Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2021 15:01:39 GMT
"It's almost dawn - and I haven't been able to sleep for more than an hour!" Bobby Caswell thought to himself as he squirmed around on the lumpy mattress in his cabin at the Secret Sanctuary Lodge and Motor Hotel just outside of Rutland, Vermont, trying to find a comfortable position.
"I hope there are some new costumes in the parade tonight I can adapt for use in my "Wonder Weasel" book!" Bobby was a junior at the Brookline College of Arts and Design in Boston, Ma, majoring in Illustration - and his dream job was to work in the comic book industry, like his uncle Al. Al was going to introduce him around at his current company, HyperGraphyics Comics during Christmas break, and he was hoping to have a self-created issue of "Wonder Weasel" ready to show off all his skills.
"Particularly some really hot chicks in tight, skimpy costumes, like Moon Miss!" Bobby had met Moon Miss while riding on a float in this same parade a couple of years ago, a really hot chick in a tight skimpy costume who had seemed to really dig him - at least, while he was in his costume as Gold Kid. "From years of going to Comic Conventions with uncle Al, I know JUST what fanboys dig in their comics! And Gloria practically promised I'd find the inspiration I need here today." Gloria was the proprietor of The Cosmic Shop. She lived in a brownstone on Beacon St. above her basement store. She was more than a little weird - she occasionally had what her customers and friends called 'prophelectic fits' in which she acted as if she were possessed and spoke cryptic messages about the future. Which always seemed to come true, though frequently in ways that were totally unexpected.
He sat up and pulled a sheath of brightly colored pages from the portfolio on the nightstand next to bed. He was leafing through them, trying to figure out what Wonder Weasel scene he should write, draw, color, letter and ink next, when a brilliant streak flashed across the window and caught his attention.
"WOW! That's no falling star!!" he thought excitedly. "It looks like it's headed for Bald Mountain!" Then - "Hey, isn't this where I came in? Can it really be happening again? It can't be another spaceship from Offorrer and Dr. Bar-Ko; he said there was only one superhero on the planet, and everyone else on the planet died in the new Ice Age anyway. But still - I have to go find out!"
In summer of 1980, while Bobby and his aunt Sue and uncle Al had been vacationing in Rutland, he'd investigated what he thought was a meteor landing on Bald Mountain. Instead he'd found a spaceship from the planet Offorrer, and inside triggered a computerized recording left by Dr. Bar-Ko, of the Energy Institute, and the computer had bestowed on him the awesome alien energy that allowed him to become the super-powered action hero Thunderbunny!
A power he'd used only reluctantly, because what teenage boy wants to be stuck as a giant rabbit for the rest of his life, a risk Bobby ran every time he'd called upon that power. A power he'd lost during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, when Thunderbunny had been killed - leaving Bobby alive, but powerless. A power he missed every time there was a situation where Thunderbunny could have made a difference. A power he'd called upon hopefully, repeatedly, for several years, until the repeated failures overwhelmed him and he'd given up hope of ever again becoming... Thunderbunny. And now, somehow, hope surged again. It was impossible that yesteryear's scene could repeat itself - but wasn't the first time just as impossible? Bobby threw on some clothes, rushed to his car and raced to the parking lot at the base of Bald Mountain - then hurried up the familiar trail as fast as he could.
"Just like the last time," he thought excitedly. "Nobody else seems to have seen it."
What he didn't see was another car pull into the parking lot. An attractive young woman, probably around 20, got out, put on a pack and pulled some equipment from the trunk, then turned and started determinedly up the trail. Far ahead of her, she saw Bobby - and that heightened her determination to follow as quickly as possible, even though she was carrying almost a third of her weight in video equipment. She used a hand-held video camera with a pistol grip to capture his backside, far ahead of her, racing up the trail. "Well, Toots, if anything exciting happens, and you can film it, that should help our grade! And if it's just a false alarm, well, there's always the parade tonight!" This was Tracy DeBaybe, a junior at Smyth College in nearby Amethyst, Massachusetts, a major in Cinematography, who was doing a field project for her Independent Filmmaking elective course.
Bobby was moving much more slowly when the young woman caught sight of him again. Then he came to a bend in the trail, and whatever he saw must have energized him, because suddenly he was running again. She hustled to the bend, looked around, and immediately opened her equipment bag. She hurriedly pulled out a big camera and tripod and set it up facing along the path, zoomed it in, and started it filming. Then she picked up her hand-held again and began cautiously approaching the scene she was now filming, being careful to stay out of the field of vision of her big camera.
Bobby was moving cautiously across a big clearing - the same clearing where he'd found Dr. Bar-Ko's spaceship years ago. Cutting diagonally across the clearing was a long gouge were something had smashed at high speed into the mountainside. And at the far end of the gouge, maybe a hundred yards from the bend in the path, was that something, half buried in a giant mound of earth and rock.
"A SPACESHIP!" Bobby was almost awestruck. "It CAN'T be happening again... but it IS!"
Well behind him, hidden in some brush, Tracy was avidly recording. "Not much action so far," she thought. "Looks like it will probably end up as a documentary rather than an action film."
There were differences between this scene and the past, though, differences Bobby noticed. Dr. Bar-Ko's ship had been under computer control and had landed safely, while this ship had crashed. The ship from Offorrer had been sleek and sophisticated in design; this one was primitive looking - to Bobby it looked almost exactly like that used by Ming the Merciless in the 1930s Flash Gordon serial - an elongated oval, bulky in front with wings on the almost pointed rear, fixed wheeled landing gear smashed against the bottom of the vessel, with what looked like automobile exhaust pipes underneath, also smashed flat. The hull, which once had been smooth and a shiny silver was now dull gray, peeling and pitted, covered with dents and dings, and there were some ugly tears as well, probably caused during the recent crash landing.
Bobby slowed even further, obscurely disappointed that this wasn't another emissary from Offorrer. "Nothing could possibly have lived through that crash!" he said to himself, both disappointed and yet a little glad that he wasn't facing the vanguard of another alien invasion. And then he saw something impossible - there was a creature of some sort climbing out through one of the rips in the hull!
"Zoom in on that thing, Toots!" Tracy ordered Tracy, who pressed the Zoom button on her expensive video camera, and suddenly she seemed to be facing the thing from only a few feet away, whatever it was. It was humanoid, but the body was more malleable than a human - it had to stretch and contort to get through the rip in ways no human body could. When it was out, it stood on 2 feet and looked in her direction - and she almost screamed as she realized that it must be an ogre!
Humanoiod - two arms, two legs, a head on top of a massive frame, it must have stood almost 8' tall, with shoulders almost half as wide. It was naked, covered in short dense hair from the armpits to the ankles, the revealed skin a sickly greenish-white, and the angular face was... demonic, horrific! Like a bald Halloween wicked witch with a cruelly bent beak nose, the mouth a wide oval filled with pointed teeth. The long brows formed a deep, thick black V on the heavy brows that covered deeply sunken eyes which glowed green. The ears were set far back, almost at the rear curve of the skull, and the tops of each ear ended in a points several inches higher than the top of the skull. In silhouette they resembled the horns of a devil. The hairy waist obscured any gender-revealing details. The arms were short and muscular, the fingers ended in claws.
Tracy almost broke and ran, but she realized that the ogre was staring at Bobby (not that she knew his name...) instead of her - and he was still like a hundred yards away. She squirmed deeper into the brush for concealment, but kept the camera aimed at the ogre.
Bobby stopped, horrified. "That thing's even bigger than Thunderbunny!" he thought in awe. "And of course, it's another alien..." Bobby, as Thunderbunny, had quite a bit of experience dealing with aliens - and except for Dr. Bar-Ko, who had actually been a recording, so far none of it had been good. "I wish I'd been more cautious approaching - but who could have guessed that anything could have lived through that crash? Oh, crap! It sees me. It's coming this way!"
The monster moved in lurches and jerks, as if it were shaky from the crash, but with incredibly long legs it still moved faster than a human. And it spoke! And it spoke English... broken English, with a strange accent, in a voice that sounded like the rumble of an earthquake, or the explosion of a volcano. "Tell Ombo where Queen Margot is... before Ombo kills you!"
Bobby turned to run. Ombo leaped - and from almost a hundred yards away, crashed down in front of the terrified young man. Dirt erupted from around his feet, smashing into Bobby, knocking him down and blinding him. Ombo staggered, but recovered faster than Bobby, reached out and grabbed him the neck and easily lifted him in front of his face. His hot breath washed over Bobby's face, burning like acid. "Tell Ombo where is Queen! NOW!" He grabbed Bobby's shoulder with his other arm, and released his throat - and continued to easily dangle Bobby a foot off the ground. "Talk! No..."
"Whack!" A stone struck the ogre square in the back. He was startled but not hurt; he dropped Bobby to the ground and spun around. Tracy stood tall at the bend of the path, fist sized stones in each hand. "You leave him alone, you monster!"
"Ombo is monster... girl is meat!" the orge roared with what might be a laugh, and he started lumbering forward. Tracy threw both her stones - one hit Ombo in the forehead, the other in the chest, and both bounced off - with no effect other than a sound effect. Ombo laughed again. The girl screamed and ran, and Ombo lumbered off after her. He moved twice as fast as she did...
Bobby's shoulder was in agony and he was having trouble breathing. He realized that he might by dying, and that brave girl was going to die too, just because she'd tried to help him. "Please, just one more time," he begged the universe, sobbing. "I have to help her!" He closed his eyes - he could SEE Thunderbunny, standing proudly in front of him, watching him expectantly - but the image was quickly shrinking and growing hard to focus on. He dragged his good arm around to the one that wouldn't move, screaming in agony, raised the good hand over the other, and let it drop, adding all his remaining strength, hopeless but praying. There was a clapping sound... a clap of thunder that sounded like "Fatoom!" and the awesome figure of Thunderbunny leaped agilely to his feet where Bobby had been crumpled in agony.
Thunderbunny, a man-shaped rabbit with pink fur, over 7' tall, wearing a red costume with white cape, boots and gloves. His face was the cute face of a hare, with big eyes, a button nose and buck teeth under tall, flexible ears, but the cute features were twisted in fury.
"Ombo! Turn and face me!" he ordered in a voice like a foghorn. "Turn and face THUNDERBUNNY!"