Serialization of "Quedly Dake and His Quest to Conquer the Globe" — Chapter 18 of 25
From Book 3 of the “Taterskin & The Eco Defenders” Trilogy
On seeing Ooga sitting nonchalantly in the plush chair in front of his desk, Dake stopped in his tracks, his shoes squeaking on the floor as he did so, and his eyes bulged. A vein in his neck pulsated, and his face turned red.
“What are you doing here!” Dake demanded. “Who are you, anyway?”
This question was addressed to Ooga alone, as he was the soul in the room that Dake saw first and was, for the moment, fixated on. He then saw the others out of his peripheral vision.
“Who are you?” he asked Tubthumper and Chumbawumba.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Chumbawumba answered. “We are the Elephants in the room.”
“Why are you so small?” Dake asked the Elephants. “Relatively speaking, I mean.”
“We’re not your relatives,” Tubthumper told him. “But to answer your question, we are smaller than our usual size because your office isn’t big enough.”
“At any rate, we are still way bigger than you,” Chumbawumba added, as he stepped closer to Dake and his henchmen. “And so are many of my friends,” he said, gesturing around the room with a sweep of his trunk.
Dake and his cohorts then surveyed the rest of us Eco Defenders. When they saw the size of Jowls and Ocero, and heard the low rumble coming from the throats of the big cats and their clearly menacing mien, the three men simultaneously gasped and took a step back towards the door.
The three men hadn’t noticed, though, that they were completely surrounded. While they had been talking to Ooga and the Elephants, the rest of us had formed a circle around them, cutting off their escape path.
Backing away from the CM, or Charismatic Megafauna (in other words, the Hippo, Rhino, Elephants, Lion, and Tiger), Dake and his two companions walked right back into the rest of us (the three humans, the six dogs [my family]; the two birds, Alexis and Falcona; Rinky; Yookie; Drako; and, last but not least, Yukyuk the Chucking Hyena.
Yukyuk, that irrepressible and incorrigible practical joker, stepped out of the way at the last microsecond but stuck out her right foreleg, causing Dake to sprawl backwards onto the hardwood floor.
Dake jumped up in a rage, pointing at Yukyuk, who was, predictably, chuckling. “You did that on purpose!”
“Ya think?” Yukyuk replied, chuckling anew.
“What are you, some kind of haywire horse?” Dake demanded.
“If you must know, I am a Hyena, a Chuckling Hyena to be more precise.”
“You won’t have anything to chuckle about when I get through with you, you humpy lumpy punk!” Dake seethed. “You men, make yourself useful and get these infernal varmints out of here!” Dake ordered his bodyguards.
The first one, going for the least dangerous-looking member of our group, picked up Yookie the Koala Bear and began to carry him out of the room.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” warned Stripes.
“Don’t threaten us, Tony the Tiger,” the second bodyguard said, pulling a pistol from his coat and aiming it at the Bengal Tiger.
In less time than it takes to chase a tennis ball two feet, I lunged at the gunman, sinking my canines (actually, all of my teeth are canines) into his right calf (not a baby cow, of course, but the fleshy part of his lower leg).
“Ouch!” he yelled out.
“Ouch? Is that all you can say?” Yukyuk said. “Not very original; on a scale of negative 1 to 17, I give you a zero for originality and a one for style. In other words: Epic fail!” and she chuckled about the comeuppance she had given the henchman.
In the middle of Yukyuk’s trash-talking, Rory had leapt forward and, slashing with his right forepaw, knocked the gun from Kenworth Bumney’s grasp (Kenworth Bumney was the name of the first bodyguard; the second had the unfortunately redundant name Reed Reid).
As the gun clattered across the floor, Reed (or Reid, depending on whether you want to call him by his given name or his surname), went after it like a linebacker seeking to secure a fumbled football. He didn’t make it there, though. Rinky, the second least-dangerous-in-appearance of our number (after Yookie), slashed R.R. with the poisonous and painful claw on his rear left foot, causing the homophonically named bruiser to yowl in anguish (a Platypus’ poison-claw scratch is, pain-wise, comparable to being stung by a scorpion or stingray).
Now that we had their attention (and their guns, as Ooga had disarmed Reed Reid while he was writhing in agony on the floor as a result of the attentions paid him by the Platypus), we told the three men to listen up.
The previous chapter can be found here.
The next chapter can be found here.
Book 1 of Taterskin & The Eco Defenders, “Wonders Never Cease,” can be found here.
Book 2 of Taterskin & The Eco Defenders, “Tell It To Future Generations,” can be found here.
Book 3 of Taterskin & The Eco Defenders, “Quedly Dake and His Quest to Conquer the Globe,” can be found here.
