dependent would expect them to go without their specs for any length of time, much less a party--even for a costume. When I wore glasses (I've since had my eyes corrected and have now graduated into a seriously-cool collection of reading glasses), I could take my glasses off and be lost--in bed. In a car. In a classroom. You get the picture, but I got nothing--blind as a muppet bat. But in the interests of story, I suspend my disbelief and go along with you.

Let's here it for an update--soon! (And pass the mallow creme pumpkins--those are my favorite!)
 

newsmanfan

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----------------
Ha -- yes, going without one's specs can be terrifying. I too have been lost all those places, and mistaken total strangers for my friend who was ahead of me on the waterslide not five seconds ago...yeep. My point was that Newsie trusts Gina enough to do so...and has even become brave enough to try to roam a little on his own while thus disabled. Of course, had his vision been sharper, he might have seen things at the party...things the Evil Author did not wish him to...yet. Mwwahhh hah hah hah hah!

(Okay, yeah, it's a plot convenience. I will strive to eliminate them in the future!) :news:

Yeah, what DID happen to Mookie-Mookie?
heh heh heh heh...

Happy you guys caught the joke references. Thanks also to Ru and Ed and Charlietheowl for certain of the costume suggestions! Trying to outfit that many Muppets was a bit of a challenge; appreciate the input! :smile:

More soon! Next: the nebulous Nofrisko...

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newsmanfan

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Part Twenty-Six

“Go away,” Snookie groaned.

The guard shook his shoulder again; Snookie felt stiff from spending the night on the floor of his cell. “Gotta gets up. Showtime,” the monster rumbled at him. Snookie angrily wrenched his arm free, curling up tighter, wrapping the blanket around him and wishing he could shut out the world.

“Forget it, you ugly overbite! I’m exhausted! Go away!”

The guard conferred with another; Snookie realized the next step would be his forcible dragging to the showers, if he was lucky. One time they’d had a far-too-pleased Carl drop by to give him a tongue-bath instead. He wasn’t expecting the next voice he heard, however: “Oh, goodness! Are you giving these good monsters a hard time, sleepyhead? Well not to worry! I have just the thing!” Van Neuter bobbled into the cell, gaily producing a large syringe. “This monsteriffic vitamin shot should perk you right up!”

“I’m up,” Snookie yelped, shooting to his feet, then hopping in place to get the cramps out. “I’m up!”

“Well, let me just give it to you anyway. You’ll feel so much slimier afterward!”

“I’m fine, thanks, gottarun,” Snookie gulped, hastily putting as much distance between himself and the vet as his painfully-tingling legs would allow. “Guard! I need a shower! Guard!”

“Oh, well,” Van Neuter sighed, then perked as he caught sight of Thatch McGurk curiously peering into the cell. “You! You were very sluggish yesterday – why not let me make you even sluggier? Hey, come back here! It only stings for a minute, you big sissy!”

Cleaned up and dressed, Snookie tromped into the studio in a foul mood. He slammed the door open, not noticing the tiny monster he crushed behind it against the wall. “You people have to let me out for some air! I’m suffocating down here in this stench!” Snookie yelled. The Frackles merely glanced at him before turning back to their jobs. “Well?” Snookie demanded, glaring at the Yeti who directed this show. The hulking, white-furred ape shrugged, pointed to a wall clock, pointed to a schedule clipboard. “And what if I refuse to perform until I get a breath of fresh air?”

The Yeti shrugged again, then gestured to a stagefrackle. The sharp-faced creature trotted over, yanked up a startled Snookie’s large nose, and sprayed a dash of Mountain Aire FeSqueeze into the Muppet’s open mouth. Snookie gagged and coughed.The Yeti growled and pointed at the stage-floor area of the small studio.

“So…much…better…cough, cough…thanks,” Snookie hacked, stealing a water bottle from the Yeti to try and regain some moisture in his throat. He drank continuously while the soundfrackle wired his lapel mic and checked it, handing back an empty bottle to the disgruntled director. Doing his best to compose himself, he stood in the center of the stage area and waited for the director to count down, the lights and theme music to go up, and the camera to begin filming. His smile wasn’t as wide as usual; he didn’t care. “Welcome, all you baconhounds and porkstuffers! Once again, it’s time to play the Hammily Feud!”

Canned applause rose and faded. Snookie turned to his right to greet the new batch of porkers destined for the stewpot. “Aaaaand today we have two new families to snout off against each other for the prize of living another day! As if anybody here thinks that’s really going to happen… Here we have with us the Carne Asadas from Albuquerque! You guys really should’ve taken that left turn, heh heh. So, Papa Carne, are you all excited to be here?”

A large hog with whittled-down tusks grunted, nodding. “Oh boy! Oh boy! They told us there’d be cake! With spinach!”

“And you believed them?” Snookie asked; the monster crew played a burst of canned laughter. “Well, who’s this amazingly rotund lady?”

“Snookie, this is my wife Prudy; my son Guapo; and my youngest son Mucho,” Papa Carne introduced them all proudly. Prudy sniffed haughtily. Guapo looked less than thrilled, and a very round little Mucho bounced up and down so hard he quivered all over with excitement. “We just can’t wait to get to the barbeque!”

“Neither can the director! All right, and in this corner, we have the Utherwhite-Miit family from Rural Corner, Pennsylvania! Welcome in, fresh Miits!”

The group of smaller pigs oinked happily…all except one. Snookie paused, frowning at the pink splotches over blue felt. “Uh…what’s your deal, little girl?”

“Oh, dat’s our newest family member,” the mother of the clan explained in a thick Penn Dutch accent. “Ve adopted her choost dis morning! Isn’t she pretty…for an Englisher?”

Snookie couldn’t resist touching the plastic-looking snout. It was plastic! Startled, he lifted the fake snout off the nose of a Whatnot girl with a gag in her mouth. “Hey, you’re not a pig at all! What the heck is this!”

“Ve luff her like our own!” Vater Utherwhite-Miit assured Snookie. He added in a lower voice, “It vas de only vay dey vould let us compete! Ve needed anutter child!”

“What’s going on?” Snookie demanded of the director, striding off-set; the camerafrackle hurriedly cut. The Yeti grumbled, gesturing fluidly. Snookie couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You ran out of pigs? Seriously? So you just threw in a…a girl and thought nobody could tell the difference? She isn’t that piggish!”

“Mnnn mnnnnnn mrrrr!” the girl protested. Disgusted, Snookie went back to her and pulled the gag loose. “—and your mother too!” the girl finished.

“Hey, sweetheart, I don’t make the rules,” Snookie told her. “Did you agree to be in this farce?”

“I’m not a pig, I’m not a pig!” the girl yelled.

“Now Sigride…” Mutter Utherwhite-Miit gently protested, but the girl shook off the comforting, hard-nailed hand.

“They dressed me up!” the girl added, nodding angrily at the Frackles offset all trying to look somewhere else.

“Is this true?” Snookie demanded.

A chorus of “No! No, no, no!” sounded.

A pink Frackle shuffled his feet nervously. “Well…we did do the nose…”

“And the hat,” another admitted.

“But she’s still an entrée! Play the game!” a scaly green thing yelled from the sound booth.

“Yeah! Play the game! Play it!” the crew chimed in.

Snookie sighed. The girl stopped him from replacing the gag, asking, “Wait, aren’t you a Muppet? This is discrimination! These monsters are blatantly disrespecting our inalienable Muppetness!”

Snookie shook his head. “Look, kid, what are you, some kind of rabble-rouser? I can warn you right now, that’s not going to play well to this crowd.”

“I’m not a kid! My name’s Stinkbomb,” the girl pouted. “I saw how they disregarded your demand for better treatment! Stand up to them! Be proud of your Muppetness! Felt is beautiful! We will not rest until no Muppet is ever discriminated against—“

“Sweetie, if people looking at you funny is the worst thing you’ve ever been through, you have a lot to learn,” Snookie sighed, shoved the gag back in the complaining girl’s mouth, and set the fake snout over her nose again before the Yeti could decide they should all have an early and unpleasant lunch break. “Fine, let’s get to it,” he said, walking back center stage and putting on a smile for the camera. “So, our contestants are ready and eager to get going! It’s time to play the Hammily Feud! The topic chosen today by our carefully selected panel of losers found loitering around the train tracks is…” A clanging bell signaled the start of the round, as from the top of the large board behind the stage, Carl the Big Hungry Helper let drop a scribbled sign. “Things you’d take to a cookout!”

The Whatnot girl fussed and strained against her bonds most of the show, while contestant after contestant was sent to the grill. Snookie pitied her: if amateur activism was the most strenuous thing she’d ever been involved in, she really wasn’t going to enjoy being basted over a spit…but there was nothing he could do for her. Carl and several other large monsters lurked close by, occasionally chewing on the unlucky goblins holding up drool buckets for them, waiting for the barbeque to impart smoky-sweet tenderness to every ham, whether real or not. Only his current contract kept them from adding him to the low, slow-cooking fire as well. They’re lucky, Snookie told himself uneasily, hurrying away from the sounds of screams and teeth gnashing at the end of the show filming: their awful day is over. I still have four more tapings to go through…and there’s nothing I can do.

This thought, despite its truth, brought him no comfort.

--------------------------
“This is fun! What color are we painting the lobby?” Beauregard wanted to know as they jostled along in the cab of the rusted pickup.

“Beau, we’re not. This is our cover,” Rhonda tried to explain again.

Beau frowned. “Should I have brought extra tarps?”

“You guys set up da paints,” Rocco Rodent directed. “I’ll get youse in, den I’ll…uh…I’ll keep a nose out for anyone inneruptin’ us!”

“Rob the place blind, you mean,” Rhonda growled. “This is risky enough already, kid! Am I paying you for this job or what? Stick to the plan!”

The Newsman shot a worried look at his producer. Bad enough they’d unwittingly involved the placid janitor; just by asking to borrow some coveralls, somehow the message of a painting job had wormed its way into Beau’s thick skull instead, and he’d cheerfully insisted on driving them and bringing the painting supplies. Rhonda had pointed out this would be perfect cover: if they actually allowed him to paint the lobby (and set tarps over the security cameras), who would question the weekend work order? However, Newsie was less then sanguine about Rhonda’s smug nephew wanting to tag along. Picking the office’s lock was one thing; trying to steal half the Nofrisko building was another.

The camerasloth riding in the back of the truck with the paint buckets added another dimension of potential trouble. Newsie was pleased that Tony was coming along to capture visible proof of monsters, but worried that his presence might somehow backfire on their legal action against KRAK. He muttered at Rhonda, “It’s really nice of Tony to help us out, but does he know this could cost him his job too?”

“His name’s Tommy, how many times do I hafta tell ya that? And it’s got nothing to do with nice! He owes me a favor from a station poker game a month ago.”

“A month a—then why did I have to pay him for our last venture?” Newsie fumed.

Rhonda shrugged. “’Cause last time, I thought you were foam-damaged.” She looked up at Newsie somewhat abashedly. “I, uh. I’m sorry, okay?”

He sighed gruffly. “Okay. At least maybe now we’ll finally get proof!”

“Just think: we might be able to bring down a freaky food factory and show up Blanke all at once!” Rhonda squeaked. She tried to fluff her hair under the painter’s cap. “Do I look cute enough for prime-time in this, ya think?”

“Aunty Rhonda, yer always a doll,” her nephew assured her with a smirk. He let out a shrill yelp when Rhonda thwacked the top of his head. “What was dat for?”

“That was for being the most insincere rat on the planet,” she snapped. “Buttering me up will not make me look the other way while you try to make off with their whole IT section!”

“Fine, see if I trow a compliment your way evah,” Rocco muttered. “So, uh, why is youse breakin’ inta dis place anyways?”

“We’re not breaking in, we’re journalists investigating a serious story about monsters,” Newsie said stiffly.

Rocco stared at him a second, then turned to Rhonda. “Where’d ya say ya dug up dis mook?”

“We’re coworkers, kid. Shut it.” Rhonda winced as Beau narrowly missed a corner mailbox. “Beau! Stick to the street!”

“I thought you wanted me to drive on it,” Beau said, puzzled. “I might have some supra-glue in my toolbox, though!”

“Just drive,” Rhonda groaned. She returned her attention to her sulking nephew. “They have security cameras. Make sure you keep your face hidden. Last thing I need is your father angry with me for you being thrown in jail, ironic though that would be…”

“Is you implyin’ somethin’?” Rocco growled. “Dad ‘n my brothers ‘n me is all legitimate businessrats!” He told Newsie proudly, “We’re tops in the waste-reclamation industry in Joisey.”

“Uh…fascinating,” Newsie replied. “Rhonda, about that: they know me! Will the coveralls be enough of a disguise?”

“I’m so glad you asked.” From a large paper bag, the rat produced a Yankees ballcap. “An explosion has just taken place at the hat factory!” She plunked the several-sizes-too-large cap onto his head; he fumbled with the brim.

“It’s covering my glasses! How’m I supposed to see like this?”

“Just keep your eyes on me, sunshine. You only need it ‘til we get past the cameras. I’m guessing they don’t film in this alleged secret room.”

“Who knows what’s down there?” Newsie grumbled, but adjusted the hat to peer from underneath it. “That’s the building, Beau! Park here!”

Newsie hoped no parking cops would be patrolling today and give them a ticket for the skid marks on the sidewalk in front of the Nofrisko office. He helped the others unload cans of paint, rollers, and tarps from the back of the truck. Rocco paused at the front door only a few seconds before opening it and strolling in, paintbrush in hand. Rhonda and the sloth followed, setting up dropcloths and spreading plastic tarps over everything in the lobby; Newsie hung back, hoping no one was around who might recognize him, until Rhonda came and murmured to him that the lobby camera had been found and covered. Taking a deep breath of relatively fresh air, Newsie ventured once more into the minimal lobby of the snack cake company.

“Rocco!” Rhonda hissed; the younger rat glanced up from munching a Fwinkie out of the welcome basket on the reception desk.

“What?” Rocco asked, wiping strawberry crème off his whiskers. When his aunt only shook her head, he threw his arms out angrily. “What?”

“That door, over there,” Newsie muttered low, just in case any sound surveillance was recording. While Beau cheerfully began priming the wall behind the front desk, Rhonda joined Newsie in front of the coat closet. Steeling his foam, the Newsman grabbed the doorknob and turned.

It opened easily. Rhonda took a tiny flashlight from a pocket of her cargo pants and shone it in…and down. Stairs immediately led from the door into darkness. “Okay, score one for Goldie,” she whispered. “I’m guessing this doesn’t go to Narnia.”

“Ton—mmy,” Newsie corrected himself, gesturing for the sloth to bring in the camera. The light mounted atop it didn’t do much more to chase the gloom; impossible to tell from here how far down the steps went. Newsie looked at Rhonda. She turned her cap around, bill at the back, and flashed a grin.

“We are so gonna hit prime time with this,” she said. “To heck with Blanke!”

He nodded agreement, removed his hat, and took another breath. He could smell it, faintly: dampness, filth, must and dust and unkempt fur…

Rhonda prodded him, making him jump. “Well?”

Shooting a glare at her, he felt for any sort of handhold along the wall, and jerked back fingers smudged with slime. “Oh blech!”

“Oh, yeah, Newsie? Ya might not wanna do that,” Rhonda said smugly, having noticed the gleam of the stuff in the beam of her light.

“Thanks,” he muttered, and took the first step down. Then another. Then another, and looked back to be certain Rhonda and the sloth were actually following. Seeing them cautiously descending after him, he continued on, placing each rubber-booted foot firmly, seeing some glops of…stuff on the concrete stairs as he went. “I told you there were monsters involved,” he muttered.

“What, are they especially rotten things?” Rhonda squeaked. “This looks more like stuff the zombies at the party woulda left in their wake! Cripes, what is this crud?” She inadvertently stepped right into a splotch of the goo, and Newsie heard her using some words even Gina didn’t usually indulge in. “I knew I shoulda gone with the booties today! These are my favorite deck shoes, dangit!”

“Shhh,” Newsie hissed, silencing her. “Listen! …Do you smell something?”

The rat edged down onto the same step he’d paused upon, sniffing. “Uh…sorta. What does it smell like to you?”

“You can’t tell?” he asked, astounded. “It’s like…like…garbage and dirt and…and…”

“Smells like a bait shop,” Tommy murmured right over Newsie’s shoulder, making him jump.

“Sloths fish?” Rhonda wondered.

Newsie gulped. “What the hey is going on down here?”

Rhonda poked his leg. “We’ll never find out if we just stand here and discuss the smell!”

Nodding, he reluctantly resumed his slow descent. Their lights picked up different colors in the walls and steps, faded red and orange, and suddenly the stairs bottomed out. Rhonda shone her flashlight on the floor; Tommy swept the cameralight over the arched ceiling. Crumbling, dusty bricks formed a narrow but fairly straight passageway. “Holy Eliot Ness! Look how old those bricks are! Newsie, this must be one of those Prohibition tunnels!”

“I didn’t know New York had anything like that,” he murmured, gazing around; though dirt and more sludge covered the floor of the tunnel, he could see bricks of the same rough color paving the way.

“Sure! There was supposed to be a tunnel like this somewhere in Chinatown…”

“We’re in the Bowery,” Newsie corrected.

Rhonda smacked his knee, making him crouch and wince, surprised. “And this is heading west, Daniel Boone! Chinatown’s that way!” Her voice echoed eerily along the tunnel, and all of them paused, listening.

“Hey, uh,” Tommy spoke up slowly, “You guys ever see the first ‘Lord of the Rings’ movie?”

Gina had coaxed Newsie into attending a marathon showing of all three films at her friend Scott’s a couple of months ago. “This isn’t Helms’ Deep,” he growled, but instinctively kept his voice quiet.

A low echo nonetheless traveled a short ways along the tunnel. “Point taken,” Rhonda whispered. Slowly, they walked along the corridor. Newsie glanced up; dusty webs of long-dead spiders traced over cracks in the bricks at odd intervals, and something like a tiny centipede scuttled ahead of their lights. He shuddered, and suddenly wished he had something to defend himself with…a stick, a club, even a paintgun he didn’t know how to shoot! “What could they possibly use this for?” he whispered to Rhonda.

“Dunno, but someone’s used it recently for something,” she replied softly, nudging him to point out faint tracks in the sludge underfoot. Newsie stopped, staring at a three-toed footprint that was far larger than his own size-five boot.

“That’s not comforting,” he muttered.

“Hey, you’re the one who wanted to check this place out!” the rat hissed, staying close behind him.

The air down here felt chilly, and reeked of offal. He wondered if the slimy sludge coating the bricks of the floor and halfway up the walls was the culprit, but refused to lean any closer to sniff it. Prohibition…why would anyone maintain this tunnel since then? Has it been open all that time? Were the monsters bootleggers? Realizing the absurdity of that thought, he shrugged it off, annoyed. Don’t be ridiculous! The monsters didn’t run moonshine, they operated the speakeasies! Well, then what are they doing with this? Running illegal drugs into Nofrisko? Using it as an escape route from the office? It doesn’t seem to go very deep, he thought, trying to recall how many steps they’d come down to reach this more-or-less level pathway. “Rhonda, how close are we to that ConEd tunnel?”

She pulled her phone out and checked it. “Well, we’re deep enough I got no bars at all…”

He frowned. “Why would you think we’d find a bar down here? Just because the tunnel might go back to the ‘twenties?”

“You and Beau been blood brothers long?”

“Huh?”

“Forget it. I mean there’s no signal down here, Newsie! But, just at a guess…yeah, I think we’re close, within a couple blocks at most.”

He didn’t like the look of the footprints he kept seeing. That one had what looked like webbing between the toes…and that one resembled an enormous pawprint… “Are you sure nothing big could get down here?”

Rhonda didn’t reply; when he looked down at her, he saw her swallow hard and twitch nervous whiskers. “Are you filming?” Newsie asked the sloth. Receiving a nod in reply, he returned his attention forward, then paused. “Look…there’s the end!”

They peered ahead; their lights picked out the edge of some sort of arched entrance, and a cold, empty dimness beyond. Their steps sounded muffled, the echoes ahead dying, sound swallowed into the open darkness past the arch. Cautiously they approached it, and discovered a large landing of rough-hewn stone. Brick steps curved upward to their right; stone ones wound down to the left. An ordinary door with peeling green paint sat directly across from them. Nervously, Newsie tried the knob. “Locked,” he whispered.

“Want me to go back and get Rocco?”

Newsie grabbed the sleeve of the rat before she could run back the way they’d come. “No! That’ll waste valuable time.” He took a deep breath, then wrinkled his long nose unhappily. “Gahh! Smells like drain cleaner.”

“Smells like poison,” Rhonda muttered, shivering.

“Smells like a meh—uh. Doesn’t smell good,” Tommy agreed.

“Up or down?” Rhonda asked.

Newsie considered it. Although he was curious what lay above them, everything he’d found out so far indicated the monsters were holed up somewhere below the city. “Down,” he said.

Rhonda scowled. “How’d I know you were gonna say that.”

“Come on,” Newsie urged, thinking they’d spent a long while just getting this far; at this rate, Beau would finish the first floor and move on to the second before they returned. “We need to find out what they’re doing, and get it on film!”

“You really still think this is about monsters?”

Newsie gestured at the slime; the thick trail of it, almost obscuring the stairs, continued down. “You think this is floor polish?”

“You gotta stop hanging around me. You’re starting to sound rattish,” Rhonda grumbled, but followed him as he carefully placed foot below foot on the treacherously slippery steps.

The smell increased until he had to breathe through his mouth, but the Newsman pushed forward, anxiety balanced nearly equally by his determination to get real proof of the monsters he knew had to be down here – something so irrefutable that Blanke would be shamed into accepting him back at KRAK, something Honeydew wouldn’t even have to test to confirm its horrible origin! There, just below: a stronger scent wafted up, so pungent he could taste it; and now he could hear something, a whispering, rustling, moving – Newsie froze. Rhonda bumped into him with a stifled curse. “Could ya warn me?” she squeaked. “I just stepped in –“

“Run,” he huffed, nearly choking on the scent, a billow of it blowing up from the stairs ahead. The noise increased: a thousand scrabbling claws, a thousand clacking jaws, a sound of – “Rhonda, run!” Newsie yelled, tripping over the step behind him as he tried to reverse course.

His nose had not been wrong.

The rat shrieked. Two of the things burst around the turn of the staircase, bug-jaws snapping, bug-legs whisking over the steps and the walls, stalk-eyes focusing on them, purple fur bristling all along the endless backs of the giant, multisectioned creatures. Tommy staggered, nearly dropping the camera as Newsie pushed past him; the reporter grabbed the sloth’s shoulder and yanked him up. Rhonda was five steps ahead, dignity abandoned, running on all four paws, leaping from stair to stair. Screeching, one of the monsters lunged at Newsie; he flattened himself against the wall, gasping, and when the thing pulled back for another try, he grabbed the camera away from the struggling sloth and swung it as hard as he could. The mic in front crunched, but so did the chitinous jaws. The monster roared, and tumbled into its partner, and Newsie shoved the sloth ahead of him, turning to run backwards, pointing the lens roughly at the second thing scrabbling around the wounded one to come after him. They’d reached the landing again. Newsie pushed Tommy toward the brick archway, but heard Rhonda yelling: “Up here! Up here!”

He looked up: Rhonda stood on one of the carpeted steps leading up, waving desperately at him. Just as he changed direction, he saw something she didn’t: the carpet she stood on was moving just above her. “Rhonda, no!” he shouted, too late. The rat screamed as the soft thing she clung to suddenly rolled and bucked, tumbling her upwards toward a gaping, slimy, toothless maw. “Rhonda!”

“Holy sh—“ the sloth exclaimed, catching the camera as Newsie slung it aside. The Newsman clambered up the steps, reaching his friend just as the sluglike thing tried to gulp her down; she flailed ineffectually on its broad, slippery tongue. Newsie grabbed one of her paws and heaved; they flipped down the steps, crashing onto the landing. Rhonda was screaming. Newsie, barely thinking, simply shoved her bodily inside his coverall and staggered to his feet. Tommy kept filming, backing along the brick corridor.

“Move it!” Newsie screamed, shoving the camerasloth. Tommy didn’t argue, hanging onto the camera and loping faster than he’d ever moved before. Newsie glanced back to see the slug-thing and the centipede-thing collide, snap at one another, then turn their attention to the tunnel. The cameralight picked up the gleam of multiple tiny eyes approaching fast. Oh frog oh frog chest hurts burning why am I burning is Rhonda still in there run dear frog run – His thoughts a blur, the Newsman pounded hard along the tunnel, panting, overtaking and then half-dragging the sloth along. Stupid this was stupid oh frog don’t want to die eaten by BUGS!

They burst through the closet door into the lobby, startling Beau, with a detail brush in one hand atop a ladder to get the ceiling corner, and Rocco, halfway out the front door with his second load of office computing equipment. “Run d—it! Ruuunnn!” Newsie shrieked at them.

Rocco vanished, the stack of laptops crashing to the carpet. Beau blinked at the uproar. “But…I’m not done with the touch-ups!” he protested.

Newsie let go of Tommy, who staggered out the front door after the pawnshop-bound rat. Newsie yanked Beauregard off the ladder. “Never mind that Beau! The truck! Get in the truck!”

“But – all our tarps –“

Somehow Newsie got Beau into the driver’s seat; somehow a harried Beau found the keys and put the groaning old truck into gear in spite of the reporter screaming at him. Gasping, Newsie looked out the passenger window as they pulled away; a dark tentacle slithered around the open edge of the Nofrisko front door – and slammed it shut. What happened in the tunnel would stay in the tunnel.

Sobbing, his chest on fire, Newsie tore open the coverall. Rhonda clung to him, wheezing, and now he saw the cause of the pain: half her clothes were dissolved, and so was a section of his undershirt. Slimy green gunk coated her fur, her eyes squeezed shut. With a choked cry, Newsie dug out a handkerchief and wiped her face. “Rhonda! Rhonda!”

“I…hate…your frogd—d stories,” she gurgled, and slumped against him.

“Are we going back to the theatre?” Beau asked, glancing worriedly at the half-undressed Newsman with the slimy rat, then back at the sloth crouched below the truckbed railings, still clutching a battered camera. “Kermit’s not going to be happy! Those special corner rollers cost a lot!”

“For frog’s sake, Beau, the hospital! Take us to the hospital!” Newsie groaned, the stuff coating Rhonda burning into his felt; he shook her gently with one hand, grimacing when his fingers suddenly seemed to catch fire at the contact with whatever digestive fluid the slug-thing had spewed on her. “Rhonda! Wake up! Rhonda!”

Beau stared at him a split second with wide eyes; then he spun the steering wheel hard, ignoring the horns and brakes screeching all around, and ramped the truck onto the sidewalk to avoid another car. “Watch it! Comin’ through!” he yelled out the window. “Move it! Woooooooooooooooo!” His siren impression was convincing enough to make people stop or get out of the way. Although it only took him three minutes to reach Organ General, it seemed forever to Newsie, who kept prodding the unconscious rat, begging her to respond. “Do we want the emergency entrance?” Beau asked.

“Yes! Yes!”

“Okay!” Another hard turn, and the thump of the wheels over a curb, and a dazed Newsie fell out of the truck cab when the passenger door flew open at the crunching stop right in the admitting lobby of the hospital. He struggled to his feet, cradling Rhonda, and a nurse ran over to see what the matter was.

“Help her!” Newsie begged, holding out the unresponsive, smoking rat. The nurse recoiled.

“A rat? Hey, we don’t –“

“She’s my friend, d—it!” Newsie roared, then fell into a coughing fit, his throat hoarse. A young man in a doctor’s coat knelt by him, pushing the nurse aside.

“Good lord, what did she fall into?” the doctor asked. Newsie shook his head, unable to answer, and the doctor scooped Rhonda up in gloved hands. The doctor swiped a fingerful of the goop off the rat’s midsection into a small jar and handing it to the flustered nurse. “I need this analyzed stat, and clear a space in Triage Four!” He ran with Rhonda in both hands through a swinging door; another attendant stopped Newsie from following, then saw the burns on the Muppet’s chest and hands.

“You too! You, get that truck out of here! It’s not sterile!” the attendant snapped first at the Newsman, then Beauregard, hustling Newsie through the triage doorway. Newsie saw the doctor rinsing Rhonda under an open shower in one corner, swiftly washing as much of the slimy stuff off her limp body as he could; the instant he stepped out of the shower, the second nurse shoved Newsie under it, unsnapping his coverall the rest of the way and roughly tugging it off him despite the Newsman’s weak protests. His shirt was ripped free as well, splitting down the front where the goop had eaten through the fabric to his felt. Shivering in nothing but boxers and socks, he tried to focus on what they were doing to Rhonda; the doctor had her on one of the triage gurneys and seemed to be checking her with his stethoscope while a nurse attempted to insert a needle in one tiny arm. Rhonda coughed, and relief swept through him even as his nurse hustled him out of the emergency shower and onto another padded gurney. He tried to see around the people tending him, feeling dizzy, needing to know how badly Rhonda was hurt. He was barely aware of a towel patting him dry, of his heart and breath being checked, of salve being spread on his burns. He started when something sharp poked his left wrist, and frowned at the IV, forcing himself to look back at Rhonda before he could faint; he’d never liked needles. The room was a blur of movement and a cacophony of voices.

“…burned all the fur off…” the doctor was saying.

“How do we cross-match for…” a tech complained.

“Get me the results…”

“This one looks okay, minor burns,” the nurse examining Newsie called out.

“Is she all right?” Newsie gulped, trying to get someone’s attention. “Rhonda!”

“Pulse looks strong, start treatment for third-degree chemical burns,” the doctor said, then turned to Newsie. “What happened?”

“We…we were underground, a tunnel, under Nofrisko,” Newsie gasped, the sting on his chest and fingers dulling; he felt remarkably aware of his heartbeat, a somewhat disturbing sensation. “A…a slug tried to eat her…”

“A slug? You’re saying a slug did this?” the doctor asked, incredulous.

“It was a really big slug,” Newsie mumbled. He clutched the edge of the gurney, feeling weak, desperate to stay conscious.

The doctor shone a penlight in his eyes; Newsie blinked, startled. “Pupils dilated. Run a tox screen,” the doctor told the tech applying a clean bandage around Newsie’s chest.

“I’m not drugged,” Newsie said. “We...we have proof! We have film!”

“Your friend’s lucky to be alive,” the doctor told him. “Can you tell me what the substance is on her?”

“Slug spit,” Newsie said, shaking his head. “I don’t know! Whatever monster slugs have!”

The doctor turned back to Rhonda, laying still but breathing, with a huge-looking needle incongruously taped to her wrist to keep it in. Newsie gulped. “Watch the film! Our camerasloth is in the waiting room…watch the film! I’m not drugged!” He did feel nauseous, however; could whatever stench he’d been breathing down there have affected him? What if he had hallucinated this? No, no! It was all on film, and these people would see it, and then they’d believe him!

The nurse who’d objected to a rat in the hospital entered, and conferred privately with the doctor. He appeared startled, then darted from the room. Newsie stared at Rhonda, who was gently being slathered with some sort of burn cream from neck to feet. Her fur was indeed gone. Realizing he was seeing a naked coworker, Newsie flushed and averted his gaze, stealing uneasy glances at the nurse treating her. Oh, Rhonda, I’m sorry! This is my fault! We never should have gone in after we saw the slime trail; that was just asking for trouble! Ill, he jumped an inch off the pallet when the doctor touched his shoulder. He stared up at the frowning physician.

“Where did you say you were?” the doctor demanded.

“A…a tunnel, under the Nofrisko offices, on Bowery,” Newsie managed, his mouth dry. “We…we shouldn’t have gone…we saw the slime, and went ahead anyway…that thing was waiting for us…horrible things!” He shivered.

The doctor gently wrapped a light fleece blanket over his shoulders. His gaze was serious. “I just looked at that film your…your sloth shot. I’ve notified Animal Control and the CDC. We’re still analyzing the slime, but I can already tell you it’s strongly basic. The opposite of acid, but just as caustic,” he explained, seeing the confused look on Newsie’s face.

“I didn’t know there was an agency just to handle Animal,” Newsie muttered. “Good luck with that…” Some of what the doc had said penetrated his dazed mind, and he perked. “You—you believe me? You saw the slug?”

“Buddy, if that’s a slug, I’m Jonas Salk,” the doctor replied grimly. “Take it easy. Once we’ve figured out what’s in your system we’ll treat you for it. Meantime, try to rest. Your friend’s going to be okay…it may take a long while to grow her fur back, though. Start an oxygen line on him too,” he told a tech, and Newsie suffered tubing being hooked over his ears to stay in his nose. The doctor frowned. “You look sort of familiar.”

“The Newsman, KRAK,” Newsie gulped, trying to take deep breaths.

“I see. Going after a story, were you? Next time, leave it to the authorities, okay?”

“They didn’t believe me,” Newsie said. “We had to get proof.”

Slowly the doctor nodded, looking back at Rhonda. “Well, I’d say now you have it.”

Newsie nodded, calming slowly. “Can I…borrow a phone? Need to call someone…”

The doctor pulled out a cell phone, but before he could hand it over, an older man in a white coat hurried over and looked Newsie up and down with sharp eyes. “This the one?” At the first doctor’s nod, the second shook Newsie’s hand. “Melvin Cosgrove, CDC. I was downstairs checking out a possible TB case, so until a team gets here, I’ll be handling your case as well. I need all the details. Where did you encounter this creature?”

Summoning what strength and concentration he could, the Newsman told the investigator all he knew about the strange Nofrisko corporation, from the odd ingredients for Shamrockies to the secret tunnel leading to a nest of monstrous invertebrates, relieved that finally, finally, someone was paying attention, and finally, something would be done.
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The Count

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Herald the conquering hero's triumphant return.

Left turn at Albuquerque, yeah, they make that mistake every time trying to get to Pizmo Beach.
So now we know what happened to Costanza 'Stinkbomb', though just dressing her up as a pig because the other family was one member short? Frankly, I thought she'd have been taken to Van Neuter as another test subject after Fauxworthy first.
That was Doglion as the director fright?
Explosion at the hat factory, yep, I remember that one, *hands over ramchips.
Okay, I know it may or may not have been intentional, but you also get some ramchips for that time-tested Labyrinth joke about which direction to go in. They're just lucky they weren't dropped further down a pit by the responsive Helping Hands.
The film survived? Yay! Now we finally have proof! But at what cost? Rhonda's gonna be mad when she finds out she'll be more closely related to Rufus from Kim Possible for the next month. I hope the doctor gives Newsie the phone so he can call Gina soon. To which point, I presume you've seen the addition to Slackbot's thread by now.

Great chapter, thanks and talk to you in a sec.
 

newsmanfan

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Glad you approve....I didn't even think about the directional Labyrinth joke! But I see you missed the other one I tossed in from a favorite Python, which I can STILL quote almost all of by heart!

Hm, didn't even think of casting Doglion there. I like the idea though. Will have to throw him in somewhere!

It only gets darker from here, folks...sanity check! :news:
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