The Brat And The Other Country

An alien warrior in a strange land....

The narrator.

I.

The first I heard of the land of Anthropomorph was when I first met Barbara Bunny, a.k.a. Power Bunny, what seems like a long time ago. We and the other members of what eventually became the International League of Girls with Guns (muscles, not firearms, as we have to keep telling people) had been faced with a threat so horrific that it spread to all corners of the universes we all operated out of. Only our combined abilities, and knowledge of our worlds and realms, could have stopped it, and stop it we did. But that’s a whole other thing I can’t go into here.

You might raise your eyebrows a bit if I told you point blank that I was pals with a humanoid, pink-furred rabbit with super powers. But, then again, people raise their eyebrows at me because I’m a “little girl” with super powers, too. So all’s fair, I guess.

In any event, PB is the way she is because Anthropomorph is the land where all of the beings which, here on this Earth, are pejoratively known as “cartoon characters”, reside or originally hail from. For the most part, we experience their presence here only through films and television programs on screens of various makes and sizes. But, if you know anything about animation, you’re aware that it has the capability to empower any beings lacking intelligence, speech, personal and political agency, or human-like locomotion with precisely those qualities. Hence, my friend and her kind.

Yet, in Anthropomorph, as I was soon to find out, it is beings not unlike my friend who rule the roost. Human beings from Earth (or appearing to be from Earth, in my case, since I’m an off-world denizen originally) are considered parasitic and devious, in contrast. Not surprising, when you consider how much Hollywood took from them, in all their years working there, and did not give back comparatively in return. They’ve had the hurt put on them in more than way, in spite of their carefree exteriors, and aren’t afraid to hurt you back if you cross them.

As I was to find out when I came to Barbara’s aid- and she to mine, as it turned out- in that country, the subject of this story.

II.

It was a typical day for me between gigs. Sitting around, doing nothing. Hoping beyond all hope that I’d be needed to do something for somebody, which is what all of us superheroes really want and crave. No matter how minor or trivial, like a lot of the stuff is. You need to feel wanted. Especially me, with no family to speak of, and no true friends other than my super-powered BFFs. And my enemies outnumber them by a country mile.

So I was delighted when my cell phone started vibrating in my pocket, even though it awoke me from a nap.

We heroes generally don’t use social media, and if we do, it’s as our secret identities only. Too many risks of exposing your heroic self to the wrong people there. And we don’t give the numbers for our phones out freely. Just to the people we trust to keep our secrets, and who trust us to save their behinds back when they’re in trouble.

So it had to be one of that select group calling me, and no one else.

“Hello?” I asked when I answered.

In response to that one word, I got one word back:

“HELP!”

I recognized the voice. Full-throated, vibrant and (mostly) confidant, like all of us heroes sound like. Only, usually, we don’t sound that panicky, desperate or insecure unless we really have a problem.

Something was up.

“Is that you, Barbara?” I asked.

“Darn right it is, Precious,” she said, using my “real” name. “I got a problem here.”

“Where are you?”

“At home. D-uh!”

“Home…..as in…..?”

“You know where I live!”

“Right. So, what is it that….?”

“The usual. I got myself into something I can’t deal with by myself. I need another set of brains and limbs, at least.”

“You talk to the other girls in the League?”

“They’re all busy. I got nobody else here to help me. This is a real damnable thing going on.”

“Got it. I’m on my way. In the meantime, you keep calm and carry on.”

“Easy for you to say. You aren’t on the other end of….”

The line suddenly went dead.

Well, that settled it. She was in trouble, all right. So I knew I had to get there- and fast.

Because I was wanted.

III.

It’s not that difficult traveling between Anthropomorph and Earth. You just need to know where to go to find the various portals that facilitate travel between the two places, and what to do afterwards. It’s a bit like the border between Canada and the United States. Except we’re talking about a border that is actually defended when the wrong kind of people invade it.

One of these entrances, fortuitously, was located near the place where I was crashing at the time. I didn’t even need to fly there- a rare occurrence. I just had to walk a little bit, to a park down the road. So I did that. In the process, I also gave the finger to a woman who falsely assumed I was the toddler I only look like, and profanely informed her that I was actually an adult little person, which is what everyone who’s unaware of me as the super-heroic Brat knows me as on Earth. Well, nearly everyone.

Barbara had shown all of us where the various entranceways were when we first met, so it made sense to use the one nearest me. It was beneath a heavy boulder in the park. My superhuman strength easily allowed me to move it, and replace it when I was inside, though a normal human being couldn’t do that, obviously. Hence the employment of the strategy. Then I climbed down a tunnel into a passageway and walked around the corner. I arrived at a desk clearly marked:

ANTHROPOMORPH CUSTOMS AND BORDER INSPECTION

I was too short to reach the “ring for service” bell on the desk beneath the sign. So I had to cough very loudly to get the attention of the doe behind the desk. Who had to shut off her phone and actually stop talking on it to deal with me.

“Let me guess,” she said. “You want in?”

“That’s right,” I answered.

“Where you from?” she asked.

I named my home planet. She looked a little non-plussed, but continued.

“Current place of residence?”

“Earth.”

“Figured that. Job?”

“Superhero.”

“Full- or part-time?”

“Full.”

“Lucky! You coming for business or pleasure?”

“Business.”

“Any fresh fruit or vegetables on you?”

I was non-plussed now. I didn’t expect that one. But better she not ask about weapons. Although I had no obvious weapons, just like I had no food.

“Nothing,” I said, confidently.

“Weapons?” (Now she asked!)

“Again, nothing. I’m not that kind of hero.”

“Okay. Welcome to Anthropomorph. Enjoy your stay.”

Next to the desk was an enormous round disk of metal resembling an eye. I walked over to it, and the doe pressed a button on the desk. I walked over to the central part of the eye, and the doe pressed a button on the desk. It opened to reveal a blasting gale-force wind. I got into flight position, waved goodbye to the doe (who had returned to talking on her phone and now ignored me) and took off, flying against the wind.

If you haven’t got the ability to fly, you just step in the shaft and then skydive without a parachute into Anthropomorph. Those of us who can fly are spared that indignity.

IV.

I soon arrived in Gennett, Anthropomorph’s capital and largest city, and the stomping grounds of my heroic pal. However, I discovered immediately that it was going to be harder than I assumed to get the information I needed to find her.

The main reason for that, as I said before, was because human and human-appearing beings are considered lower than scum there. The Hollywood thing, and also, because of that, the fact that the few ones of them that are there aren’t exactly beloved members of the community.

If I wanted to find Power Bunny, I’d have to be careful. Even super powers are no match against some of the kinds of things these creatures can do or become in the heat of battle.

I clearly knew I was in a different place when I walked into a bar, ordered a beer, and was refused service.

It wasn’t being refused service that made me mad. I get that all the time on Earth. It was the fact that the lady goat tending the bar got mine when she insulted me with the refusal.

“What did you call me?” I snapped.

“You heard me!” she retorted. “I said you were a lousy human mother…..”

“I don’t deserve to be called names.”

“Deserve?” she retorted, in a snotty tone. “Aren’t we smart? You humans are all alike. You get all high and mighty with us because your kind supposedly “invented” the whole goddamned universe, and then you roll us here just as bad as you do on Earth. Well, you ain’t getting none of mine, sister. Booze or dollars.”

“I don’t want your money,” I said. “And I only wanted booze so that, as a paying customer, I could enter into a conversation with you in order to secure information from you. But if you’re going to…”

“Information?” she bleated, haughtily. “What about? How to get into somebody’s pants? ‘Cause you sure look like that type!”

I got up onto a bar stool, grabbed her long tongue, and pulled it out.

“Insult my virtue again, madam,” I warned her, “and this will be torn out!”

I shoved the tongue back in, to the sound of the drawer of a cash register slamming back in place.

She didn’t take that well.

Her face turned beet red, and smoke came out of her ears and nose. The universal sign of unblemished fury among the Anthropomorphians. From out of nowhere, she produced an elephantine machine gun that even the NRA wouldn’t endorse, and pointed it right at me.

“I don’t let nobody touch my tongue like that and get away with it!” she roared.

“Who’s “nobody”?” I taunted. “Your lover? You look like you’ve had more than one!”

She fired the gun at me, using all the bullets at once. Of which there seemed to be an inexhaustible supply. But I handled myself well. In response to the battery of bullets, I ducked some of them, caught others with my hands and crushed them, and let the rest bounce off my chest.

“Shit!” the goat exclaimed, in shock, when the supply was finally spent. “You’re a super human!”

“Correction. A super alien human,” I said. “And a pissed off one, at that. Now, you’re going to tell me what I want to know, or I’ll…”

“Oh no, you don’t!” She leapt over the bar and confronted me in a professional wrestling stance. “That don’t mean nearly as much as it does on Earth. We all have a bit of that going on. And I can use it to whip you- easy!”

“You and what army?” I said, assuming a fighting crouch myself.

“This one.” She whistled loudly. “FELLAS!”

With speed resembling the kind I possessed, a human sized pig and cricket, and a life-sized banana with limbs appeared from the back room.

“This human slut thinks she’s better than us,” said the goat. “We gotta show her otherwise.”

So saying, they all jumped on top of me to take me on at the same time, from all directions at once.

The fight lasted nearly as long as the shooting. It was complicated by the fact that my opponents could contort their bodies in such ways that were impossible for human beings, including spontaneously creating holes in their torsos they falsely assumed I would stick my fists in, so that they could close up the holes to trap me. Barbara had alerted me to all the fighting tricks of her race’s trade, though, so I didn’t take any of their crap. And, although the average Anthropomorphian is leagues stronger and faster than the average human being, none of them possessed anywhere near the speed and strength I had on me. I licked all of them in short order.

Grabbing the goat by her horns, I confronted her one more time.

“Now will you talk?” I demanded.

“Sure,” she said, meekly. “Just don’t beat us up any more.”

“All right. I’m looking for Power Bunny. Have you or your pathetic excuses for friends seen…?”

I was cut off then. By Power Bunny herself.

Outside.

Screaming.

In what sounded like agony.

Just around the corner.

“Never mind,” I said, dropping the goat abruptly to Earth, and letting her and her pals recover from their beating on the bar room floor.

V.

I raced in the direction of where I heard PB shouting. Sure enough, I found her.

She was lying there, face down, with her pink-furred limbs splayed out in pretzel twists extending from the blue skirt and shirt of her uniform on her torso.

I thought, for a moment, that I was too late. That whomever she had been fighting had bested and killed her and left her on the road to die.

Until I saw the empty bottle of Beaujolais wine extending from her paws.

Barbara has- how to say it- a rather complicated relationship with alcohol.

It’s not her weakness as a supe. That’d be fire. Anthropomorphians are all made of paper and ink and paint and old-school nitrate film stock. Consequently, they can burn faster than a forest can if you get either natural or man-made fire on them.

Alcohol is, however, a weakness to her personal character.

She claims it’s because, in Anthropomorph, wine flows like water, and the creatures here drink any kind of alcohol like it’s going out of style regularly. No legal drinking age to prevent minors from getting their hands on it, so she started out real young by our standards. Also, their internal organs are immune to the kinds of things alcoholic beverages do to the human body. With the exception of the D.T.s, in which state she was now. And even those aren’t as bad or last as long with human beings.

Add to that being a super-powered heroine, and….well, it doesn’t do much to harm her. Other than possibly making her goofier and more nonsensical than she is when she’s sober. (Which is not much of a stretch.)

Our joint pals have tried to persuade her for years to cut back on the sauce, futilely. None of us use the stuff, especially not on duty. We can’t even go inside bars, owing to the fact that we are or look like human minors, or are animals in corporeal form. All things Barbara doesn’t have to consider. We don’t mind her nipping and sipping to her heart’s content at our social events, but it becomes a problem when you do it when you’re supposed to be working.

As I assumed was the case here.

I went up to her, picked up one of her long ears, and yelled her name into it. She promptly sprang to attention, like a grunt soldier at morning roll call, with hardly any evidence of inebriation in her manner.

“Ah! Precious!” she said, nonchalantly. “You made it. I’ve been waiting for you for, like, ever.”

“You weren’t alone,” I said, gesturing to the bottle.

“I just needed something to calm my nerves, after what happened today.”

“What happened? Did you- or should I say, Barbara- get dumped again? And then, as Power Bunny, did you get the idea to get revenge on the guy, and get it? And then get loaded?”

“How would you know what….?”

“It’s not the first time for this, PB. Not even. You should know better than that now. Especially not to impersonate a wino on the street!”

“Better?” She was unusually outraged. “BETTER? Damn it, Precious! Are you going to give me the same pro-teetotaler crap the other girls are always giving me now? I thought you were different, you being an adult yourself….”

“Part of being an adult is being truly responsible for your actions. This is not responsible behavior. All you’re doing with this routine is crying wolf. You’re letting alcohol run your life, Barbara. You can’t just…”

“Don’t talk like that!”

“I’m only telling you this, as your friend, so that you’ll….”

“Friends like you I don’t need!”

“God damn it, Barbara!” I shoved her in her chest. “Are you going to listen to reason, or….”

Then I stopped. I suddenly realized, when the scent of her body entered my nostrils, that this being, although looking like my friend, was not really her.

“Wait a minute!” I said. “You’re not Power Bunny! Barbara Bunny, the reporter who resembles her very closely, is the one who goes around drinking and carousing. Power Bunny has much more respect for herself, her body and her reputation than that. She has to, considering who she is and what she has to do. You’ve got the two of them confused. Who are you, really? Or, should I say, what are you?”

Before I could do or say anything else, the faux-Barbara roared in my face. Before devolving into what was obviously its natural form.

A noxious blob of muck with a face!

“What in the name of…..?” I exclaimed.

The thing roared at me again. Obviously, it wasn’t going anywhere. So I knew I had to show it who was boss.

Big mistake.

I threw a fist at it, and my fist became entrapped in the muck. It used my entrapment to its advantage. It wasn’t just muck it was made up. It was muck mixed with a sticky, gelatinous substance which even my strength seemed useless against. It absorbed and contained most of my small body within seconds. I was helpless to stop it. As much as I struggled against it, it looked like I was done for.

Then I heard a familiar ululation in the air.

The battle cry of Power Bunny. The real one.

From out of nowhere, she flew out of the sky. Wordlessly, she put her mighty paws around my waist. Then, after I was deposited safely on the nearby sidewalk, she confronted the blob again.

“Try to put the hurt on one of my best buds, huh?” she growled, as she shaped one of her trademark carrot-shaped beams of light with her paws, while the beast quivered in fear. “Take THIS, you bastard!”

She flung the light at the blob. It was utterly obliterated in seconds.

That done, she turned her attention to me, as I was trying to figure out how I was going to get the muck stains out of my sweater, T shirt, skirt and boots combo.

“Hey, Presh!” she said.

“Hi, Barbara,” I replied.

“Sorry about that.”

“No worries. But what exactly was that?”

“That was an example of an odious species of monster cooked up by one of my nemeses. To be precise: Dr. Golem, Gennett’s mad scientist-in-residence. I hate that son-of-a-bitch with a passion! Even more now than before- considering he had the audacity to propose to me today!”

“Propose? As in ask you to be his….?”

“Uh huh. Which I utterly refused to do, of course. I don’t want to be single forever, but I don’t want him for a husband. It’s not just that he’s a twisted, evil genius; he also has a face like forty miles of bad road, and a body to match!” She did a mock vomit to further demonstrate her contempt for him. “I would have been there to greet you when you came in, Presh, only I was in the process of laying the smack on him, his evil experiments and his fancy-schmancy chateau in one sitting. I thought I wrecked him and everything he stood for, but that thing obviously got away from me the first time.”

“I thought it was you. Before you arrived, it did such a good job of pretending to be you that I could have sworn it was….”

“That’s what the Doc wanted. He put a glamour, or a spell, or something like that, on those things so that they would look like whoever those people were thinking of at the time, and they’d look like whoever that was. That was how he baited the trap. When the people were bought in, that’s when they’d reveal their true form and trap them. He was going to let them loose on all the high muckety-mucks in Anthropomorph to take control of the place. Fortunately, I squelched that. Except for the one who looked exactly like me. You obviously tangled with that one, and would still have been if I hadn’t shown up.”

“I’m just surprised I didn’t catch on until it was nearly too late….”

“Don’t be. I got fooled by more than one of those things when this deal went down. And you’re smarter than me, so you can imagine how I felt like getting fooled, let alone you.

“The key thing with them is that you can always tell they’re not the real deal even if you don’t get it right away. There’s the toxic smell they give off to start with. And then the fact that the fake beings do crazy stuff the real beings wouldn’t dare to. Save maybe in their dreams- or nightmares.”

“Such as lying in the streets with an empty bottle of Beaujolais nearby?”

“Yeah, like…..WHAT? Was that…..thing….doing that? Golem is such a tool that way. He made that Power Bunny sluttier than I really am to get revenge on me rejecting him. I’m pretty sure about that. Who knows what that damn thing did in my name? Damage control time tomorrow, looks like.”

“I found you…..it….like that over there. The bottle kind of set me off. You know how we feel about you drinking to excess around us. Especially on duty. And I started calling it on that. And then…..”

“See what I mean? That asshole knows how to trick people. About the only thing he’s good at. The rest of him is evil, but he’s not an idiot. He’s dangerous. He knew enough about me to make a duplicate of me even one of my best pals thought was really me. But he got some of that stuff wrong, and that’s how you found out. First of all, I try not to drink in my PB identity….”

“Emphasis on try.”

She shot me a vicious look, and then continued.

“And second, I don’t usually drink much wine. It’s expensive. I have some on social occasions, but only when I’m not paying for it. We got to import most of our wine from Earth. And that French stuff really costs you an arm and a leg. Almost untouchable on the kind of money I make as a reporter.”

“One more thing. Was that you calling me on the phone, or was it that noxious doppleganger of yours?”

“It was me. I was in the midst of battling Dr. G, and he and those….things….had me cornered. I didn’t think I could keep doing it alone. I thought maybe the other girls could help me, even though you know how we all feel about being called in on short notice. Couldn’t get the others, but you answered. We talked, and then he caught and overpowered me temporarily, taunting me by how he was ready and able for a wedding and honeymoon when I was. That made my mad. I couldn’t let him get away with that. So I busted up the joint. You girls wouldn’t have expected any less of me, after all. I only wish I didn’t end up calling you in a false alarm. Bad form on my part. I’m sorry, Precious.”

“You needn’t be. I wasn’t doing anything important then, and I always wanted to see this place up close. This gave me the excuse I needed to go. And, even though I nearly bought it, I’m glad I did. Needed to keep in shape, after all.”

“Well, you can crash me for as long as you want to stay here.” We started walking down the street with her paw around my shoulder. “We should head back to my pad. You probably need a nap same as I do to get your power back. But not before we have a drink first.”

“Not that kind,” I said, pointing to a nearby neon bar sign. “I already busted my butt looking for you in one of those dives today, and I’d rather not repeat myself.”

“Of course not that kind,” PB agreed, in a sober but playful tone. “I was merely suggesting that we partake of a couple of ordinary glasses of wat-tah! In the privacy of mine own home.”

After keeping a straight face on the job all day, I broke down and start guffawing. She did, too.

Because we both needed to. Bad.