"Somewhere Out There" - Part Two

 

Part Two

            All the mice at the street corner scurried in panic from the large black cat that had appeared. Jennifer drew her revolver and fired a few shots at the giant feline. She wished she had something more powerful, like a Mark 2 Lancer Assault Rifle. Unfortunately, the best option she could have used was locked away in the black archives vault at the Torchwood America hub. With her revolver, she was merely tickling the cat.

            Once it had enough of her ineffective assault, the cat swiped her out of the way.

            Rania didn’t catch sight of where Leeka’s small mouse body landed after colliding with one of the fruit stands. However, what truly captured her attention was the moment the large cat opened its mouth wide to unleash a powerful roar. Intrigued and feeling a surge of audacity, she decided to take a bold risk. “Hey, Garfield!” she shouted, energetically waving her arms overhead. “Lookin’ for a tasty snack? I’m what’s for dinner!”

            Tyler, Fievel, and the other bystanders watched—baffled as to what Rania was thinking.

            They were horrified when the cat obeyed her request, scooping her up from the ground and swallowing her whole. “RANIA!” Tyler screamed as he witnessed the love of his life being consumed by the feline.

            After finishing its meal, the cat resumed its relentless assault on the small marketplace, forcing many residents to seek shelter or hide. Suddenly, it paused, hacking violently as if it were trying to cough up a hairball. Sure enough, it eventually expelled a nasty, wet black hairball right there on the street. Afterward, the cat ran away.

            As Tyler stared at the grotesque hairball, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it bore an uncanny resemblance to a certain domino-shaped craft. To his astonishment, the tangled mass of hair began to dissolve, merging into wisps of ethereal mist that twirled away like smoke. Gradually, the true form emerged: the Type-Z TARDIS, its sleek lines and familiar contours coming into focus. With a triumphant grin, Rania stepped out of the ship, her eyes sparkling with delight. “I found the ship!” she exclaimed, her voice brimming with joy as she basked in the moment of discovery. “You were right, Ty. A cat did eat it.”

            “Eh, I don’t get it. You risked your life fuh a domino that was lodged in some cat’s windpipe?” Tyler looked behind him to see Tony and another mouse—a cute female with red curls in a ponytail and a small white flower on top and brown fur with a tan tone around her eyes and on her freckled muzzle. She wore a three-tone green dress with a purple belt and frilly pantalettes but was barefoot.

            “That’s no ordinary domino,” the female mouse spoke with an Irish accent.

            As he took a closer look, Tony couldn’t help but acknowledge that she was right. Rania was stepping out from within the domino block, as if she had emerged from a vast, hidden chamber beyond its flat surface. “What dah heck…?!” Tony muttered, his voice a blend of astonishment and confusion.

            As Rania scanned the bewildered crowd of mice, her heart sank when she realized that someone very dear to her was absent. A wave of concern washed over her as she frantically searched the faces around her. “Where’s Craig?” she called out, her voice tinged with urgency and worry.

            Tyler suddenly noticed that someone else was absent. “Where’s Jenn?” he asked.

            “Jenn!” Rania remembered the last time she had seen the immortal captain. “Oh, no! Ty, help me find her and Craig!”

            “I’ll help, too,” volunteered Fievel.

            “So will we,” Tony also pitched in. He looked to his new girlfriend and told her, “C’mon, beautiful.”

            “O.K.,” the cute mouse said. “Me name’s Bridget, by the way.”

            Together, they searched the wrecked marketplace for Leeka and Craig.

            While there was no sign of Craig anywhere, they did find Captain Leeka…caught in a mousetrap. She looked dead, her body ensnared by the triggered mechanism. There was no blood, but the sight itself was rather gruesome for Tony and Bridget particularly. “Oh, my,” the latter gasped. “How horrible. Poor dear.”

            Tony respectfully removed his hat, holding it over his heart. “What a way to go,” he said. “I only knew her fer a few minutes, but she seemed like a swell—”

            His eulogy was cut short as soon as Leeka suddenly gasped.

            “WHAT THE…!” Tony yelped along with Bridget, not expecting Jennifer to have come back from the dead. “How dah heck are you still breathin’, lady?!?!”

            “NEVER MIND THAT! GET ME OUT OF THIS TOM & JERRY PIECE OF JUNK!”

            Tyler and the spooked Tony worked together to free Jennifer from the mousetrap. Tony felt like he was going to vomit when he heard the bones in Leeka’s crushed body snap and crackle back in their proper places—her flattened torso inflating like a fleshy balloon. “Jeez Louise,” he gagged.

            Once Jennifer had fully healed from her ordeal, Rania worriedly informed her, “We couldn’t find Craig anywhere.”

            “Oh, no.” A wave of concern washed over Jennifer as one hand instinctively flew to cover her mouth. Her wide eyes reflected a deep empathy as she whispered, “You don’t think that poor baby was…” She didn’t want to say what she was thinking—that the cat had eaten Craig.

            “No,” Rania immediately dismissed the thought. “He has to be somewhere. The TARDIS can pick up his bio-signature.” With that idea in mind, she rushed back inside the Type-Z; Tyler and Jennifer followed closely behind. She went straight to work on the central console, flipping switches and turning knobs.

            None of them paid mind to the three native mice that had followed them into what was previously perceived as—in Tony’s words— a ‘domino that was lodged in some cat’s windpipe.’ Fievel, Tony, and Bridget were caught up in a whirlwind of emotions, seeing a much bigger space filled with assortments of technology that was not only alien but way ahead of their time.

            “Wow!” Fievel was captivated by the beauty of it all.

            “Unbelievable!” Bridget exclaimed in astonishment.

            “Are youse guys magicians or what?” Tony asked.

            Rania, Tyler, and Leeka spun around to see that Fievel, Tony, and Bridget had entered the ship uninvited. Rania didn’t care; she was too preoccupied over zeroing in on Craig’s signature to deal with outsiders. “He’s alive,” she sighed in relief once she saw the information displayed on the console monitor.

            Tyler and Jennifer sighed along with her. “Well, ain’t that good news,” the latter said. The former followed by asking, “Where is he?”

            “That’s the bad news,” Rania said. “Because of the dramatic changes to our bodies when we arrived, most of his bio signature is too scrambled for the TARDIS to pinpoint his exact whereabouts.”

            “If you’re lookin’ for your friend, you just might be able to find him through Honest John at Tammany Hall,” Bridget suggested.

            “Our friend’s not from your world,” Tyler told them.

            “Not from our world?” the confused Tony parroted Tyler’s words. “Wha’d ya mean by that?”

            As Rania regarded Bridget and Tony, her gaze settled on Fievel, who was standing in front of them. His little eyes sparkled with curiosity as he took in everything in the console room. She recalled the promise she had made to him: to find his family and protect him from whatever scheme the Archivist was planning in Fievel’s world.

            “Craig isn’t from this world, but Fievel is,” she said firmly, drawing the little mouse’s attention upon hearing his name. “We made a promise to Fievel, and we’re going to keep it… and we’re going to find Craig, too.” She afterward pulled the lever on the console that dematerialized her TARDIS from the ravaged marketplace.

            Unbeknownst to the three travelers and their new friends, Craig had emerged from beneath a pile of apple slices that had kept him well-hidden—from the attacking cat and from his own friends. When he heard the TARDIS engines roaring, panic set in. “Wait!” he cried out to the vanishing monolith. “Where are y’all going without me?!” Unfortunately, the TARDIS had vanished completely from the street, leaving Craig standing there alone, frightened and confused.

            Suddenly, he heard a girl’s voice call out, “Mama! Papa! Look!”

            He turned to see a girl mouse—about his age—wearing a red headscarf and a blue blouse with a navy jumper dress. She was pointing directly to Craig when she called out to her parents—a tall, portly male mouse with a gray beard, a tan shirt, brown pants, and small glasses on his snout, and a female mouse in a conservative yellow-and-brown dress with a red apron over the skirt, also wearing spectacles.

            Craig saw that the family had also emerged from the wreckage unscathed.

            “Are you all right, my boy?” the ‘Papa’ mouse asked him.

            “Yeah, I’m O.K.,” Craig said. “It’s just that I lost my…”

            “Ohh, you poor thing,” the ‘Mama’ mouse pitied him before he even had the chance to finish his statement. She then proceeded to scold her husband, “And you said there were no cats in America! Well, it was a cat who took this poor child’s family from him!”

            Craig stiffened. “My…Whoa. Wait. I think there’s been…”

            Again, he was interrupted—this time by the ‘Papa’ mouse. “Do not worry, my dear boy. It is fate that has brought you to us. You see, we have lost a member of our family. He was a boy just about your age with the same twinkle in his eye that I see in yours.” He placed a comforting hand on Craig’s back. “Do not be afraid. We will take care of you.”

            Craig wasn’t sure what was happening.

            He only knew that he needed to get back to Rania, Tyler, and Jennifer—if they were still in that dimension.