WILL YOU, WON’T YOU, WILL YOU, WON’T YOU, WILL YOU JOIN THE DANCE?

By Alexander Ritter

Eugene Patilio stood across from White Rabbit, the two having come face to face at the “Kwikkee Burger.”  She challenged him to come fight her, under threat of destroying the city.  Being the hero he was, Eugene grabbed his Frog-Man gear and arrived as soon as he could.

“Listen, every time we’ve ever done this, it’s ended the same way.  You end up knocked unconscious, then taken to jail.  Maybe you’d just like to surrender this time?”

“You dolt, why would I summon you here just to give up?”

“Nothing to lose by asking, I was trying to nice, geez!  I guess we can do this the hard way if you really want.  I was hoping you would’ve learned from past experiences, but I guess not!”

“No, you are very wrong, my amphibious adversary.  I have learned a great deal in the course of our epic encounters, but I will admit that I’m still learning every day.  As a matter of fact…”

White Rabbit’s eyes twinkled as she pointed her umbrella at Frog Man.  A razor sharp blade extended from the tip.  “Today I’m going to learn how, exactly, one goes about dissecting a frog!”

Charles Liddell sipped a steaming cup of coffee while observing the computer monitors.  White Rabbit had been working Charles to the bone. He was so tired and worn down that the coffee was barely enough to keep him awake and focused.

He had set up a workspace in the back of the ice-cream truck, similar to what you’d see in a movie when people are on a “stakeout.”   Three laptop computers were wired together, and Charles was doing his best to multitask on all three hard drives.

The center computer was wired into the remote control cameras that watched and recorded White Rabbit’s every move.  He was letting them run on autopilot, but he was ready to jump in and enter manual commands if necessary.

The computer on his left, he used to scour the internet for any information about White Rabbit.  He wasn’t turning up much, having to wade through an insurmountable amount of pages linked to the keywords “White” and “Rabbit.”

The computer on his right, let’s just say he was downloading a movie and leave it at that.  He already knew how White Rabbit felt about that kind of thing, and if she found out what he was doing with her computer, he reasoned the last thing he would ever hear would be “off with his head!”

His attention diverted toward the computer on the left, as something captured his interest.  His seemingly fruitless search had pulled up a truly interesting result indeed.

Eugenie was extremely anxious about the blade that White Rabbit was wielding.  Geez, look at the size of that thing, she wouldn’t have any problem carving me up like a chunk of roast beef.  Eugenie couldn’t let her know he was having second thoughts.  He tried his best to put on an air of confidence.

“I gave you the chance to give up, but you leave me no choice.  Prepare to be pummeled by the amazing leaping ability of the fabulous Frog-man!”  Eugenie crouched down and prepared to launch himself across the room and tackle White Rabbit.  He extended his legs…

…and landed a measly two and half feet away from his starting position.

White Rabbit had an unimpressed expression on her face. “A rather uninspiring thing.”

I’m such an idiot, geez! thought Eugenie.  I should have tested the suit first, before leaping into a fight!  I just need to adjust the resistance on the springs before she slices me wide open!

White Rabbit advanced on Frog-Man, swinging her blade with wild abandon.  “Do you know how long I’ve waiting for this moment, dreamed of this divine retribution?  My repeated defeat at your hands has been an albatross around my neck for far too long.”

Frog-Man was doing his best to adjust the knobs on the power back on his back, while simultaneously dodging White Rabbit’s blade.  Eugenie was not in the best physical condition, always having relied on the suit’s jumping coils to do all the work.  One of White Rabbit’s swipes caught him on the forearm, ripping the suit open and gouging his flesh.

“Yowch!”  Eugenie grabbed his forearm, blood oozing from between his fingers as he tried to hold the wound closed, while avoiding being skewered like a shish kabob.

“It would appear that first blood, is mine!” announced White Rabbit, triumphantly.  “Do you know what it will do to my reputation to kill a superhero, especially one that is considered my arch nemesis?  Why, my colleagues will no longer consider me a laughing stock, they will be lining up in droves, begging me to honor them with my partnership!  I’ll finally get the respect I deserve.”

Becoming overexcited at the prospect of besting her rival, White Rabbit charged with a sloppy thrust that Frog-Man ducked under.  He used White Rabbit’s momentum against her, flipping her into the air, sending her flying over the front counter of the Kwikkee Burger.

White Rabbit slammed into several large shelving unit’s the held hamburger buns, boxes of napkins, condiments, and other fast food related items.  She crashed onto the floor, then rolled under the counter while the shelving units toppled down around her.  The three floating camera spheres glided between the falling objects, maintaining their focus on White Rabbit, even though she was squashed under the shelves.

White Rabbit found herself face to face with the teenager who had been hiding under the counter since she robbed the cash register.  They were both smashed together under the pile of clutter.  He grinned nervously, hoping she wasn’t about to eviscerate him.  White Rabbit gave him an annoyed look, punctuated with a “hmph” sound, before trying to crawl out from under the counter.

“There’s not a lot of space under here, is there?” She crawled around, trying to maneuver out from under the counter.  Her hind end bashed the teen in the face, knocking his head against the wall.  Her bunny tail tickled his nose as she wiggled her way out from under the counter, he did his best to hold in a sneeze, reasoning that sneezing on her bottom may mean certain death.

She wiggled her way free and crawled up over the countertop.  Looking around the room, she saw Frog-Man was no longer present.

“Oh Charles, can you please tell me what happened to my Froggy friend?”

White Rabbit’s earpiece crackled to life, as Charles’s voice emanated from the other end.  “Ah, sorry… I was distracted.  I wasn’t watching the monitor, I didn’t see what happened.”

“Unacceptable!  What could have possibly been more important than watching me?!?”

“Well, it’s something I think you’ll find very interesting, but we can talk about it later.  Do you want me to send the cameras out on a search?”

White Rabbit noticed something on the floor and smiled.  “That won’t be necessary.”

She walked out of the Kwikkee Burger, following a trail of blood drops on the ground.

Sara Sanderson, also known as the heroic Crimson Cat, was running late.  She had deciphered White Rabbit’s video message to Frog-Man, and after suiting up in her costume, headed for the fight as fast as possible.  Unfortunately, her scooter could only travel so fast.

It wasn’t befitting of a superhero to have their mode of transportation be a scooter, but she had to make do.  As a student attending ESU, most of Sara’s funds were tied up with school.  Luckily, she had a partial scholarship for gymnastics, but she still didn’t have enough disposable income to own a car.

It had already cost enough money just to make the costume and the claws, and to modify the scooter’s front to resemble a cat’s face.  She certainly couldn’t afford a Cat Car, let alone a Catcopter, as cool as that would be.

“How the hell is it, that someone like White Rabbit has her own helicopter while I’m stuck driving a scooter?” mused Crimson Cat.  “Once I’m a famous superhero, I swear I’m going to have all the coolest toys and gadgets.”

Crimson Cat pushed down on the brakes, slowing to a stop as railroad crossing bars lowered before her.  She had briefly considered gunning the engine and trying to beat the train, but the last thing she wanted was to die in an automobile accident on the way to stop a crime.

As she waited for the train to pass, she noticed a car full of teenagers sitting next to her, the kids all giving her a weird look.  She smiled weakly and waved, praying for the train to pass as quickly as possible.

Frog-Man managed to find himself a decent hiding place to recuperate.  There was an abandoned building across the street from the Kwikkee Burger, condemned and slated for demolition.  With his boot springs malfunctioning, he was forced to play a demented game of real life “frogger” to get across the street in one piece, but he made it.  He had ducked into the building after grabbing some old rags to construct a makeshift tourniquet, stopping the flow of blood from his forearm.

Eugene sat down on the floor in one of the inner rooms, and started calibrating his jumping coils by twisting the knobs on his powerpack.   Before he could adjust them properly, White Rabbit burst into the room.

“It appears this is the end of the line for you.  You’ve trapped yourself in a corner, there is nowhere left to run.”

Frog-Man glanced around the room.  She was right, it was an interior room with no windows.  She was blocking the only doorway in or out.  What she didn’t know, is Eugene had no intention of running away.  In his heart, he was a hero.  Hero’s didn’t “run away” just because they got a “little scratch.”  Retreating into the room had just been a temporary strategy, trying to buy enough time to patch up his arm and fix his jumping coils before coming back to defeat the villain in the end.  That how it works, the good guy fights back from adversity, but always wins in the end.

“Maybe you should brush up on your animal facts, running isn’t a frog’s strong point,” began Eugene, trying to come up with a clever quip like his hero Spider-Man, before delivering the final blow to end the battle.  “Ask anyone on the street, they know, frogs are famous for jumping!”

Frog-Man crouched, then leapt into the air with the intention of landing on White Rabbit to stun her long enough to end the battle.  He gracefully soared upwards…

…and continued his upward momentum, crashing through the ceiling.

When White Rabbit startled him, he hadn’t finished his calibrations.  The resistance on his jumping coils had been set too high, when he jumped, they sent him flying upwards with so much force, he crashed through three floors and two support beams!

“Ah-ha, you are running away!” exclaimed White Rabbit, misunderstanding what happened.  She peered up into the darkness of the newly formed tunnel caused by Frog-Man, trying to glimpse where he ended up.  Suddenly, the whole building made an awful groaning noise as it shifted to the right.

“Oh dear…”

White Rabbit made a mad dash out of the room and down the hallway.  She made it out of the front door just as the building started to collapse.  The outgoing flow of dust and debris acted like a strong wave or tide, as White Rabbit was swept off her feet and engulfed by the rubble.

Charles Liddell was franticly searching the area where his cameras had lost sight of White Rabbit.  As soon as she disappeared, he tried to contact her through the headset, but she never responded.  He dug through the rubble with his bare hands, expecting the worst.  Several feet away, he thought he saw movement.  He realized it was a bunny tail wiggling.  White Rabbit rose up to her hands and knees as she coughed up dust.

“You scared the hell out of me, I thought you were dead!”

“As Mark Twain famously wrote all those years ago:  The report of my death was an exaggeration.”  White Rabbit stood up and brushed herself off.  “You see, I am merely dazed and very slightly bruised…”

White Rabbit paused as she noticed two green legs sticking out of the wreckage, limp and unmoving.

“I am also elated beyond explanation!  Happy day, I have vanquished one of my fiercest foes, slain the monkey that once resided on my back!”

“Ding Dong, the Frog is dead,” muttered Charles, looking at the green flippers sticking out from under the collapsed building and briefly considering trying to pull them off, but then deciding he’d rather not actually touch a dead body.

White Rabbit danced and skipped all around where Frog Man was buried, she held out her hands toward Charles with a demented grin plastered on her face.  “Come, dance with me Charles!  Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?”

“Listen, as much as I can appreciate how much of a thrill it must be to literally dance on the grave of your arch nemesis, we really need to leave before the cops get here.”

Charles grabbed White Rabbit’s hand and led her away, she reluctantly followed him.  They loaded into her custom ice cream truck and drove away.  She glanced into the back of the truck, at the computers and electronic equipment.

“Oh, incidentally, you were going to tell me what was so important that you turned a blind eye to my battle with Frog-Man?”

“Well, I was talking to this girl online…”

White Rabbit’s nose wrinkled in disgust.  “You used my computer to partake in you vile cybernetic sex? What have I told you about that!  Now I shall have to burn my computer, such a waste…”

“I don’t think “cybernetic” is the correct term, and anyway, that’s not what I was doing!  I was digging through the internet to see if any mainstream media had picked up on your story yet…”

“Yes?  Yes?!?”

“No, nothing yet.  I couldn’t find any legitimate news outlets that had anything about you, however, I did find something else entirely that piqued my interest.  There’s a fairly large and growing fan community devoted to you.”

“What?”

“The media hasn’t noticed you, but a lot of other people certainly have.  I stumbled on a discussion forum devoted to you.”

White Rabbit still didn’t believe what Charles was telling her.  “I have fans?”

“Apparently you have quite a few fan.  There is a lot of interest in your videos, and when people try and find out more about you, there isn’t any information available.  They’ve all gotten together online with this forum, and I was talking to the girl who created it.  You’ve been snubbed by the media and by your peers, but this internet thing is really taking off.  I think we can use this.  If we control the information, we control the perception, and perception is reality.”

“Well, this is a very remarkable development indeed.”

Crimson Cat arrived at the Kwikkee Burger, albeit a lot later than she planned.  The place looked like a war zone, but no sign of White Rabbit or Frog-Man.  Her attention was immediately drawn across the street, where police and emergency personnel had gathered around a collapsed building.

She parked her scooter behind a garbage can, then scaled a neighboring building to get a better view of the situation.  She could see EMTs digging in the rubble, and then pulling out a man who was wearing green.  They removed his frog helmet and stabilized his head with a neck brace.  Crimson Cat’s eyes widened behind her goggles as she watched them place the boy onto a gurney.

“Eugene?!?”

Next Issue:  I’ve defeated two heroes back to back, what am I going to do next?  Why go on a cruise of course!  Also, how in the world does Crimson Cat know Eugene Patilio?  All this and I give Charles a gift he will never forget!  Come back next month for hijinks on the high seas!

Down the Rabbit Hole

Yay, more mail.  Where do you crazy people keep coming from?  Impurest Cheese writes:

So Frogman could be taking his final dive? So far this has been a highly entertaining piece of fanon and I hope that you keep up the caliber of writing. Also Charles reminds me a bit of the henchman who follows Screwball around and films her crimes which are later put up on her website (Note that this is just an observation I’m not suggesting he was stolen from the Spider Man Villaness) Keep up the good work and I hope to see more of your work soon.

Screwball?  Never heard of her.  Note to self:  have Charles hack into the interwebs and crash her website.  I can’t be having competition like that, now can I?  Have to maintain my position as the number one villain in social media, though Charles is the one who takes care off that kind of thing.  As far as Frogman… well, as much as I wish that nincompoop had taken a dirtnap, alas, my ultimate victory does not seem to be ultimate after all.  You’ll just have to stick around to see what happens next with Frogman.  Yes, that’s right, he’s still sticking around.  Unfortunately.

And now it looks like we have another new member of the Bunny Brigade, with JasmineNightheart

OMG! ILOVE IT! I had an idea though, maybe you should a character to it like the mad hatter. Also a song that might help you get inspiration to write is Her Name is Alice by Shinedown. Thanks for writing this!

Mad Hatter?  Never heard of him.  I think you are getting me confused with a different White Rabbit.  There is one who chases bats, I believe.  I’ve heard rumors of a Mad Hatter type character, but that wouldn’t be until our trip to London… that I don’t know about yet… so, it wouldn’t be anytime soon, but it IS a story for another time.

Until next time, Happy Hopping!!!