by Comickook
“Well, Miss Witchbolt and Mr. PoultryGhost have just uncovered that nasty ol’ War-Ender’s current postion, Mr. What’s-Up-Doc, sir,” Sniffles Thunder said. “Ah, ah, ah… ah-choo!”
“Errr, t’anks, kiddo. Now, den, I t’ink we should get ta explain what we know ’bout da War-Enda ta our allies so dat dey’ll be up ta speed on ‘im,” What’s-Up-Doc said.
“Not another secret origin!” groaned Pig-Iron, palming his face with his left hand.
“Don’t worry, it’ll be over inna minnit,” said What’s-Up-Doc. He turned to the Zoo Crew and began to explain it all. “Anyway, as you know, he’s a pritty powerful li’l bugga capable of reanimatin’ ‘n’ even supa-chargin’ da dead. On top o’ dat, he’s supanaturally strong ‘n’ fast ‘n’ capable of teleportation in a pinch. ‘Course, ya already know all dat. What ya don’t know is dat dis guy lost ‘is soul in ‘is youth when he wuz jest strugglin’ ta keep what li’l he could git ahold’a on ‘is home woild.
“Anyway, he sold ‘is soul fer near-limitless powa ‘n’ combat knowledge. It wuz lata on when he realized what he lost, ‘n’ den he tried ta confront da evil god dat gave ‘im ‘is powa. It wuz in da midst o’ dat battle dat he realized, in orda ta defeat da god dat gave ‘im ‘is powa ‘n’ git ‘is soul back, he’d have ta put an end ta war itself. Ova da centuries, he became so flipped out dat he decided da only way ta end all war wuz ta put an end ta all sentient life in every univoise he comes across.
“Da Looney Society — sans PoultryGhost ‘n’ myself, who were trapped in a portion of dimensional limbo dat allowed ‘im ta feed off our powa — fought ‘im back in oily ’45 ‘n’ jest barely managed ta beat ‘im. He’d bin trapped in dimensional limbo ever since ‘is defeat… ’til today. One more t’ing — da guys can also control da four basic elements ‘n’ is a supanaturally quick heala, but he should still be weak enuff dat we can take ‘im now if we hurry.”
“Thanks for explaining, Doc,” Captain Carrot said with a nod as the PoultryGhost teleported himself, the Looney Society, and the Zoo Crew to a vast frozen wasteland, with a fearsome-looking fortress right in front of them.
***
“Oh, dear. Looks like those busybody super-animals have already picked up my trail. I shall have to extend even more of my power to keep them busy until I’m back up to full strength. As it is now, I’m only at one-sixteenth strength. Delays, delays, delays…”
The War-Ender fretted as he transformed four hundred portions of frozen ground into one-hundred-foot ice golems and then reassembled those dragon bones unearthed by the transforming of the ground into monsters. As those bones reassembled themselves, they became revealed as four hundred now-living dragon skeletons, skeletons that were now regrowing their original scaly flesh.
***
Rubberduck looked at Duck L’Orange and gulped, “Are you sure this guy’s not back to full strength now?”
Duck L’Orange said, “Positive; the licks we managed to get in before he got away meant that his getaway exhausted every bit of his juice, enough that, even with his supernaturally quick healing, he’d still be only up to one-eighth strength by now, and the loss of his sword cut his power in half, so he can’t be any higher than one-sixteenth of his normal juice.”
“Yeah, but da good news is dat dis stunt took most’a what he got back, so if dese beasties kin be kept busy, a small group’a us can take ‘im down once ‘n’ fer all,” added What’s-Up-Doc. “PoultryGhost, Duck L’Orange, ‘n’ I will do dat job.”
“Hey, no way am I missing out on this punch-up,” Pig-Iron grunted.
“After all, this is our world, so that makes it our fight, too,” Captain Carrot added, Alley-Kat-Abra agreeing with a quiet nod.
“‘Kay, ya t’ree kin come along ‘n’ help out,” What’s-Up-Doc replied. “Da rest’a ya jest be as careful as ya kin be while you keep dese bums off’a our backs.”
With that, What’s-Up-Doc teleported himself, Duck L’Orange, PoultryGhost, Captain Carrot, Alley-Kat-Abra, and Pig-Iron into the fortress to face the War-Ender himself while the other eight did battle with the Martian villain’s monsters.
Using carefully timed super-speed after-images, the Skirt Chaser and Fastback each managed to maneuver fifty of the ice golems into taking each other out — plus each maneuvering a few of the dragons into accidentally defeating another twenty-five of the ice golems for them — before using repeated super-speed friction attacks to each take down another twenty-five of the golems. With half of the golems already defeated, the Skirt Chaser then activated his super-skunk spray and spun his arms in separate directions, but both at speeds creating winds strong enough for the winds to catch the noses of fifty of the dragons and take those fire-breathing monsters down faster than a dot.com company.
Meanwhile, the Bunny-Goddess played bucking bronco, using her lasso as a bridle with one of the dragons until she maneuvered it into ramming into one of the other dragons. While those two dragons were dazed, she then slammed their heads together and, employing her demigoddess speed, dashed out to their tails and grabbed each one before starting to spin faster and faster, creating a whirlwind strong enough to suck in another eight of the dragons. Using the two dragons she was spinning like giant sledgehammers, she was able to quickly pound those eight dragons into submission before taking off after the last half of the golems, chipping away at each of those ice giants like a diamond-tipped, two-thousand-horsepower buzz-saw through soft butter. As soon as those golems were chipped away into mere ice shavings, the Bunny-Goddess then tossed those two dragons away one by one, each dragon flying into ten more.
Rubberduck was holding the mouths of four of those dragons shut long enough for them to pass out while simultaneously tickling another two dragons into submission. Yankee Poodle was riding atop one of the dragons — with a little help from her bio-magnetic stripes, which she was using as a bridle — using her stars to repel the flame-breath blasts of five of the other dragons right back into their mouths. While trying to buck her off, the dragon she was riding also crashed into another two dragons hard enough to knock all three of the involved dragons unconscious, and Rubberduck caught Yankee Poodle by stretching himself into a giant trampoline after he was done with the six dragons he was fighting, then proceeded to wrap himself around the wings of another six of those dragons, causing them to crash hard onto the ground. Little Cheese was using careful stick, shrink, and move maneuvers to trick eight of the dragons into taking each other down.
Meanwhile, Witchbolt, under the control of Sniffles Thunder, morphed into ten giant squids with a giant fire-hose in each tentacle and blasted a hundred of those dragons with enough water to not only put out their flame-breath, but also — considering they were pretty deep in the polar region of the Barctic Ocean — freeze those dragons solid.
After protecting himself from the flame breath of fifty of the dragons with a force-field, the Moon-Howler let loose a blast of cosmic energy potent enough to kayo all fifty of those dragons, but that took so much of the juice out of the hero’s Acme Cosmic Control Rod that he ended up crashing into the ground, where he held up a sign that read, “Hey, you knew I had to hit the ground at least once in each adventure.” After that, two dragons knocked out by one of Yankee Poodle’s stars-and-stripes blasts crashed into an icy mountain above the Moon-Howler, who was just getting up from his two-hundred-foot crash. The resulting avalanche crashed down hard on the Moon-Howler and produced a series of smoke clouds that, if one were to look hard enough, would seem to spell out “Dedicated to the memory of Chuck Jones.”
Twenty of the last ninety dragons had caught Rubberduck, Yankee Poodle, and Little Cheese in a ring of fire, but Fastback and Skirt Chaser were able to produce enough of a super-speed vacuum to put out those flames before Fastback spun his arms at whirlwind speed to cause the Skirt Chaser’s super-skunk spray to take down those twenty dragons before they could fire again. Another three dragons crept up downwind and tried blasting at the heroes from behind, but Fastback and Skirt Chaser spotted them in time. Fastback grabbed Rubberduck and Little Cheese, while Skirt Chaser grabbed Yankee Poodle, and both super-speedsters zipped well clear of the flames.
Skirt Chaser carried Yankee Poodle into a cave and hung a Do Not Disturb sign out in front of the cave entrance. Rova Barkitt shrugged her shoulders and said, albeit in a very quiet tone, “Hey, the guy did save my behind, and he still smells better than half the animals I’ve gone out with.”
The Bunny-Goddess slammed two dragon heads together, threw them each pretty hard into one of the other dragons, then caught those next two dragons in mid-leap before slamming them down into the first two. She lifted those four dragons up and threw them into six more — not quite hard enough to knock them unconscious, but still hard enough to take a significant portion of the wind out of them. With two demigoddess-level strength and speed punches, the Bunny-Goddess finished subduing those last six of the dragons she was fighting. Thirty more dragons came after her while she was catching her breath, but they got caught by a massive bolt of golden energy that knocked them right out of the fight.
Finally getting his Acme Cosmic Control Rod started back up, the Moon-Howler blasted tons of debris off of him and then flung that debris in all directions, which left the last thirty of the dragons so dazed that he was able to pick them off with ten blasts from his rod.
***
Aside from What’s-Up-Doc having been taken down, the heroes fighting the War-Ender himself were doing pretty well. The heroes came in using magically charged decoys, courtesy of the aforementioned Doc, to keep the villain occupied while they moved in for the big attack. But the magically powered rabbit caught sight of thirty dragons attacking a slightly exhausted Bunny-Goddess and relinquished his decoys to let loose a blast against those dragons. Though the effort succeeded in what the rabbit intended to do, it also left him wide open for one of the War-Ender’s sucker-blasts.
Otherwise, however, the fight had not been going in the exhausted Martian villain’s favor. The combined strength of Captain Carrot, Pig-Iron, and the Bunny-Goddess — the last of whom leaped into the fortress and joined the fight against the main villain after she caught her breath — mixed with the combined mystic energies of Duck L’Orange, Alley-Kat-Abra, and the PoultryGhost still proved to be enough to make short work of the interstellar evil-doer while he was fighting with the proverbial empty tank. Of course, that was the only reason the heroes were having such an easy time of this fight; otherwise, they would have been in for one heck of a hassle. The combined mystic energies of Duck L’Orange, the PoultryGhost, Alley-Kat-Abra, and the just-recovering What’s-Up-Doc created a set of chains that, this time, were strong enough to hold the War-Ender for good.