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Part Fifty-Three (III)
Most of the Muppets were free now or on the verge of being so. Most of the monsters were simply trying to get out of the way, paws over their cringing heads, eyestalks, or fragile horns as the case might be. Camilla seemed to be tiring, her stylishly clipped wings not meant for sustained flights, and the monster chicken was clucking and slamming its beak into the floor, the now-crumbling walls, and at whatever fell in its way in its furious efforts to impale the more nimble white-feathered hen. Gina waved at them all. “Hey! Everybody out!”
“This is a Muppet News Flash!” Newsie shouted, trying to get their attention as well. “Studies show that collapsing buildings are the only effective trap for monster chicken things!”
But only the Muppets closest to them heard. Walter tried to look around, alarmed, but Wanda wasn’t letting go of his face, doing her best to preserve his innocence. “What...what’s going on? I can’t see!”
All of them hit the floor a moment as the Underchicken swiped a meaty wing right where their heads had been. “Aaah, did I ever tell ya da one about da evil dictator crossing da road?”
Rowlf helped an unsteady Chef to his feet; the Chef’s hat had been flattened although he himself seemed all right. “Fozzie, I don’t think this is really the time or the—“
“He was trying to get to da underside! Aaaaaah!”
Rizzo tugged on Gonzo’s sleeve. “Hey, buddy, good ta see ya again. I was beginnin’ ta worry you’d gone Hollywood and forgotten your old pals.”
Too distracted to really notice the rat, Gonzo mumbled, “Yeah, extra butter would be great, thanks...and can I have some gummi spiders melted over it?”
Affronted, Rizzo smacked the Whatever’s shoulder. “Earth to Gonzo! Are you gonna sit there and watch your chickie battling the Swedish Film Chicken or are ya gonna help her?”
“Noog un Svedish chickie!” the Chef objected.
Gonzo blinked. “Oh, hey, Rizzo. When did you get here?”
“Unbelievable,” Rizzo groaned.
“Jou really has to stop stealing my lines, amigo.”
The Newsman stumbled and staggered on the rumbling floor over to his friends, clutching Gina’s arm tightly so he didn’t fall and flatten his nose. “Is everyone all right?” Nods and voices all replied affirmatively, but Newsie looked among them in vain for a yellow game-show host or a blonde rat. “Has anyone seen Chester or Rhonda?” he shouted over the crash of another of the ballroom’s web-choked chandeliers.
Gonzo came out of his trance, Rizzo’s words finally making their way to his dazed brain. “Camilla! Camilla, look out!”
The hen spared him an annoyed glance, too busy dodging the enraged giant Underchicken to cluck at him. She pecked at one enormous toe, and the Underchicken roared a window-shaking cackle of pain and then stomped. Camilla sidestepped and aimed for the other foot – and then a blue arm was around her waist, yanking her back. Camilla clucked, startled and frightened, and the sharp beak slammed into the floorboards right where she’d been standing so hard it stuck. As the Underchicken tried to wrench itself free, Camilla turned her head up to see the bulbous, concerned, wonderfully expressive eyes of her beloved weirdo. “Bawwwwk?” she asked, not trusting the hope welling up in her feathery breast.
“If you think I’m gonna let you put yourself in half the danger I enjoy,” Gonzo said roughly, “you’re dead wrong!” He tossed her aside and aimed a kick at the Underchicken’s wattles. “Hiiii-yah!”
The other Muppets stared. “Decent form,” Scooter murmured respectfully.
Miss Piggy shook her head. “He exhaled too soon. Not enough force.”
Honeydew noticed Gina. “Aha! Well, it’s good to see this psychokinetic trauma is not, in fact, the result of one of my assistant’s inventions failing yet again! What happened to your portable field blocker generator device?”
Beaker rolled his eyes and sighed.
“Let’s just get out of here before the whole place caves in!” Newsie urged.
“Every monster for himself!” howled Beautiful Day, scrabbling at the boarded-over windows.
“And that’s the attitude that got us all into this mess in the first place!” J G scolded him. “Now, see, if we’d started that Monster Benevolent Union last year like Hubert suggested, we’d have been able to counter the Underlord’s demands with an offer of our own, and under the collective bargaining agreement which I co-authored with Shakey, we never would have...snnnnnkkktt...”
“Speakin’ of counters, where’s Lunchy?” wondered Behemoth.
“There’s no way out! We’re all d-d-doomed!” Shakey cried. He grabbed a startled Kermit by the collar. “Help us!”
The Underchicken pulled its beak free of the floor finally and oriented on Gonzo, waiting bravely in a toreador’s stance. “Aaaaaarrrribaaaa!” he yelled, flourishing a red tattered curtain in front of the speechless poultry...and suddenly he wasn’t standing alone. Rosie McGurk brandished a snapped curtain rod. His big brother Thatch stepped up with a nail-studded broken board. And two raggedy tentacled things scooched in from either side, charged antennae bristling.
The Underchicken looked quickly at them all. Its eyes narrowed. A violent scream of sheer defiance came from its wobbly throat, and it lunged at Gonzo. With a whoosh of the curtain like a cape, Gonzo swung out of the way, laughing, and Rosie stuck the curtainrod into the plucked right wing. The Underchicken whirled, clucking in rage.
“Now that’s an angry bird,” Floyd said. Zoot nodded.
Rowlf scratched his head. “Where’d they get the little bullfighting hats?”
Kermit glared at the tiny monster hanging onto him until Piggy detached it distastefully from his collar. “You guys went along with this weirdness and didn’t even bother warning the rest of us and now you want help?”
Behemoth, Beautiful Day, Big Mama, the Mutations, Timmy, and numerous other Muppet Show occasional cast members crowded around the knot of Muppets huddled by the windows, as far away as they could get from the weird fight going on by the dais. The monsters all nodded and pleaded and some even groveled. “We didn’t want to! He was scary! Help us!”
Newsie winced as a chunk of ceiling tumbled down, missing Gonzo by a feather’s-breadth. “How do we get out of here? This isn’t the way I wanted to die!”
Gina hugged him, worried as well. “What if we both focus on...on an exit appearing? Try a News Flash!”
Newsie grimaced. “I think the cameraguy got taken out by a naked-chicken foot. Apparently it doesn’t work without an actual broadcast.”
Gina shook her head. “I love you, Newsie, but I am never ever going to understand Muppet logic...”
The Underchicken took a swipe at Thatch, missed and gouged the wall where the old dumbwaiter shaft had served as an escape back to the tunnels for several bugs. The cord holding the rickety old mechanism snapped, and a wooden box for running champagne up to the ballroom plummeted a hundred feet; faintly the muffled screams of a dozen smushed pillbugs and centipedes floated up. “Ha ha hahhh!” Gonzo crowed, swooping and flapping his makeshift cape at the charging poultry. Off to one side, Camilla fanned herself with a wing, breathless and awed; she’d never found bullfighting sexy before...
Kermit yelled at Newsie, “Well do something! I don’t think this place has much left!”
Beaker suggested, “Meemee moo mo mo meep mo?”
“Excellent idea, Beakie!” Bunsen agreed.
Newsie and Gina gave the scientists a blank look. Hurriedly Bunsen paraphrased, “Perhaps if the two of you concentrated on getting these windows opened, and the larger monsters jumped down first to help the rest of us, the issue of a usable exit might be precipitated!”
“Mee mee mippy-mippy,” Beaker reminded him.
Bunsen blushed. “I was getting to that...ahem...” He couldn’t quite meet Newsie’s and Gina’s gazes. “Our previous calculations strongly suggest that the process would be greatly enhanced, and the chances of success improved by approximately thirty-seven-point-two-four percent, if the two of you also...erm...”
Gina looked at Newsie. “Windows,” she said.
Confused, he muttered, “I thought you liked Mac better?”
With a tolerant shake of her head, she crouched by her Muppet love, grabbed his fuzzy felted cheeks in both hands, and pulled him hard into a passionate kiss. Understanding hit right after shock, and Newsie shut his eyes, kissing back just as fervently, and thinking Open the windows, open the windows!
“Come on, is that all you got?” Gonzo taunted, sidestepping another lunge. Thatch smacked the giant chicken with his board across the beak, and it swung its head angrily, tossing the startled monster into a wall. Rosie yelped and barely rolled out of the way of a claw-swipe.
Pepe stared. “I do not think making fun of the Colonel Sandy reject is un bueno idea.”
Rizzo gulped agreement. “More power to ya, buddy...”
The whole room shook crazily. Monsters lost their footing and tumbled into Muppets; Muppets pinwheeled for balance and grabbed hold of huge furry monsters. Everyone, it seemed, was holding onto everyone else except the crazy chickenfighters. With a crunch and the deafening roar of falling bricks, the wall of windows looking out onto Doyers Street fell; shocked, Kermit had just enough time to realize it was the entire wall of the hotel before the floor tilted and he grabbed Robin and Piggy and went sliding out. Bodies furry and felted, scaled and horned and clad in tee-shirts, all tumbled in a mass exodus. Cries and screams and the crazed laughter of a Whatever were buried under the sounds of terrible destruction.
Coughing, Newsie worriedly brushed the gray-dusted hair of his Gypsy girl from her face, relieved when her eyes opened. “Are you okay?” he asked.
She adjusted his tilted glasses on his nose. “Nothing broken. You?”
“Same,” he replied, and then realized she was sprawled atop him in a way he would be embarrassed to have anyone see. “Uhm.” Quickly he scrambled to his feet, but upon looking around, saw everyone else was similarly tangled and not paying any attention to him, concerned with their own recovery from the fall. He saw someone yellow staring at the damage from across the street. “Chester?”
The plaid-coated Muppet approached, seeming a little stunned. “Aloysius?”
Newsie nodded, and stuck out his hand. Snookie looked at it, then at the anxious eyes of his cousin, and then did another in what was shaping up to be a long line of atypical actions tonight: he hugged Newsie. Gina smiled, trying to keep her bedraggled hair out of her face. A blue-and-pink-splotched girl stepped across the rubble in the street to stand by Snookie. Gina nodded at her. “Friend of his?”
Constanza grabbed Snookie’s arm. “He’s mine, sister. Don’t even think about it.”
Embarrassed, Snookie pulled away from Newsie. “Uh, I think she has her own squeeze. This is Const—I mean Stinkbomb,” he said, remembering her preferred nickname.
When Constanza saw Gina drape her arms over Newsie’s shoulders, she relaxed. “Oh. Um. Hi. Constanza le Whatnot.” She stuck a dirty hand at Gina, who accepted it.
“How’d you get out?” Newsie asked. So many questions to ask! But for now he was just inexpressibly relieved to see his cousin alive. Now...if only Rhonda made it...
“Ran out the front door right before the whole place came down,” Snookie said. He shook his head in awe at the rubble. “Hope those SWAT guys got back out the way they came in...or are really good at digging.”
Newsie blinked. “SWAT team?”
“Is everyone all right?” Kermit coughed, brushing the dust from his face. Everyone seemed to have a fresh coating of gray plaster and brick-dust on them.
“What happened to da giant chicken?” Fozzie asked, and several of the Muppets beginning to pull themselves upright looked around as well.
The pink Martian pulled himself out of a small pile of crumpled boards, and gestured at a larger pile of rubble. The entire hotel was nothing more than a heap of wreckage. “Aww. Chick-en un-der. Un-der. Yip yip yip.”
The blue one shook itself in disagreement. “Un-uh un-uh un-uh. Chick-en over. O-ver. Awwww! Yip yip yip yip yip!”
“Yip yip yip yip o-ver, unh-huh, un-huh!” they chorused excitedly.
Camilla clucked softly, peering at the pile of destruction. Rizzo did the same uneasily. “Hey, anybody seen Gonzo around?”
“I sincerely hope all this weirdness is through,” Sam grumbled, shaking his feathers and brushing the top of his head in disgust.
Rizzo looked at Pepe. “Did we just miss a joke somewhere?”
The shrimp shrugged. “Jou gots me, amigo. All I knows is there are scantily costumed girls at a party somewheres who are missing their Pepe right now!”
“You wish.”
“Are we safe?” Walter wondered, still dazed. He felt something wriggling below his shirt, and fished out a flopping salmon. “Uh, I think this is yours.” He handed the fish to Lew Zealand.
Lew exclaimed as he walked off, “You naughty girl! He’s half your age! Come on, let’s go find a late show to watch...I think the wrestling match is over...”
Newsie looked at the ruined heap of broken bricks. “I...I had no idea you and I could...” The extent of the damage, though fortunate for the whole party, was nevertheless a bit frightening.
Gina nodded soberly. She turned to the scientists. “Can you guys make me another necklace?”
Beaker nodded eagerly. Bunsen elaborated, “Happily, as we know the exact field frequency of both of your psychokinetical, magnetical fields, we should be able to fix it again. Never fear, the power of science can resolve all problems!”
With a fierce BAAAAWWWWK!, the giant plucked chicken burst from the center of the rubble.
Bunsen put his hands up in consternation. “Well, most problems...”
A fierce clucking built up to a roar which sent a few broken windows in adjoining buildings crashing to the street. The startled Muppets and monsters alike began to fall back, spreading out in the narrow street; a number of monsters immediately took to their paws and scattered away through the Lower East Side as fast as they could. Thatch helped Rosie out of a heap of bricks and crushed mortar, both of them so covered in gray dust as to be indistinguishable from each other. They stared in horror at the monstrosity rising unconquered and shaking its terrible wattles.
“Uhh...faggah,” Rosie gulped. Thatch could only nod in stunned agreement.
“For the chickennnnns!” a wild shriek came from the still-standing tenement next to the hotel site. To everyone’s surprise, the Great Gonzo, brandishing Rosie’s curtain rod, saluted the crowd with a crazed look in his eyes, and then swiftly swung across the empty space from a busted window to land flat on the Underchicken’s broad pimply back. “Ha ha haaaah!”
Piggy gaped. “When the heck did he have time to change into a gladiator outfit?!”
Scooter shook his head. “Never mind that – where the heck did the vine come from?”
Kermit tried to herd everyone to a safe distance down the street. “Come on, guys – let’s get out of their way!” No one could argue with that. Feet, paws, and saddle shoes pounded the pavement of Doyers Street.
“I know he’s probably at the parade,” Bland (or maybe Blander) was telling Blandish from the dubious safety of a shop awning across the way. “Go get him! Tell him it’s urgent!”
Newsie cast an anxious eye about in vain for his reports producer. “I can’t find Rhonda,” he told Gina. “Do you think she’s...she’s...”
Gina hugged her worried Muppet tight. “I hope not, sweetie.” She backed away farther, the thought striking her of the rest of Chinatown falling down if she and Newsie stayed together like this much longer; as upset as he understandably was, she didn’t think more damage would be forgivable tonight. Or exempt from lawsuits, she thought, noticing the lawyer frumping at the whole scene. “My love...I think one of us should leave, before the subway collapses under us or something. I’ll see if I can get hold of anyone at your station and make them send a camera crew, and maybe you can—“
“I’m not sure a News Flash is going to solve this,” Newsie interrupted. “Look at that thing! If being crushed under a building didn’t stop it, what will?”
Rizzo overheard. “Hasn’t stopped you yet.”
Newsie glared, but then stooped to address the rat directly. “Have you seen Rhonda?”
He seemed surprised. “Huh? Blondie? No – oh, man, she wasn’t in dere, was she?”
Distraught, Newsie clasped his hands together, staring at the giant naked chicken being rodeo-ridden by a largely ineffective Gonzo. “Oh man,” Rizzo gulped. “But...but...we can’t go lookin’ in dere right now! Dat t’ing’ll peck us all ta death!”
Confirming this sentiment, the Underchicken spotted Rosie and Thatch and struck a wickedly sharp beak at them. The brothers barely scrambled out of the way, tumbling feet-over-horns down the rubble heap. “Gazza! Heppa!” Rosie cried.
Gonzo yanked hard on the wattles like floppy reins. “Yeeeeeehaaaaaah!”
Gina kissed Newsie quickly. “Stay safe! I’ll send help!” She grabbed Bunsen’s shoulder. “You guys! Back to your lab before this gets any worse!”
Kermit muttered, “How could this possibly –“
A thump rippled along the street. Car alarms went off two blocks over.
Piggy growled, “You just had to say it.”
Another subsonic boom sounded, and this time the street pavement actually trembled. “That does not sound like help,” Pepe said, slowly backing behind Beauregard. The frightened janitor clutched the ancient dustmop he’d rescued.
“Does this mean the fences are down?” he asked, remembering something about big mean dinosaurs.
Another boom traveled along the street, making even the Underchicken pause a moment; then it cackled in glee and tried to slam its body against the neighboring building; Gonzo hung on, though the blow made his eyeballs roll. “Ooh, yeah, make me like it...” he murmured, though fortunately Camilla, standing anxiously among the Muppet crowd, didn’t hear him.
“Whaddevah it is, it’s comin’ closer!” Rizzo yelled.
Newsie shoved Gina away from him. “Go!” he shouted gruffly. “I love you!”
She gave him one worried, determined look, then took off. In seconds she was out of sight around the crooked angle of the street. Newsie sighed, glad she was out of danger, but then turning back to the giant freak lunging and reeling around the pile of wreckage, he realized it was only a matter of time before the Underchicken scraped Gonzo off its back...and then came for the rest of them...and what the hey was that weird booming? Transformer stations? Overflying planes? Disturbing memories of another such sound on a very grim day in the city’s history came to mind. Newsie strained on tiptoe but couldn‘t see anything in the night sky over the surrounding buildings. No flames or smoke, that has to be a good sign, right? But then what... He saw Gina running back around the bend in the street. “Gina? What are you doing?” he yelled.
And then another deep, shuddering blow hit the concrete, making him wobble. Robin peeped in fear and hopped atop the Muppet nearest, which happened to be Beaker; he meeped agreement, backing against a closed Chinese tea room. Piggy steeled her sturdy legs, wondering what the heck else was about to go badly wrong tonight, as her frog peered ahead worriedly. Only one overhead light cast its feeble glow along that end of the street, and as yet another horrible boooom sent alarming tremors along the sidewalks, the glass in the lamp shivered and fell with a crash. The immediate mental association with another light bulb dropping was not comic at all this time.
------
Most of the Muppets were free now or on the verge of being so. Most of the monsters were simply trying to get out of the way, paws over their cringing heads, eyestalks, or fragile horns as the case might be. Camilla seemed to be tiring, her stylishly clipped wings not meant for sustained flights, and the monster chicken was clucking and slamming its beak into the floor, the now-crumbling walls, and at whatever fell in its way in its furious efforts to impale the more nimble white-feathered hen. Gina waved at them all. “Hey! Everybody out!”
“This is a Muppet News Flash!” Newsie shouted, trying to get their attention as well. “Studies show that collapsing buildings are the only effective trap for monster chicken things!”
But only the Muppets closest to them heard. Walter tried to look around, alarmed, but Wanda wasn’t letting go of his face, doing her best to preserve his innocence. “What...what’s going on? I can’t see!”
All of them hit the floor a moment as the Underchicken swiped a meaty wing right where their heads had been. “Aaah, did I ever tell ya da one about da evil dictator crossing da road?”
Rowlf helped an unsteady Chef to his feet; the Chef’s hat had been flattened although he himself seemed all right. “Fozzie, I don’t think this is really the time or the—“
“He was trying to get to da underside! Aaaaaah!”
Rizzo tugged on Gonzo’s sleeve. “Hey, buddy, good ta see ya again. I was beginnin’ ta worry you’d gone Hollywood and forgotten your old pals.”
Too distracted to really notice the rat, Gonzo mumbled, “Yeah, extra butter would be great, thanks...and can I have some gummi spiders melted over it?”
Affronted, Rizzo smacked the Whatever’s shoulder. “Earth to Gonzo! Are you gonna sit there and watch your chickie battling the Swedish Film Chicken or are ya gonna help her?”
“Noog un Svedish chickie!” the Chef objected.
Gonzo blinked. “Oh, hey, Rizzo. When did you get here?”
“Unbelievable,” Rizzo groaned.
“Jou really has to stop stealing my lines, amigo.”
The Newsman stumbled and staggered on the rumbling floor over to his friends, clutching Gina’s arm tightly so he didn’t fall and flatten his nose. “Is everyone all right?” Nods and voices all replied affirmatively, but Newsie looked among them in vain for a yellow game-show host or a blonde rat. “Has anyone seen Chester or Rhonda?” he shouted over the crash of another of the ballroom’s web-choked chandeliers.
Gonzo came out of his trance, Rizzo’s words finally making their way to his dazed brain. “Camilla! Camilla, look out!”
The hen spared him an annoyed glance, too busy dodging the enraged giant Underchicken to cluck at him. She pecked at one enormous toe, and the Underchicken roared a window-shaking cackle of pain and then stomped. Camilla sidestepped and aimed for the other foot – and then a blue arm was around her waist, yanking her back. Camilla clucked, startled and frightened, and the sharp beak slammed into the floorboards right where she’d been standing so hard it stuck. As the Underchicken tried to wrench itself free, Camilla turned her head up to see the bulbous, concerned, wonderfully expressive eyes of her beloved weirdo. “Bawwwwk?” she asked, not trusting the hope welling up in her feathery breast.
“If you think I’m gonna let you put yourself in half the danger I enjoy,” Gonzo said roughly, “you’re dead wrong!” He tossed her aside and aimed a kick at the Underchicken’s wattles. “Hiiii-yah!”
The other Muppets stared. “Decent form,” Scooter murmured respectfully.
Miss Piggy shook her head. “He exhaled too soon. Not enough force.”
Honeydew noticed Gina. “Aha! Well, it’s good to see this psychokinetic trauma is not, in fact, the result of one of my assistant’s inventions failing yet again! What happened to your portable field blocker generator device?”
Beaker rolled his eyes and sighed.
“Let’s just get out of here before the whole place caves in!” Newsie urged.
“Every monster for himself!” howled Beautiful Day, scrabbling at the boarded-over windows.
“And that’s the attitude that got us all into this mess in the first place!” J G scolded him. “Now, see, if we’d started that Monster Benevolent Union last year like Hubert suggested, we’d have been able to counter the Underlord’s demands with an offer of our own, and under the collective bargaining agreement which I co-authored with Shakey, we never would have...snnnnnkkktt...”
“Speakin’ of counters, where’s Lunchy?” wondered Behemoth.
“There’s no way out! We’re all d-d-doomed!” Shakey cried. He grabbed a startled Kermit by the collar. “Help us!”
The Underchicken pulled its beak free of the floor finally and oriented on Gonzo, waiting bravely in a toreador’s stance. “Aaaaaarrrribaaaa!” he yelled, flourishing a red tattered curtain in front of the speechless poultry...and suddenly he wasn’t standing alone. Rosie McGurk brandished a snapped curtain rod. His big brother Thatch stepped up with a nail-studded broken board. And two raggedy tentacled things scooched in from either side, charged antennae bristling.
The Underchicken looked quickly at them all. Its eyes narrowed. A violent scream of sheer defiance came from its wobbly throat, and it lunged at Gonzo. With a whoosh of the curtain like a cape, Gonzo swung out of the way, laughing, and Rosie stuck the curtainrod into the plucked right wing. The Underchicken whirled, clucking in rage.
“Now that’s an angry bird,” Floyd said. Zoot nodded.
Rowlf scratched his head. “Where’d they get the little bullfighting hats?”
Kermit glared at the tiny monster hanging onto him until Piggy detached it distastefully from his collar. “You guys went along with this weirdness and didn’t even bother warning the rest of us and now you want help?”
Behemoth, Beautiful Day, Big Mama, the Mutations, Timmy, and numerous other Muppet Show occasional cast members crowded around the knot of Muppets huddled by the windows, as far away as they could get from the weird fight going on by the dais. The monsters all nodded and pleaded and some even groveled. “We didn’t want to! He was scary! Help us!”
Newsie winced as a chunk of ceiling tumbled down, missing Gonzo by a feather’s-breadth. “How do we get out of here? This isn’t the way I wanted to die!”
Gina hugged him, worried as well. “What if we both focus on...on an exit appearing? Try a News Flash!”
Newsie grimaced. “I think the cameraguy got taken out by a naked-chicken foot. Apparently it doesn’t work without an actual broadcast.”
Gina shook her head. “I love you, Newsie, but I am never ever going to understand Muppet logic...”
The Underchicken took a swipe at Thatch, missed and gouged the wall where the old dumbwaiter shaft had served as an escape back to the tunnels for several bugs. The cord holding the rickety old mechanism snapped, and a wooden box for running champagne up to the ballroom plummeted a hundred feet; faintly the muffled screams of a dozen smushed pillbugs and centipedes floated up. “Ha ha hahhh!” Gonzo crowed, swooping and flapping his makeshift cape at the charging poultry. Off to one side, Camilla fanned herself with a wing, breathless and awed; she’d never found bullfighting sexy before...
Kermit yelled at Newsie, “Well do something! I don’t think this place has much left!”
Beaker suggested, “Meemee moo mo mo meep mo?”
“Excellent idea, Beakie!” Bunsen agreed.
Newsie and Gina gave the scientists a blank look. Hurriedly Bunsen paraphrased, “Perhaps if the two of you concentrated on getting these windows opened, and the larger monsters jumped down first to help the rest of us, the issue of a usable exit might be precipitated!”
“Mee mee mippy-mippy,” Beaker reminded him.
Bunsen blushed. “I was getting to that...ahem...” He couldn’t quite meet Newsie’s and Gina’s gazes. “Our previous calculations strongly suggest that the process would be greatly enhanced, and the chances of success improved by approximately thirty-seven-point-two-four percent, if the two of you also...erm...”
Gina looked at Newsie. “Windows,” she said.
Confused, he muttered, “I thought you liked Mac better?”
With a tolerant shake of her head, she crouched by her Muppet love, grabbed his fuzzy felted cheeks in both hands, and pulled him hard into a passionate kiss. Understanding hit right after shock, and Newsie shut his eyes, kissing back just as fervently, and thinking Open the windows, open the windows!
“Come on, is that all you got?” Gonzo taunted, sidestepping another lunge. Thatch smacked the giant chicken with his board across the beak, and it swung its head angrily, tossing the startled monster into a wall. Rosie yelped and barely rolled out of the way of a claw-swipe.
Pepe stared. “I do not think making fun of the Colonel Sandy reject is un bueno idea.”
Rizzo gulped agreement. “More power to ya, buddy...”
The whole room shook crazily. Monsters lost their footing and tumbled into Muppets; Muppets pinwheeled for balance and grabbed hold of huge furry monsters. Everyone, it seemed, was holding onto everyone else except the crazy chickenfighters. With a crunch and the deafening roar of falling bricks, the wall of windows looking out onto Doyers Street fell; shocked, Kermit had just enough time to realize it was the entire wall of the hotel before the floor tilted and he grabbed Robin and Piggy and went sliding out. Bodies furry and felted, scaled and horned and clad in tee-shirts, all tumbled in a mass exodus. Cries and screams and the crazed laughter of a Whatever were buried under the sounds of terrible destruction.
Coughing, Newsie worriedly brushed the gray-dusted hair of his Gypsy girl from her face, relieved when her eyes opened. “Are you okay?” he asked.
She adjusted his tilted glasses on his nose. “Nothing broken. You?”
“Same,” he replied, and then realized she was sprawled atop him in a way he would be embarrassed to have anyone see. “Uhm.” Quickly he scrambled to his feet, but upon looking around, saw everyone else was similarly tangled and not paying any attention to him, concerned with their own recovery from the fall. He saw someone yellow staring at the damage from across the street. “Chester?”
The plaid-coated Muppet approached, seeming a little stunned. “Aloysius?”
Newsie nodded, and stuck out his hand. Snookie looked at it, then at the anxious eyes of his cousin, and then did another in what was shaping up to be a long line of atypical actions tonight: he hugged Newsie. Gina smiled, trying to keep her bedraggled hair out of her face. A blue-and-pink-splotched girl stepped across the rubble in the street to stand by Snookie. Gina nodded at her. “Friend of his?”
Constanza grabbed Snookie’s arm. “He’s mine, sister. Don’t even think about it.”
Embarrassed, Snookie pulled away from Newsie. “Uh, I think she has her own squeeze. This is Const—I mean Stinkbomb,” he said, remembering her preferred nickname.
When Constanza saw Gina drape her arms over Newsie’s shoulders, she relaxed. “Oh. Um. Hi. Constanza le Whatnot.” She stuck a dirty hand at Gina, who accepted it.
“How’d you get out?” Newsie asked. So many questions to ask! But for now he was just inexpressibly relieved to see his cousin alive. Now...if only Rhonda made it...
“Ran out the front door right before the whole place came down,” Snookie said. He shook his head in awe at the rubble. “Hope those SWAT guys got back out the way they came in...or are really good at digging.”
Newsie blinked. “SWAT team?”
“Is everyone all right?” Kermit coughed, brushing the dust from his face. Everyone seemed to have a fresh coating of gray plaster and brick-dust on them.
“What happened to da giant chicken?” Fozzie asked, and several of the Muppets beginning to pull themselves upright looked around as well.
The pink Martian pulled himself out of a small pile of crumpled boards, and gestured at a larger pile of rubble. The entire hotel was nothing more than a heap of wreckage. “Aww. Chick-en un-der. Un-der. Yip yip yip.”
The blue one shook itself in disagreement. “Un-uh un-uh un-uh. Chick-en over. O-ver. Awwww! Yip yip yip yip yip!”
“Yip yip yip yip o-ver, unh-huh, un-huh!” they chorused excitedly.
Camilla clucked softly, peering at the pile of destruction. Rizzo did the same uneasily. “Hey, anybody seen Gonzo around?”
“I sincerely hope all this weirdness is through,” Sam grumbled, shaking his feathers and brushing the top of his head in disgust.
Rizzo looked at Pepe. “Did we just miss a joke somewhere?”
The shrimp shrugged. “Jou gots me, amigo. All I knows is there are scantily costumed girls at a party somewheres who are missing their Pepe right now!”
“You wish.”
“Are we safe?” Walter wondered, still dazed. He felt something wriggling below his shirt, and fished out a flopping salmon. “Uh, I think this is yours.” He handed the fish to Lew Zealand.
Lew exclaimed as he walked off, “You naughty girl! He’s half your age! Come on, let’s go find a late show to watch...I think the wrestling match is over...”
Newsie looked at the ruined heap of broken bricks. “I...I had no idea you and I could...” The extent of the damage, though fortunate for the whole party, was nevertheless a bit frightening.
Gina nodded soberly. She turned to the scientists. “Can you guys make me another necklace?”
Beaker nodded eagerly. Bunsen elaborated, “Happily, as we know the exact field frequency of both of your psychokinetical, magnetical fields, we should be able to fix it again. Never fear, the power of science can resolve all problems!”
With a fierce BAAAAWWWWK!, the giant plucked chicken burst from the center of the rubble.
Bunsen put his hands up in consternation. “Well, most problems...”
A fierce clucking built up to a roar which sent a few broken windows in adjoining buildings crashing to the street. The startled Muppets and monsters alike began to fall back, spreading out in the narrow street; a number of monsters immediately took to their paws and scattered away through the Lower East Side as fast as they could. Thatch helped Rosie out of a heap of bricks and crushed mortar, both of them so covered in gray dust as to be indistinguishable from each other. They stared in horror at the monstrosity rising unconquered and shaking its terrible wattles.
“Uhh...faggah,” Rosie gulped. Thatch could only nod in stunned agreement.
“For the chickennnnns!” a wild shriek came from the still-standing tenement next to the hotel site. To everyone’s surprise, the Great Gonzo, brandishing Rosie’s curtain rod, saluted the crowd with a crazed look in his eyes, and then swiftly swung across the empty space from a busted window to land flat on the Underchicken’s broad pimply back. “Ha ha haaaah!”
Piggy gaped. “When the heck did he have time to change into a gladiator outfit?!”
Scooter shook his head. “Never mind that – where the heck did the vine come from?”
Kermit tried to herd everyone to a safe distance down the street. “Come on, guys – let’s get out of their way!” No one could argue with that. Feet, paws, and saddle shoes pounded the pavement of Doyers Street.
“I know he’s probably at the parade,” Bland (or maybe Blander) was telling Blandish from the dubious safety of a shop awning across the way. “Go get him! Tell him it’s urgent!”
Newsie cast an anxious eye about in vain for his reports producer. “I can’t find Rhonda,” he told Gina. “Do you think she’s...she’s...”
Gina hugged her worried Muppet tight. “I hope not, sweetie.” She backed away farther, the thought striking her of the rest of Chinatown falling down if she and Newsie stayed together like this much longer; as upset as he understandably was, she didn’t think more damage would be forgivable tonight. Or exempt from lawsuits, she thought, noticing the lawyer frumping at the whole scene. “My love...I think one of us should leave, before the subway collapses under us or something. I’ll see if I can get hold of anyone at your station and make them send a camera crew, and maybe you can—“
“I’m not sure a News Flash is going to solve this,” Newsie interrupted. “Look at that thing! If being crushed under a building didn’t stop it, what will?”
Rizzo overheard. “Hasn’t stopped you yet.”
Newsie glared, but then stooped to address the rat directly. “Have you seen Rhonda?”
He seemed surprised. “Huh? Blondie? No – oh, man, she wasn’t in dere, was she?”
Distraught, Newsie clasped his hands together, staring at the giant naked chicken being rodeo-ridden by a largely ineffective Gonzo. “Oh man,” Rizzo gulped. “But...but...we can’t go lookin’ in dere right now! Dat t’ing’ll peck us all ta death!”
Confirming this sentiment, the Underchicken spotted Rosie and Thatch and struck a wickedly sharp beak at them. The brothers barely scrambled out of the way, tumbling feet-over-horns down the rubble heap. “Gazza! Heppa!” Rosie cried.
Gonzo yanked hard on the wattles like floppy reins. “Yeeeeeehaaaaaah!”
Gina kissed Newsie quickly. “Stay safe! I’ll send help!” She grabbed Bunsen’s shoulder. “You guys! Back to your lab before this gets any worse!”
Kermit muttered, “How could this possibly –“
A thump rippled along the street. Car alarms went off two blocks over.
Piggy growled, “You just had to say it.”
Another subsonic boom sounded, and this time the street pavement actually trembled. “That does not sound like help,” Pepe said, slowly backing behind Beauregard. The frightened janitor clutched the ancient dustmop he’d rescued.
“Does this mean the fences are down?” he asked, remembering something about big mean dinosaurs.
Another boom traveled along the street, making even the Underchicken pause a moment; then it cackled in glee and tried to slam its body against the neighboring building; Gonzo hung on, though the blow made his eyeballs roll. “Ooh, yeah, make me like it...” he murmured, though fortunately Camilla, standing anxiously among the Muppet crowd, didn’t hear him.
“Whaddevah it is, it’s comin’ closer!” Rizzo yelled.
Newsie shoved Gina away from him. “Go!” he shouted gruffly. “I love you!”
She gave him one worried, determined look, then took off. In seconds she was out of sight around the crooked angle of the street. Newsie sighed, glad she was out of danger, but then turning back to the giant freak lunging and reeling around the pile of wreckage, he realized it was only a matter of time before the Underchicken scraped Gonzo off its back...and then came for the rest of them...and what the hey was that weird booming? Transformer stations? Overflying planes? Disturbing memories of another such sound on a very grim day in the city’s history came to mind. Newsie strained on tiptoe but couldn‘t see anything in the night sky over the surrounding buildings. No flames or smoke, that has to be a good sign, right? But then what... He saw Gina running back around the bend in the street. “Gina? What are you doing?” he yelled.
And then another deep, shuddering blow hit the concrete, making him wobble. Robin peeped in fear and hopped atop the Muppet nearest, which happened to be Beaker; he meeped agreement, backing against a closed Chinese tea room. Piggy steeled her sturdy legs, wondering what the heck else was about to go badly wrong tonight, as her frog peered ahead worriedly. Only one overhead light cast its feeble glow along that end of the street, and as yet another horrible boooom sent alarming tremors along the sidewalks, the glass in the lamp shivered and fell with a crash. The immediate mental association with another light bulb dropping was not comic at all this time.
------
Statler...
Yes, what is it?
"Unbelievable."
"Ju need to stop stealing my lines, amigo."
"I thought you prefered Mac."
and he comes to the rescue.
