Lisa Waltz presents: The Meteor Team: The story continues...

Chapter Eight: Introducing the Friendly Dragons

“What a weird day that was,” said Hotwheels between slurps of hot chocolate. Dorilla and the rest of the exhausted team nodded in agreement. They were all down in the living room of Meteor Mansion, enjoying a late night snack of cocoa and cookies while they discussed the events of the day.

“I wonder how Baby Elephant is doing in the hospital with Dr. Ben,” smiled Jet.

“She’s probably getting her nose stitches ripped off for the 85th time. That Dr. Ben was never real good at sewing things up the right way around,” snickered Dorilla. “Plus, I think they gotta pay him each time he tries.”

“Not to spoil the jolly mood, my reptilian brethren” growled Sawtooth, “But we still have the Snip Snap problem, remember?”

“Oh dear,” groaned the suddenly stricken team leader. “How could I have forgotten about them?”

“You mean, how could we have forgotten about ol’ grape toes,” corrected Dorilla.

“Wait a minute, how did you know about that? You weren’t even here for our meeting.”

“Weeeelll, let’s just say I kinda, sorta was…” admitted the tiny lizard.

“Rilla, you have got to stop spying on everyone… it’s almost as annoying as Baby Elephant’s chunk collection,” (I was really hoping to avoid this subject entirely, but here goes: it seems Baby Elephant has a hobby in direct alignment with her personality; that is to say, she gathers and carefully stores pieces of, ahem, regurgitated matter. That’s right, I do, in fact, mean puke. Incredibly enough, she treasures these recycled alimentary gems with the patient avarice of a fiscal conservative soliciting more and better tax breaks for the insanely wealthy. The prize of her collection is a whopping big space monster chunk that she obtained by shaking a poor lost killer alien beastie up and down until it barfed into one of her “specimen” bags. These are convenient paper receptacles kindly if unwittingly provided by Continental Airlines whenever Baby Elephant stows away in a seat back pocket. Which reminds me, NEVER, EVER eat any chocolate found on an airplane, especially not in the first class section. Baby Elephant generously takes it upon herself to add extra “caramel” for the people who pay for the most expensive service.) Jet’s voice was quite stern.

Dorilla blushed and had the grace to look embarrassed, but then he recalled something important.

“Jet, if I didn’t eavesdrop on everyone, how would I have found out about the six gigoundous dragons who just moved in next door?”

“WHAT DRAGONS?!” Everyone shouted at the same time.

“You know, the dragons I was supposed to tell you about this morning but forget.”

“Did your kindly Mama Lizard drop you on your head? (Yes, she did.) I mean, more than that one time?” Asked Jet with a grimace. (It was probably only four or five times… no more than seven, I’m sure…Hey, don’t you dare judge Mama Lizard…it’s hard to hold onto mutated babies. Just look at The Incredibles (check out the index under Jack-Jack) for independent verification of this strange law of nature.)

Sawtooth then interrupted this helpful exchange. He spoke with the quiet authority of a critter who can shear through any substance whatsoever in about 6.3 seconds flat, “Just tell us about the dragons now, if it’s not too much trouble.”

Hotwheels spoke up next, “That won’t be necessary, guys, ‘cause I looked at the front door security camera… and here they come!”

Chapter Nine: And No One is Named “Puff”

Everyone froze as a polite knock sounded at the entrance of Meteor Mansion. The superheroes gathered around the security monitor and stared at the six enormous green dragons that stood patiently in front of the huge oaken door. One of the creatures carried what appeared to be a small cheerfully wrapped package.

“Should we answer the door?” whispered Dorilla.

“No, absolutely not,” replied Jet. “You should answer the door.”

Everyone but a certain tiny lizard nodded enthusiastically at this obviously brilliant suggestion.

Dorilla opened his mouth to argue but realized he was outvoted. He trudged unwillingly toward the mansion entrance. A quick glance back, however, revealed that he was not alone. Despite their previous anger, his friends did not leave him to face this new danger all by himself. His heart glowed with gratitude, and he felt much better about opening the door. As his small-clawed finger-toes turned the knob, the door slowly began to creak open. Suddenly, something caught it from his grasp, and, instantly, the door was ripped completely open.

“Well, hello there! My name is Jaws; this is my wife Arnya (she’s expecting our sixth, if you can believe it! I mean, look at that girlish little figure on her!!), and these are our good friends Spik, Bionl, Siunid, and Rockblast! We are new to your island, so we thought we’d come over to say a neighborly howdy. The wife here brought you a fruitcake! Show it to them, honey! It’s homemade! Arnya says the secret’s in the toasted macadamia nuts! I say the secret’s in the sweet little chef, hee-hee." (When the dragons speak, try to imagine a nice, musical, Wisconsin accent. Sort of like Betty White’s character on the Golden Girls. That’ll be close enough [Mwahahahaha… ah, the sheer, unadulterated power, the absolute dominance of authorship].)

Dead silence.

Then Jet’s natural gentlemanly instincts kicked in. He moved to the front of his group and addressed the newcomers.

“Ah, yes, hello there yourselves. This here is, um, Meteor Mansion, and these are the members of the Meteor team. This is Sawtooth, Hotwheels, and I’m Jet, Team leader. Oh, and this is Dorilla, he lives right over there, about 3 miles underground. *Cough* Please come in. Oh, yeah, thanks for the fruitcake. It looks, um, really, ah, fruity.” (No one said that Jet was a genius about etiquette.)

After sensibly wiping their massive feet and wings on the doormat, the dragons trooped cheerfully into the mansion. Dorilla cautiously closed the door after them and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “What a bunch of maroons.”

Chapter Ten: Team-Ups Can Be Trouble

“Now isn’t this nice,” said Jaws, as he sipped cocoa and glanced at the mixed group of reptiles now assembled in the Meteor Mansion Fancy Dining Hall. Turning to Arnya, who was sampling the cheese and crackers, he continued, “Doesn’t it just remind you of those long winter nights in prehistoric Scandinavia, Honey bun? You know, before the kiddies were hatched…Aw, look, folks, I’m making her blush! Isn’t she the cutest little thing you ever did see?!”

“Hush up, dear, and have a cheese log,” urged the long-suffering Arnya, helpfully stuffing a large Gouda (A kind of big round mild cheese, semi-soft and easily chewed. Arnya really should have chosen the two- foot wheel of sharp cheddar. It would have been harder to dislodge.) into Jaws’ jaws.

It was no use.

Jaws swallowed and continued with barely a pause, “Gollygeewhillikers, it’s just so exciting to meet real life crime fighters like these nice young people, isn’t it, gang? I mean, we fight naughty folks too, but it’s more of a hobby for us, like Spik’s fichus collection…”

Spik began to look seriously worried but was saved from further humiliation by Dorilla’s tactful interruption. “If you don’t mind my asking, if you don’t actually patrol for super villains, what do you do that brings you in contact with the nogoodniks?”

“Oh, hee-hee, that is a funny one, isn’t it? Si, Bi, back me up on this. Actually, it’s kinda a long story, so you folks just sit back and enjoy, Okey-dokey?!

To everyone’s immense relief, (Including the writer’s) Rockblast, a most unusual looking dragon with a long, scaly, low slung body and short, stubby legs, hurriedly cut in and gave them the short version, “We go back in time and rescue animals that are under threat of attack by predators or who face extinction from change of habitat. Sometimes we have to fight the predators in order to save the smaller creatures.”

“Wow, that’s so cool,” admired Hotwheels, “But what’s this about a fichus collection? Is that anything like Baby Elephant’s sch’mold?” (Do I really have to tell you about this one as well *Sigh* Early in her career of evil, Baby Elephant decided that she would start with something easy. So she created life. Easy peasy, she thought. All she had to do was to cross chemically produced slime with artificially generated mold. Hence, “sch’mold.” Regrettably, the sch’mold has quickly evolved into a life form that is capable of speech and both morally and intellectually superior to its inventor, that puny, pretentious pachyderm. This means Baby elephant no longer understands a thing it says…which is just as well, since the sch’mold has recently mastered nuclear fission and is developing a rocket with sufficient payload capacity to be the envy of terrorist groups everywhere (and, incidentally, to scare the bejeezus out of the rest of us).)

“Please,” said Jet, “This is neither the time or place to gross out our new neighbors…”

“Yeah, Sawtooth can do that later when he tries to eat oatmeal,” interrupted Dorilla with a smirk.

A strong voice rang out above the conversational chaos.

“Would everyone please just hush up for a moment?” commanded Bionl, another slinky, unnaturally extended dragon with foreshortened limbs and long whiskers.

Instantly there was a respectful silence, but mostly because Bionl has such big scary claws. (Reminiscent of a Harpy Eagle in dire need of a manicure and, perhaps, a nice peppermint exfoliating scrub.)

“Thank you,” this newest dragon continued in a relieved voice. “I only wanted to say that we, sea dragons and mountain dragons alike, are honored to make your acquaintance and look forward to a long and fruitful collaboration.

“Yep, you betcha, that’s exactly right. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Ain’t that right, sweet pea?”

Jet hastily jumped back into the conversational waters to head off Jaws before he got going again.

“Before we go any further, may I ask two questions?”

The dragons nodded as a group, a helpful group. (Dragons are always helpful; even when they are eating you alive, they will do their best to make your trip an enjoyable one. Some go so far as to carry a generous supply of comment cards in their lower instestines.)

“First, what do you mean by sea and mountain dragons? Second, what do you mean by, um, collaboration?”

The Meteor Team and Dorilla listened in fascination as Bionl described the differences between the two species of dragon, both of which can breathe fire (From the moment of hatching, the only time these dragons can not breathe hideous, death-dealing flames is when the females are pregnant with eggs and for about thirty days after those eggs are hatched out. During this time period, female dragons can only breathe water vapor and mist. This allows the new mamas to extinguish the infernos caused inadvertently (or otherwise) by their newly hatched but fully functional babies. Not surprisingly, this tendency of baby dragons to “flame on” at unexpected moments makes the endless mammalian chore of changing dirty diapers seem enviably boring.) and fly. He also pointed out that he, Rockblast and Siunid were sea dragons, while Jaws, Aryna and Spik were of the mountain clan. He concluded his narration by explaining that the dragons had hoped to join the Meteor Team in its never ending battle against the Evil Baby Elephant, the newly discovered source of so much trauma and devastation for endangered prehistoric animals.

“Are you saying that smelly sides (It should come as no surprise to the alert reader that Baby Elephant has the revolting habit of slathering various substances all over her teensy-weensy body. She then claims to be delicious and fudgy. To prove this, she invites others to taste her. Please do not take her up on this offer; she is definitely NOT chocolate covered, unless by “chocolate covered” you mean “liberally coated with juvenile elephant poo.”)has found a way to go back in time and terrorize the locals?” Dorilla looked skeptical.

“Exactly!” said Siunid, a sea dragon who was as terse as Sawtooth and wore a disturbing grin most of the time, even at (Some might say, “especially at”…) funerals.

“AHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Hotwheels exploded with laughter, his lean, muscular body twitching in helpless paroxyms of mirth. He finally managed to gasp “Bu…but she…she can’t even change a flashlight battery without getting seriously injured… how, how can she possibly figure out time travel?”

“She got lucky at that last rummage sale,” Bionl grimly explained. ”She thought she was buying a Barbie easybake oven, but it turned out to be a time platform. When Dr. Doom wouldn’t give her money back, she tried to make cookies with it anyway. As you might have guessed, the cookies turned out extra disgusting. Furthermore, unfortunately, B.E. learned how to go back to the Jurassic, you know, before cookies had been invented. Then she cruelly tricked defenseless, unknowing dinosaurs into eating her appalling culinary creations. She nearly caused a mass extinction with her Prune and Turkey chip cookies before we could track her down. The notorious killer comet came as a great relief to most of the few pitiable survivors. In self defense, the rest evolved into birds and started eating worms.”

“Oh, the humanity, the humanity,” moaned Jet. “Of course, we would collaborate with you. But we don’t need to, thank goodness. Baby Elephant is currently regrowing her nose skin in the sick ward of Death Island’s security prison. Once her trunk is healed up, the prison warden has orders to place her in the most secure and well guarded prison section of all, the cells reserved for the criminally pointless. She’ll never be a threat to anyone ever again.” (Jet is also not known for his prescience.)

The Team’s new dragon friends looked much happier at that dubious piece of news, and Jaws led the charge to finish off the remaining cheese logs before it was time to go home.

Chapter Eleven: An Elephant in the Hand

“Aw, I want to be a threat to everyone again,” Baby Elephant whined through her heavily bandaged snout.

She had had enough of Dr. Ben and his goon squad of nurses. It was high time to break out of this sickeningly sterile joint and do what she did best: get filthy and cause chaos. (In exactly that order.) After all, “realignment was the opossum of the classless”…or something deep and insightful like that.

So Baby Elephant dreamt up another, um, interesting plan. Faking a massive seizure by rolling around on the floor dripping shaving cream from her bottom, (I refuse to comment.) she screamed, “I can see the light! I can see the light! Mama, your baby’s coming home again! Make way for ducklings! Who ya gonna call? What’s up, Doc?” Then she pretended to collapse with a squashy sound, like a balloon full of pudding slowly deflating.

Calling upon all their extensive medical expertise, Dr. Ben and his highly trained crew immediately rushed to her side, and, with great tenderness, stuffed a cork in her mouth.

“Hmmmm,” thought the miniature epitome of evil, “Time for plan B.”

***MEANWHILE BACK ON DEATH ISLAND***

The Dung Beetles of Doom were becoming restless and hungry. Moreover, worse yet, they had become homeless. Shortly after Baby Elephant’s capture by the Meteor Team, the Castle of Despair tragically became another victim of a harsh urban pestilence, known to many as extreme “recycling.”

A recycling program is, as any intelligent person knows, a well-intentioned terrorist movement that has rendered far too many of our most august monuments to mayhem into mulch. In this case, the Death Island Monster Welfare Institute’s Technical Services (Yep, there really are some true D.I.M.W.I.T.S. out there…) had sponsored a newspaper and cardboard collection drive with the dual purposes of ridding the island of disfiguring trash and also of efficiently gathering reusable paper products that would otherwise take up valuable landfill space. Obviously, some fool felt that shredding the Castle of Despair would serve both purposes, (Just as obviously, that fool was right.)which then directly led to the Beetles’ sudden lack of home and hearth and, um, dung.

“This would not do, “ they mumbled to each other, “This would not do at all.” Even dim insectoid lackeys understood that strong decisive action was called for. Indeed, within their barely existent reasoning apparatus, they knew that they had to take a stand to protect all they held dear. (And to get that friggin’ narrator to stop with the cheap bug jokes.)

So they did.

Using strategies carried down through generations of affluent and successful poo-eaters, they carried out a daring commando-style daylight raid on a Giant Weasel Supermarket produce department and made off with a recycle-proof treasure: a small, plastic lettuce crate filled with rotting spinach leaves.

Ah, it was home, smelly home, to the little black beasts. (The beetles had intended to name their new headquarters “The Castle of Despair, II” Then some particularly perceptive grub pointed out that these new digs, while impressively stinky, were about one tenth the size of the old ones. Thus, after much consideration (and over a few splats of nicely aged pigeon poop), they christened it “The Condo of Despair,” thereby preserving all of the intimidating alliteration of the original but allowing the beetles to maintain their sense of architechural integrity.) They hauled it off to a conveniently disgusting alley, threw it down, and felt that things were finally looking up. Yet, for all their hard work and bravery, there was one dinky thing still missing...

Chapter Twelve: The not-so-great Escape!

The Meteor Team awoke from a sound sleep to the screeching of the Dorilla Signal.™ Throwing on their super-suits, the plucky reptiles made their way to the front lawn where Dorilla awaited them impatiently.

“Looks like real trouble this time, amigos. A bunch of little black things have sprung Baby Elephant from the pokey. Apparently, the little suckers sent her a prune packed with plastic explosives. She took one bite, and the whole cell exploded! (I know, I know, why didn’t B.E. die in the explosion?!… The answer is as shocking as it is simple. Baby Elephant’s weird metabolism is chock full of a mutated substance she calls “Generator P(ee).” Gen P endows the minute pachyderm with almost instant self-healing powers. Sort of like Wolverine, but somehow not nearly as kewl. By the way, Dorilla has his own variety of immediate healing factor that is called “Generator D.” Rumor has it that Gen D is considerably less revolting than Baby Elephant’s version. [On the other hand, as it was Dorilla himself who started the rumor, it may or may not be trustworthy.]) Now she’s on the loose and very cranky!!” (But, on the bright side, is no longer troubled by constipation.)

“Have you called in the dragons? They said they wanted to help…” Hotwheels asked hopefully.

“Excellent idea,” Jet said, with a worried expression on his normally carefree gecko face. “Dorilla, knock on their door. It’s too big and bulky for the rest of us to make much of an impact.”

“Not necessary,” Sawtooth cut in, “They’re coming out right now. That signal must have woken them too.”

“Hi there, guys. We were just about to go hunting for those silly snipes, once again, when we heard all the racket. What’s up?” Jaws sounded sickening alert and bright-eyed.

*Sigh* “Dear, I keep telling you, there are no such things as snipes. It’s a joke. You won’t catch them, because they don’t exist. Rockblast was just playing an April Fool’s Day trick on you. Please forget about the whole thing.” Arnya sounded desperate.

“Now, Sweetie muffins, I’m sure that our old friend Rockblast would never play such a mean and unkind trick on us, would ya, Rocky?”

“Yes, yes, I would. Arnya’s right. Get over it.”

The stricken dragon leader shook his head in disbelief at the cruelty of his own kind and let Bionl take over his part of the conversation.

“It’s The Evil Baby Elephant once again, isn’t it? I can smell her ‘homemade chocolate’ from here.”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. We must act swiftly before she re-establishes another base of operations,” replied Jet.

“No problems,” said Spik, one of the Mountain Dragons, “Me and Bionl will sniff her down, wherever she may be hiding. Let’s go!”

“Can’t we at least consider the possibility that snipes are involved…” trailed off a disheartened king dragon.

“NO!!!!”

It was unanimous.

Chapter Thirteen: Snipes Are Involved

“Well, this sorta sucks.” Baby Elephant stared at the Condo of Despair with, well, despair. “I expected my loyal and expendable servants to come up with something better than that. It’s pretty… dinky, ya know.

The Dung Beetles of Doom shivered with fear. Their mistress and generous provider of stinky stuff had used the “d” word! That had never happened before. What would happen now?

Baby Elephant didn’t keep her minions in suspense for long. “OK, everybody, line up to be squished.”

“B…bu…but, your Majesty, the crate, er, I mean, Condo of Despair, contains spoiled, contaminated spinach. How can you ignore such opulent furnishings? I can promise you that no one else on Death Island has such a fortune in biological weaponry.”

Baby Elephant paused in the middle of tying the laces on her “stompin’” shoes. “Hmmmm, you do have a point there, ya crunchy little bug. Maybe I’ll let ya live long enough to run me a few more errands… like contact the Snip Snaps and get’em over here right now, capiche?”

“Your most arbitrary and unintelligible wish is our most sacred duty,” said the head dung beetle, backing away and bowing at the same time.

“Better be, or it’s bug stompin’ time.” (That’s probably an empty threat, seeing as Baby Elephant has absolutely no clue how to tie shoelaces. The best she could hope to do is pound the beetles into paste with her nose. Of course, taking a look at the big picture, that would likely work just as well.)

“And you,” she continued, “Yeah, you, the cockaroach who dared to interrupt the most sacred shoe tying. I want you to get me some snipes. ON THE DOUBLE!”

“Y…ye…yes, my Queen. Do you require regular or extra crunchy.”

“Extra crunchy. Wait, I also crave one spicy grilled fillet. But leave out the jalapenos. They make my trunk itch.”

“What side dishes do you want with that?”

“Surprise me.”

to be continued...

Post By Lisa (via Visionary) Thu Feb 01, 2007 at 11:38:34 pm EST	Subject Lisa Waltz presents: The Meteor Team: The story continues...

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