***
Dr. Banana Crunch was perplexed. It wasn’t that the three teens were particularly odd. Once you’d met the icicle entity, the artificial lifeforms made from old pie pans, and the microculture that had evolved from the mold in her medical fridge, teenagers were just another unpleasant fact. These, however, were something else.
“How are you doing that?” she asked, as every piece of medical equipment transformed into a hedgehog.
“Magic.” Henry Potty said.
“Not transdimensional interphasic metamorphing? Or megaomnipotence? Or technology too advanced to be explained? Just…”
“Poof,” Henry said helpfully, adding a certain hedgehogness to Dr. Crunch’s collection of thermometers.
“Poof.” Dr. Crunch sat down heavily, on a chair that was now feeling unusually curved and spiny.
“It’s scientifically possible, Mom,” Nestley put in. He and Horrendous were sitting side by side on a hospital bed, texting and sharing pictures from their contrasting universes. “If magic evolved on their world and not ours. They probably don’t use much technology themselves—no computers or cellphones or indoor plumbing…”
Horrendous nodded. “Just IMAX theaters and CGI, really.”
“A world with magic?” Thoughts of unimaginable medical leaps filled the doctor’s head. One was paramount. “Could you make Nestley hit puberty?”
“Hey!”
“What, why?” This was Horrendous.
“Well, in our world, medicine has advanced and the lifespan is close to two hundred. But we take correspondingly longer to reach adulthood.” Dr. Crunch hesitated. “The truth is, if Nestley’s as big a weenie as his father, he could be like this for up to twenty years! And I can’t take another minute.”
“What!” Guitard stood in the doorway, face like thunder. “You said he was just small-boned!” His uniform’s tuxedo front flew up and hit him in the eye, and he smoothed it firmly. Vision no longer obstructed, Guitard stared. He was nearly certain that all the medical equipment hadn’t been hedgehogs yesterday. “Ahem. We need to find these children’s proper universe and send them there. Immediately.”
“Because the fabric of reality is thinning?” Nestley asked.
“Er, yes. Certainly,” Guitard said too quickly.
Henry leaned against a console and yelped as he started to tumble through it. “What the—?”
“Henry, he just said,” Horrendous pointed out. “Reality is thinning.”
Dr. Crunch found a computer that hadn’t been hedgehogged and logged in. “Captain, walls are fading all over the ship. And everyone’s been calling. You really shouldn’t turn off your cellphone.”
As the captain started responding to his eighty-six text messages, Horrendous waved her wand. “Ix-it-fay!”
Instantly, every available bottle of glue hurtled toward Henry, who was still stuck half-inside the wall. “Horrendous!” He ducked as the bottles orbited him, twirling and spattering.
“No, stop!” Really Wimpy whimpered, hopping from foot to foot. “I mean, op-stay! Simon Says!” As he waved his wand, sparks dribbled in all directions, singeing marks in the floor.
“Really, watch it, that glue is flammable!” Horrendous shrieked, busy coaxing the bottles away from Henry, one by one. However, magically woken for the first time, they all seemed eager to create the maximum ruckus while they had their freedom.
Nestley tried to drag Henry from the wall, but his hands stuck to Henry’s arm. This always happens when there’s glue anywhere around.
“Mom, help!” Nestley bleated.
As Really turned, his wand ignited two of the hedgehogs, who ran shrieking through the room.
Doctor Crunch grabbed the fire extinguisher, but the hedgehogs charged, knocking her off her feet. She landed on her well-cushioned posterior, and tried to stand. But the glue it seemed had gotten everywhere. “Nestley, help!”
“Everyone stop!” Guitard demanded.
Horrendous and Really ceased casting spells, while the glue bottles themselves, for some reason, clattered to the floor.
“Golly. And you thought I was bad,” Nestley grinned.
“That’s it—I want these anomalies closed now,” the captain said.
“The three of us can handle it,” Henry Potty said proudly. “They haven’t invented the reality I can’t destroy.”
“No, we’re trying to save it,” Horrendous said.
“Oh. That’s good too.”
“We’ll need to monitor at least one member of their team,” said Doctor Crunch from the floor.
“Neat! I’ll stay,” Really Wimpy said. Even with medical probes, the stable world of steady meals and curious female med students appealed far more than dimension hopping.
“That leaves two of us to find our own universe,” Henry said. “In the most rule-breakingly, heroic, death-defying way possible, of course.”
Guitard coughed heavily at the words rule breaking. “I’m not altogether comfortable sending two unprepared teenagers to save us.”
“Three,” Henry said. He waved a hand for emphasis, and Nestley’s entire arm came with it.
“Great!” Nestley said. “I’m finally in!”
The captain gave him a disgusted look and activated his cellphone. “Commander Biker, get these annoying children off my ship. There’s an airlock down the hall.”
“Right you are, sir. Meet me in the hallway, you three, I’ll find you goaway team gear.”
“No, I meant—” the captain considered. “Well, I suppose that’s faster.” He eyed Really Wimpy, who was busy cleaning out an ear with a medical probe. “The universe is in their hands.”
A Preposterous Portfolio of Parodies: Free Selections from Spoofs of The Hobbit, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Star Trek and More Page 10