by Dan Swanson
Ombo stopped and turned toward the source of the roar, apparently unimpressed. He then returned to chasing the fleeing girl.
“Better hop to it!” Thunderbunny whispered, following his own advice. He landed on the monster’s shoulders, knocking him face-first into the ground. Standing in front of his foe, he waited for Ombo to rise.
Pushing up to his knees, Ombo growled, “Giant rodent!” Thunderbunny was about to object when Ombo suddenly launched himself forward with a roar, the roar of a forest predator. The Heroic Hare couldn’t leap fast enough, and Ombo’s tackle caught him around the knees, bringing him down hard on his back. Of course, Thunderbunny couldn’t be harmed that easily, but Ombo crawled up his body, using his claws to try to shred his furry foe. The super-resilient fabric of the hero’s costume turned the slashes, but even with his invulnerability, they hurt.
Terrified, Thunderbunny watched as the ogre’s mouth opened wider than seemed possible, revealing rows of sharp teeth meant to rip out his throat. Fending off the voracious monster with his arms, Thunderbunny squirmed to draw his legs up between them. He braced his feet against the ogre’s stomach and kicked with all his power. Ombo was torn free and thrown high into the air, crashing down on top of the wreck, adding another significant dent to the battered hull.
Hidden in the woods, Tracy mentally swore at herself. Damn it, Toots — run! That monster wants to rip you to shreds and eat you! Despite her own frantic, wild pleas, she crawled into the concealment of a heavy bush, pushing her camera through the leaves until she could see the combatants in the viewfinder. “Even an A-plus isn’t worth the risk!” she muttered as she resumed recording. But still, she couldn’t tear herself away.
The fight was brutal. Thunderbunny was stronger, faster, and more agile than the ogre, while Ombo was incredibly savage. Bobby Caswell had been energized by the essence of the greatest hero of Offorrer, who had defended his planet from all threats for many generations. During that time, he had learned every fighting technique and trick the varied peoples on his planet had developed. However, Ombo knew dirty tricks the Heroic Hare had never seen. Years ago, Bobby had sworn never to kill, while Ombo was determined to rip the Remarkable Rabbit to shreds and then eat the remains.
They battered each other for long minutes, tearing up the landscape around them. Boulders and shattered trees became weapons. Flurries of punches resembled super-powered boxing matches, while body-to-body encounters looked like two wild animals in a death match. Thunderbunny dropped on Ombo from the sky, blasting a crater around him. Ombo managed to grab the Resilient Rabbit and throw him through the hull of the spaceship, then raced in after him. For a while, they fought inside, trashing the interior of the ship. Thunderbunny managed to grab Ombo by the neck and slammed his head against the floor of the vessel. Finally, Ombo collapsed, unconscious.
The Remarkable Rabbit quickly searched through the shattered ruins and found some control cables that resisted even his vast strength. He bit through them to cut them, then wrapped Ombo in a cocoon that he was sure was unbreakable.
As Thunderbunny climbed wearily through the new rent in the side of the hull, he realized that the ground around the wreck was burning. “We must have ruptured the fuel tanks!” he realized instantly. With his sensitive ears, he could hear Tracy’s sobbing not far away. He raced to her side, wrapping her in his cape and holding her to his chest with one arm.
“Don’t worry — I’ll get you out of here!” Already, the leaves on the bushes she had hidden in were withering from the heat; it wouldn’t be long before this part of the woods became an inferno. Yet she had other priorities.
“You have to get my camera first!” she yelled directly (and painfully) into his ear, pointing down the path. It wouldn’t take an extra half a second, so the wincing Thunderbunny dashed down the path, snatched up the camera and tripod, then zoomed to the parking area at the base of Bald Mountain.
“You’d best scurry out of here!” he told her as he landed next to her car and released her.
“You saved me!” she exclaimed. “You’re a giant anthropomorphic super-powered rabbit, and you saved me! What a movie this is going to make!”
“That’s better than some of the things I’ve been called,” he replied, abashed. “Try ‘Thunderbunny to the Rescue!’ instead. I gotta go now!”
“Wait! What about the guy driving that car? He was up there, too!” she shouted, pointing toward Bobby’s car.
Pellets of poop! he swore mentally. What do I tell her about Bobby? Thunderbunny thought fast. “He’s already safe; I scooped him up and dropped him on the other side of the mountain before the ogre attacked.”
The Heroic Hare inwardly groaned; that was exactly like one of the lame excuses comic-book action-heroes always used, and he always moaned in disbelief when comic-book characters believed these lame excuses. But he did have other things on his mind, and just pushed forward. “I have to rush back up there and try to put out the fire!” he yelled back to her as he leaped into the sky and raced back up above the side of the mountain.
Thunderbunny was astounded by what he found when he got there. The fire was out. Where the wreck had been, a glob of metal remained; it looked as if the wreck had melted and then cooled. Standing in the clearing was a very large man wearing partial armor that appeared to be made of scaled gold. A Roman centurion helmet of the same gold, complete with a large brush on top, made him seem even taller. He carried a giant two-headed war axe and a short pavise shield emblazoned with a giant V.
“Son of Vulcan?!” Bobby exclaimed. He was a big fan of action-heroes, so naturally he recognized one of the most famous. I hope someday I’m as easily recognized as he is! he thought. I’m so tired of people calling me Bugs!
“Yes,” Son of Vulcan replied. “And I know you — you are Thunderbunny, one of the newer action-heroes.”
“You know my name?” Thunderbunny was again astounded and more than a little gratified that this famous hero recognized him.
“I know many things,” the seeming Roman centurion replied mysteriously. “As you know, I have an affinity for fire. My mystical senses alerted me to the unnatural flame on this mountain, a flame unlike any on this Earth, about to be released and cause untold disaster. I appeared here and doused the fire, containing the intense heat. Other than the char you see around you, I contained this unnatural flame without damage to the Earth. Without me, the intense heat would have turned Bald Mountain into a deadly volcano and created the greatest forest fire in recorded history.”
“What about Ombo, the monster I was fighting? He was inside that spaceship before it melted,” Thunderbunny asked anxiously. “He was the most dangerous foe I’ve ever faced!”
“If he was in that vessel, he has been vaporized to random atoms,” Son of Vulcan replied. “He will never be a menace to anyone again.”
“Wow, thanks, Son of Vulcan!” Thunderbunny exclaimed, extending a paw to shake hands with the older action-hero. He thought, I wonder if his friends call him Sonny? If we ever teamed up, would they call us Sonny and the Bunny? Shaking his head once to dispel those irrelevant thoughts, he added, “It was really awesome of you to put out the fire for me. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t prevent a volcano!”
“No thanks are necessary, youngster. It is part of my job. I hope to encounter you again in the future!”
What Son of Vulcan didn’t tell Thunderbunny was that he had responded to this crisis in answer to a call from the Super Wizard, the current Monitor of Earth-Four. The spaceship and Ombo had originated from another vibrational universe, one that had been destroyed during the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Somehow, the rocket had become caught in a space-time anomaly, perhaps similar to a whirlpool, caused by the collapse of that universe during the Crisis. This whirlpool had eventually deposited it on Earth-Four. One of any Monitor’s responsibilities was to investigate such anomalies and neutralize or minimize their effects on the Earth they protected. Thunderbunny would likely never learn the full story behind this other-dimensional incursion, but he wasn’t worried about that now.
“Well, thanks again! But now I gotta run — I need to protect my secret identity!” Thunderbunny declared as he took to the sky, flying down toward the road that circled the base of the mountain. He landed next to the road, concentrated, and transformed back into Bobby Caswell.
That transformation wasn’t nearly as hard as it was in the past, Bobby realized in wonder. I wonder if something’s changed over the past few years! He didn’t have time to ponder this further, as headlights approaching turned out to belong to a car driven by a worried young woman, Tracy DeBaybe. She stopped when she saw who he was, got out, and introduced herself to check on him.
Both had stories to tell. After introductions, they were eager to hear each other’s accounts, leading to a long chat session over breakfast at the nearby IHOP.
The End