Tales From The Marvelous World: "Constantine vs Black Widow"

[muppetwriter]

Here comes another installment of my Tales From The Marvelous World series that has become one of my favorites to work on, as it makes reference to one of my favorite villains: Constantine! The events of this tale take place between Earth-M's equivalent of the Black Widow film and Doctor Who and the Marvelous Muppets! Enjoy!
-------

Chapter One: “The Copycats”

​

The drive through the Russian countryside outside of Saint Petersburg was rather pleasant for Nadya, the feisty warden of Gulag 38B. It could’ve been a lot roomier, having to share a tight space with French Interpol agent, Jean Pierre Napoleon, in his Interpol car – “Le Maximum.” The only comfortable one was Boris, Nadya’s right-hand rodent, recently promoted from his position as Head of Security at Gulag 38B. Boris hardly took up any space at all.

“I cannot believe we’re going to see the Red Guardian!” Nadya beamed on the ride-through. “I have been a fan of his since I was a little girl!”

“Don’t forget why we are here, Nadya,” Jean Pierre warned her.

“Yes, yes, I have not forgotten,” Nadya bemoaned. “The copycats.” With a heavy sigh, she added, “Why could this not have been under better circumstances? I didn’t even bring my autograph book!”

“Ya mean yer prison ledger, boss?” Boris said in his thick Brooklyn accent.

“No, that is my other autograph book,” Nadya clarified.

Jean Pierre rolled his eyes in annoyance. He was thankful to have seen the homestead of Melina Vostokoff close ahead of them. Thanks to his Interpol connections, Jean Pierre was able to uncover Vostokoff’s exact location. She remained under the radar for many years and kept herself well-guarded for decades – and for good reason.

It appeared that her guard was still up even then, as Le Maximum was fired upon the moment Jean Pierre pulled into the homestead. Nadya, Boris, and Jean Pierre saw Melina a short distance away, armed with a sniper rifle. “Take your clown car and drive away from here!” she demanded them.

Nadya was the first to step out of Le Maximum, with her hands held up high. “Don’t shoot!” she exclaimed. “We are not here to arrest you!”

“Then what are you here for?” Melina asked, her rifle aimed for Nadya’s head.

“We are here to talk about Constantine.”

“Constantine?!” a burly voice bellowed with rage.

Nadya almost couldn’t believe it when she saw him – the Red Guardian! He stepped out from Melina’s homestead with a young blonde who Nadya figured to be Yelena Belova. He had gotten a lot fatter and hairier over the years but, sure enough, it was him. “It’s really you!” Nadya squealed.

“Compose yourself, Nadya,” Jean Pierre ordered as he and Boris clambered out of Le Maximum, taking the utmost caution as Melina still had them in her sights. Addressing her and the Red Guardian (a.k.a. Alexei Shostakov), he said, “Yes, we are here to discuss a matter involving the notorious ‘Number One’ criminal himself.”

A hearty laugh busted out from Alexei. “Is that what he still calls himself? How can you be ‘Number One Criminal’ when there are thousands of them in the world? That frog is nothing more than a joke!” He turned to Yelena and Melina and asked, “Have I mentioned how he beat me once in arm-wrestling?”

“Only about a hundred times,” Yelena groaned.

“It was back in the Gulag, winter of ’96,” Alexei began – Yelena mouthing every word. “He walked right up to me with his beady eyes, his arrogant smirk, and that disgusting mole! He tells me, ‘You are not so tough, Red Guardian. I can beat you by barely touching you.’ And I say, ‘Ha! Let me see you try, frog!’ The second we grapple, he tells me that he has warts. And so I panic. What man wants to deal with warts?! Before I know it, Constantine has my hand pinned in one swoop!”

“You do know frogs cannot give you warts,” Melina told him. “That is a myth.”

Alexei frowned. “A what?”

“A myth,” Melina repeated.

Suddenly (and randomly), a woman appeared from one corner of the homestead and said, “Yeth?” No one knew who she was or where she came from, but it prompted their discussion to be taken inside for privacy.

Nadya, Jean Pierre, and Boris filled Melina, Alexei, and Yelena in on Constantine’s latest escape from Gulag 38B. “He was last spotted at the Red Room crash site, presumably stealing information on the Widow program,” Nadya informed.

“That’s impossible,” Yelena denied. “Natasha deleted all of it.”

“Unfortunately, that is not the case,” Nadya said. “Before he was recaptured, and while impersonating Kermit the Frog for several weeks, Constantine held secret meetings with General Dreykov. They made exchanges for information.”

“Information like the keys to a failsafe in the system, allowing Constantine to recover the deleted information on the Widows,” Jean Pierre elucidated.

“And with that information, he has now created Black Widow copycats,” Nadya stated. “One was spotted in Moscow just yesterday.”

This was a lot for Melina, Alexei, and Yelena to process.

They believed the nightmare of the Red Room and the Widow program to have been buried beneath the remains. And now it had all resurfaced because of one dangerous frog with a mole.

RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!!!

The windows of the homestead exploded in shards as a hail of bullets riddled through, urging everyone to take cover. It wasn’t that long ago when the homestead was infiltrated by Red Room agents, led by Taskmaster. As such, Melina made sure her humble abode was more than fortified for a follow-up attack, upping her arsenal with more weapons collected from the Red Room incident.

She, Alexei, and Yelena returned fire while Nadya, Jean Pierre, and Boris all cowered. “What are you doing?!” Nadya particularly asked Boris. “You’re supposed to be my bodyguard!”

“I ain’t got ‘nuff body tuh guard ya with!” Boris griped.

After a brief moment, the gunfire ceased and all was quiet. And then a familiar redhead donned in a black skintight suit crashed through one of the windows that hadn’t yet shattered. As she landed, she crouched in that signature pose Yelena knew all too well. It was Natasha’s pose – hair flip and all.

But it wasn’t Natasha.

Although the hair, suit, and body frame were all identical, the face was a stark difference. Makes kicking her butt that much easier, Yelena thought as she engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the Black Widow copycat. As they fought, Yelena experienced a sense of déjà vu – she had only recently grappled with the real Natasha in Budapest. This copycat had all her moves. The only notable difference in this fight was that the copycat was trying to kill her.

It would have ended in the copycat’s favor if Melina had not done what she did next. “Yelena!” she called, tossing her a vial of Red Dust, a synthetic gas used to free victims of mind control. It worked on the copycat, who seized in doing any further harm to Yelena and anyone else.

“Where am I?” the dazed woman uttered. Her accent was British. She saw a lock of her red hair and reacted in shock, “Why’s my hair red? I’m a brunette!”

“Do you know who you are?” Jean Pierre asked her.

“Of course! My name is—”

BLAM!

Before the woman could finish identifying herself, she received one bullet to her skull and thudded to the floor, dead. The shot came from outside. Everyone looked out to see the shooter to be yet another copycat, subsequently escaping on a motorcycle.

“How many are there?” Yelena asked Nadya.

The Gulag warden shrugged and answered, “Too many.”

TO BE CONTINUED...​

 

[muppetwriter]

Chapter Two: “The Intel”

​

Following the attack at the Vostokoff homestead, Nadya placed the threat level of Constantine to a “Level 10,” which meant she and her comrades had to go to America and consult with the one frog who might have known Constantine better than any of them: Kermit the Frog.

Jean Pierre’s intel brought them to the Daily Chronicle headquarters in New York City, which bustled with activity from various reporters and other personnel in the bullpen. “This looks like CNN headquarters,” Alexei observed. “They report fake news here.”

“Let me guess,” Yelena remarked, “an orange man with a bad comb over told you that?”

“Yes!” Alexei confirmed, genuinely surprised by Yelena’s spot-on deduction. “How did you know?”

Yelena mockingly shrugged and said, “Women’s intuition.”

“I thought that was a myth,” the bewildered Alexei muttered, prompting Yelena to roll her eyes in revulsion.

Searching for Kermit through the bullpen, Nadya and her comrades heard shouting coming from the office of The Daily Chronicle’s editor-in-chief, Mike Tarkanian. The door was closed, yet Tarkanian’s voice could still be heard outside the office. It got much louder when the door eventually opened and Kermit rushed out with Tarkanian shouting behind, “…and I’ll tell you this – if those jackanapes at The Daily Bugle can manage to get pictures of that Spider-Man joker, you can get me a real story for this paper to print! You got it?”

“I-I got it, chief,” Kermit whimpered.

“Good!” Tarkanian bellowed before retreating back into his office, slamming the door behind him.

“Sheesh,” Kermit uttered. He turned to make his way out of the bullpen, only to have a woman in a familiar brown uniform block his path. Looking up, he was stunned to see the lovely face of Nadya for the first time since the mix-up in Russia, four years ago. “Nadya? What’re you doing in New York?”

Even though she and Kermit were already well-acquainted, Nadya was still fangirling in the famous frog’s presence. Just as she had with Alexei, she maintained composure and kept herself strictly professional (to the best of her ability). “It’s so good to see you again, Kermit,” she said with a stiff smile. “How have things been with you?”

Noticing how stiff Nadya was, Alexei whispered to Jean Pierre, “What is the matter with her? She’s acting as weird as she did in Russia, when she first laid eyes on me.”

“Oh, she’s just a little starstruck,” Jean Pierre explained.

“That’s more than ‘a little’,” Alexei noted.

Kermit heard the two men whispering behind Nadya, noticing them, two other women, and a uniformed rat with the Gulag warden. “Who are all these people, Nadya? What is going on?”

“Kermit, I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” the regretful Nadya stated, “but Constantine has escaped.”

“What?!” Kermit gasped. “D-D-Does that mean he’s coming for me again?”

“We do not suspect so,” Nadya said. “His methods lean more towards global domination this time around.”

“That’s even worse!” Kermit cried.

“You spent many weeks in the Gulag where Constantine was imprisoned,” Jean Pierre recalled. “You were in contact with several inmates, who believed you were the Number One criminal.”

“Can we please stop calling him that?” Alexei groaned.

Not missing a beat, Jean Pierre continued with Kermit, “Supposing they told you something of major importance, such as the Red Room?”

Kermit thought long and hard back on his time imprisoned in Gulag 38B – a time in his life that he preferred to leave in the past where it belonged. But, whatever he could remember from that time would be beneficial in returning Constantine behind bars. “I do recall some talk about the Red Room,” he said. “Something about Black Widows and Super Soldiers. I thought they were just fans of the Avengers.”

“What was said about Super Soldiers?” Alexei pressed Kermit. “Tell us, frog!”

Kermit cowered from the big, burly, and bearded Russian. “I-I-I can’t remember the specifics, but it sounded like they wanted to make Super Soldier copies of Black Widow.” He noticed how the faces of Nadya and her associates were frozen in terror. “W-What’s this about? What is Constantine planning?”

Melina was specifically mortified by this information. “I heard rumors of Dreykov planning a ‘Phase Four’ of the program. Fully-trained Black Widows subjected to Super Soldier conversion, becoming virtually unstoppable.”

“Only Dreykov died before he could see his plans come to fruition,” Yelena noted. “And now Constantine plans to finish what he started.”

“You will not stop our plans!!!”

Suddenly, one of the Chronicle workers in the bullpen – speaking with a Russian accent – produced a handgun concealed beneath his desk and aimed it at Kermit. Before the frog’s would-be assassin could pull the trigger, Alexei grabbed the man by his arm, using his Super Soldier strength to snap it. The assassin’s gun fell out of his grip right before he was hurled through the nearest wall by Alexei.

Everyone in the bullpen stopped as they witnessed the brief scuffle.

Tarkanian, hearing the commotion from his office, emerged to see what the deal was. “What happened out here? Did someone get into a fight?”

“Yeah, a big one!” the shaken Kermit told his boss. “And I was almost assassinated by a Russian spy!”

“Really?!” Tarkanian yelled, sounding a bit too excited. “One of my reporters killed in a Russian espionage! That would’ve been our first newsbreak in weeks!”

Kermit shook his head in disbelief and repugnance. “I really need to find a better line of employment.”

-------------------​

Nadya and the others safely escorted Kermit out of the Daily Chronicle building and ushered him into the nearest taxicab – one that happened to be driven by Beauregard.

“Where you guys headed?” he asked his new passengers.

Before anyone could pick the destination, the rear windshield shattered as the taxicab was fired upon by more Russian henchmen approaching in an unmarked black van. This urged Yelena to yell to Beauregard, “Just get us out of here!”

Oblivious to the events happening around him, Beauregard gave a hard blink and said, “Right!” He stepped on the gas, screeching down the busy New York street as the black van gave chase. The Russians did everything possible to run the taxicab off the road, ramming it from the left side while continuing to fire upon it. Melina returned their fire, managing to take out one of the men, his body tumbling out of the van.

Ultimately, it was Beauregard’s maniac driving that outmaneuvered their Russian adversaries, as the driver lost control of the van and the entire vehicle flipped over, landing upside-down atop a parked, unoccupied SUV.

Impressed, Kermit acknowledged Beauregard, “Nice work!”

“Thanks,” Beauregard said. “What did I do?”

“You outsmarted the bad guys that were chasing us with your crazy driving,” Kermit expounded.

“There were bad guys chasing us?!” Beauregard freaked.

BAM!

Before anyone in the cab knew it, they were derailed by another Black Widow copycat that had landed right in their path, slamming her fists down on the hood and caving it in – shutting the automobile down instantly. They discovered this Black Widow copycat to be robust in size, built just the same as Alexei.

“Another copycat,” Melina surveyed.

“A Super Soldier copycat,” Yelena elaborated.

“She’s nothing more than a challenge to me,” Alexei proclaimed, stepping out of Beauregard’s ravaged taxicab and advancing on the copycat. She proved to be more than the Red Guardian could handle in hand-to-hand combat, overpowering him in two blows.

Yelena and Melina provided the best backup they could, but the copycat made short work of them as well. She nearly curb-stomped the downed Yelena’s head until a gas grenade had been launched into the area and unleashed a red mist that the Super Soldier/Black Widow copycat inhaled. Broken out of the mind control, the robust woman looked around in a daze.

Yelena did so herself, but only to see who it was that had thrown the grenade loaded with Red Dust. That’s when she heard a familiar voice tell her, “I figured it’d be soon before I had to save you again.”

Through the red mist, Yelena detected a woman with short blond hair and wearing the same vest she gave up to Natasha Romanoff after the Red Room incident.

As it turned out, the woman was Natasha Romanoff.

 

[muppetwriter]

Chapter Three: “The Trap”

​

Nadya couldn’t believe how the week was turning out.

First, she met the famous Red Guardian; now, she and her comrades had just been rescued by the Black Widow herself. “What are the odds we will see Black Panther or the Falcon pop up?” she whispered to Jean Pierre.

The Interpol agent rolled his eyes as he clambered out of Beauregard’s wrecked taxicab. “I would say mince à aucun,” Jean Pierre answered, though those last few words (spoken in his native French tongue) were lost in translation for Nadya, who was only fluent in Russian and English.

In the meantime, Yelena, Melina, and Alexei were elated to be reunited with Natasha again. “Love the hair,” Yelena admired of her sister’s altered appearance. “Blondes do have more fun, ya know.”

“So I’ve heard,” Romanoff teased.

“Is…Is he here with you?” Alexei asked, his eyes darting all around.

Natasha cringed at him. “Is who here with me?”

Alexei leaned in close – too close for Natasha’s comfort, as her nostrils flared from his odorous, aged, and heavily used Red Guardian uniform – and he whispered one name, “Captain America.”

“He doesn’t even know you exist!” Yelena (who clearly heard Alexei) blurted out. “Get over yourself!”

“I was just wondering,” Alexei impertinently excused himself.

“It’s just me here, Alexei,” Natasha stated for the record. Moving past the Red Guardian’s awkward obsession, she told the group, “My source filled me in on what’s happening. Just when I thought the whole Red Room situation was put behind us.”

It’s time to play the music! It’s time to light the lights! It’s time to meet the Muppets on the Muppet Show tonight!

​

The catchy lyrics randomly played out on repeat from the left pocket of Kermit’s reporter trench coat, prompting him to reach in and take out his cell phone – the item in question that played the classic Muppet Show theme as a ringtone. The caller I.D. identified that the call was from Fozzie Bear. “Fozzie?” Kermit answered. “Look, I’m gonna be a little late for lunch. Tell Robin, Gonzo, and Scooter that I…”

“Oh, I am sorry, Kermit the Frog,” a familiar Russian-accented voice spoke from the other end. “Funzie cannot come to the phone right now. He is, as you would say, ‘tied up’. Wocka…wocka.”

“Constantine?!” Kermit exclaimed. All eyes centered on him as he said that name.

“Put him on speaker,” Natasha instructed.

Kermit did just that, allowing Romanoff and the others to hear Constantine’s voice over his phone. “It has come to my attention that the real Black Widow has been snooping in my affairs, which I can no longer allow. So, if Kermit the Frog wishes to see his bear friend again, he and Black Widow will come to abandoned Muppet Theatre alone. But if I see any police, Avengers, French Interpol agents, gulag wardens, or even that overweight Red Guardian…”

There was a pause and then they heard Robin (Kermit’s nephew) crying out through the phone, “Help, Uncle Kermit!!”

Nadya gasped when she heard the child’s terrified voice. “Oh, dear.”

“Robin?! I-I’m coming to save you!” Kermit reassured. “Just hang on!”

He only received a dial tone in response. Constantine had hung up.

“It’s a trap,” Alexei surmised.

“No kidding,” Yelena mocked his observant skills. Looking to Natasha, she asked, “How are we playing this one?”

“What do you mean?” Kermit asked her. “You heard what Constantine said.”

“Yes, I heard,” Yelena said. “But I’m not just gonna stand and do nothing when there’s a psychopath threatening a child.”

“Neither am I!” Nadya declared, boldly stepping forward.

“Oui!” Jean Pierre exclaimed. “Constantine has gone too far this time!”

“We’re going to save your nephew and Fozzie, Kermit,” Natasha guaranteed. “But we’re going to do it the smart way.”

-------------------------

As Constantine requested, Kermit and Natasha arrived alone at the derelict Muppet Theatre near Broadway. They were greeted by Constantine himself, standing onstage while holding a gun not only at Robin and Fozzie, but Gonzo and Scooter as well. All four Muppets were tied to chairs onstage while four Black Widow copycats stood behind them, presumably for added incentive, each of them wearing gas masks to avoid the influence of any possible Red Mist.

“Do not be fooled by these copies,” Constantine warned. “They may not be as big as the last one you fought, but they are just as powerful with the Super Soldier formula coursing through their veins.”

“It’s all such a brilliant plan, Constantine,” Natasha said. “You really sure you’re the one who came up with it all?”

Constantine gave her a questionable scowl. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you and Dreykov were such good friends, right?” Romanoff inquired. “You two shared and shared alike. But how do we know it wasn’t really his master plan all along, and you were the ‘Number Two’ guy? That was the impression I got when he spilled his guts to me in the Red Room.”

Kermit gazed on Natasha, wondering where she was going with all of this.

She glanced back at him, winking.

It then dawned on Kermit what she was doing. Following her lead, he commented, “Yeah, that’s the impression I got, too. This Dreykov fella sounds like a really big deal – probably worth the attention of the entire Avengers team. I wouldn’t have imagined you to be the mastermind behind it, Constantine.”

“And why not?!” Constantine bellowed with his ego bruised.

“Well, for one,” Kermit said, “you’re always focused on small-time schemes like impersonating me just to steal the Crown Jewels of England.”

“That would’ve been a successful endeavor if my previous Number Two had not gotten in the way!” Constantine proclaimed, his anger and frustrations rising.

“Can’t blame others for your mistakes, Constantine,” Natasha belittled.

“She’s right,” Kermit agreed. “Sounds to me like you’re the real Number Two around here.”

Fully enraged, Constantine turned to the Widow copycats and ordered, “Exterminate Kermit the Frog’s nephew and friends!”

Before the order could have been carried out, two objects fell from the rafters and clattered across the stage. Constantine realized that they were two grenades – one a flash, the other modified for Red Dust – right at the moment that they both went off. Caught in a cloud of Red Dust, the flash grenade stunned Constantine and the Widow copycats long enough for Yelena and Alexei to rush onstage, freeing the hostages and removing the copycats’ masks and expose them to the gas.

From the rafters, Melina waited for the mist to clear to get a visual on Constantine through the scope of her sniper rifle. As soon as she got one, she pulled the trigger, expecting the Russian frog to go down as soon as the bullet connected with his torso. However, to Melina’s surprise, the bullet had gone right through Constantine’s body.

“What?!” she whispered to herself.

Detecting the attempt on his life, Constantine looked to the rafters and gloated, “Ha! I have fooled you all! I am not even here in this disgusting theatre! I am elsewhere you cannot find me!”

“You’re a hologram?!” Gonzo said, walking up to the projection of Constantine and moving his hand through it. The projection fizzed in and out from the weirdo’s gestures. “That is so cool!”

“STOP THAT, ZONGO!” Constantine demanded. “You will not think it’s so ‘cool’ when you meet my backup!”

He gestured to the doors leading into the theatre auditorium and, right on cue, dozens of men clad from head to toe in black body armor, carrying semiautomatic assault rifles, rushed in and surrounded the heroes at gunpoint. Two had their lasers sighted for Melina up in the rafters, forcing her into surrendering.

“Hired mercenaries,” Natasha gulped. “Should’ve seen that one coming.”

Kermit shuddered. “W-What do we do now?”

“There is nothing you can do now, Kermit,” Constantine reveled. “The show is over.”

Just as Constantine was about to give his mercenaries the kill order, the doors once again busted open – this time by SWAT teams that outnumbered Constantine’s mercenaries. They swooped in, forcing the mercenaries down to the floor and handcuffing all of them.

Nadya, Boris, and Jean Pierre were the last ones to enter, beaming with pride after bringing the authorities to the scene. “It is over, Constantine!” Nadya declared, pointing directly at him. “You are going back to Gulag 38B!”

“He’s not actually here, Nadya,” Kermit alerted. “It’s just a holographic projection.”

“That is correct,” Constantine scorned. “Scour the Earth! You will never find the world’s most dangerous frog and number one crimin—!” He was cut off by an unseen individual who delivered some news that highly agitated him. “What?! How did they find our location?!” The unseen individual responded, though Constantine didn’t like the answer. “WHO ORDERED A PIZZA?!?!”

The projection fizzed again as Constantine was yanked out of view.

A second later, a familiar blue eagle stood in his place. “Sam?!” Kermit reacted with Fozzie, Gonzo, Scooter, and Robin, surprised beyond belief.

“Sam, mon ami!” Jean Pierre cheered. “It is so good to see you again! How has the CIA been treating you these days?”

“I no longer work for the CIA, Jean Pierre,” Sam said, a slight hint of regret in his voice. “I’m working outside the system.”

This baffled Jean Pierre. “I do not understand. Who are you working for?”

“Well, for starters…I work for her.” Sam nodded towards Natasha.

“Wait a sec,” Yelena uttered in addressing her sister. “Your source is the eagle?”

Natasha shrugged and smirked. “He begged and pleaded to work with Cap after the whole fallout with the Avengers.”

“I did not beg!” the offended Sam stormed. “I sent in a well-written, deeply informative résumé and background checks, just as any hard-working American citizen would!”

“Yes, then I used it as a sandwich wrap,” Natasha admitted to Sam’s disgust.

Meanwhile, Jean Pierre was disheartened. “You do not know how this hurts me to hear, Sam. Assisting a wanted fugitive that Interpol has ordered me to apprehend, should our paths cross.” He already had the cuffs in hand to do the deed, until he pocketed them away in a change of heart. “Nonetheless, I am willing to accept Constantine’s arrest as a satisfactory substitute for Romanoff and give the both of you a ten-minute head start.”

Natasha smiled, grateful for the Interpol agent’s loyalty to Sam. Before she departed, she looked to Yelena one last time. “Seems like we can’t have a proper moment to say goodbye without the authorities on my tail,” she joked.

Yelena tearfully hugged her sister. “Just promise me we’ll catch up when this is all over with, O.K.?”

“Name the place and time, and it’s a deal,” Natasha assured.

She finally made her free getaway, heading to the theatre’s rooftop where Sam had a Quinjet waiting for her to rocket into the skies.

----------------------------​

The following day, at Pete’s Luncheonette, Nadya said her farewells to Kermit.

“It was wonderful to see you again, Kermit.” She fought back tears. “That’s what makes it so much harder to leave you again.”

Kermit nodded, sharing her despair. “You’re a great friend, Nadya. My nephew and friends owe you their lives.”

Nadya blushed, waving off the praise. “I was only doing my duty.”

“Well, it certainly proved just how much of a hero you are,” Kermit said. “And you’re more than welcome to come back anytime and be given a more comforting American experience.”

“Nothing would give me more pleasure, Kermit.”

The gulag warden gave the frog a kiss on the cheek and left the establishment, just as Gonzo, Fozzie, Scooter, and Robin walked in. “Hiya, Uncle Kermit,” Robin greeted. “Was that Miss Nadya we saw walking out?”

“Yeah, that was her,” Kermit verified, his heart full of sorrow.

“I really hope we see her again,” Robin said.

“So do I,” Kermit concurred.

Jenny the waitress approached their booth, delivering their meals. And then, not a second later were they approached by another female figure – an Englishwoman with jaw-length blond hair and hazel-colored eyes, wearing a hooded, lilac-blue trench coat and a low-collared navy blue t-shirt with rainbow stripes.

“‘ello!” She hailed with a breath of eagerness.

THE END​