The Prologue That Flaps in the Night
It sounds cliché, but it WAS a dark and stormy night.
In the long-abandoned Tinsel-Whisker movie theatre in downtown St. Canard, Tuskernini was putting the finishing touches on his latest device: an invention that could allow one to travel into worlds of wonder! That could allow one to escape reality and enter the imagination and fantasy of the big screen and more!
“Behold, the Wonder-Jumper!” Tuskernini announced to his penguin henchmen as he held it in the air. The penguins applauded, Tuskernini’s hammy delivery greatly appreciated. The wicked walrus of the underworld bowed low for his arctic audience, withdrawing his top hat. “Thank you, thank you,” he said.
Tuskernini put his top hat back on his head, with so much bravado, it seemed he was crowning himself king. “With this device,” he said as he eyed the Wonder-Jumper, “I’ll be able to travel through fiction as though it were real!”
He placed it down on the table before him. “Have you loaded the projector?” he asked one of his penguin henchmen. The henchman looked up to the projector room to see one of his compatriots give him what would have been a thumb’s-up, had he any thumbs. The henchman turned back to Tuskernini and nodded.
“Finally, the time has come!” cheered Tuskernini. He looked up to the big screen as the projector began to roll. “The time has come for me to enter the penultimate masterwork of television animation!”
As the presentation began to display on the big screen, Tuskernini turned on the Wonder-Jumper. It made a sound that crackled through the air, shaking eardrums—then a portal the color of the ocean appeared on the screen.
Tuskernini nervously bit into his hat as he began to sweat. “Come on,” he whispered, pleadingly. “Please work…”
Suddenly, the ocean parted in a loud explosion. There was a blue light, and as it faded, Tuskernini opened his eyes and saw that the portal had opened! The art-house film freak laughed and jumped in joy at his success.
Then the theme song began to play, as Tuskernini snapped his fingers and sang along. I would write the lyrics, but the thing is, Tuskernini is not as good a singer as he likes to think; and as such, it is important that I do not write those lyrics, as he had already forgotten them and sang out of key anyway.
Suddenly, Tuskernini heard a slow clap come from behind him. He turned in surprise to see that he had a non-penguin audience in his theatre seats for the first time in a long time. This development would have delighted the demented director of doom, had it not been for the unfortunate fact that the fiendish Fearsome Five filled the row.
Their nefarious leader Negaduck stopped his insultingly slow applause. “When I heard the news that you were stealing expensive experimental equipment in our names, I knew you were onto something big,” he slowly stated. His words, icy and hateful, were underlined by his vicious baritone—and it froze Tuskernini to the spot.
“B-but there was no way for you to know it was me!” said Tuskernini.
Negaduck got out of his seat and walked down the aisle as his henchmen Megavolt and Quackerjack menacingly stared down Tuskernini’s penguin associates, and folded his hands behind his back as Bushroot and the Liquidator held Tuskernini in place.
“At first, I admittedly just thought my boys were getting sloppy in their robberies. BUT!” Negaduck leaned so far into Tuskernini’s face that his terrifying stare was all Tuskernini saw. “When I learned that they DIDN’T have the parts they stole in their possession, I figured that some has-been actor/director was trying to steal their act.”
“Yeah!” growled Bushroot. “I still can’t believe everyone thought you were me! You must outweigh me like a hundred times!”
“And seriously,” added Megavolt, “it’s an Electro-Ray gun, not a Magneto-Ray gun. What kinda shmoe only settles for magnetism as a superpower?”
Tuskernini gulped as the Fearsome Five surrounded him. “Ah, perhaps we can make a deal—”
Before he could finish his sentence, Negaduck pulled a knife from seemingly nowhere and held it against Tuskernini’s head. “No deal,” he hissed. “No one steals our act! Fearsome Five, let’s finish off this box-office fop!”
Just as Tuskernini was about to be sent to the big theatre in the sky, blue smoke broke the tense scene. “I am the terror that flaps in the night!”
Tuskernini breathed a sigh of relief. “I never thought I’d say this, but thank goodness he’s here!”
“I am the fat guy wearing the very tall hat sitting in front of you in the theatre! I am…”
And with a flourish, Darkwing Duck parted the cloud aside. His purple cape fluttered, despite there being no wind. His cape was dramatic like that.
“DARKWINGGG DUCK!”
Negaduck grinned at this turn of events. Things were finally starting to get interesting! “Well, this is a new one, isn’t it, Darkwing? Fighting to save the life of a common crook like this guy?” He grabbed Tuskernini by the neck and shook him, producing that most curious of sounds, the maraca. Megavolt fought the urge to start dancing to the beat of Tuskernini being manhandled.
“ALL life is precious!” Darkwing opined as he pulled out his Gas Gun (TM). “Now put the walrus down, or it’s ‘goo-goo-g'night’ for all of you!”
The Fearsome Five began to scratch their heads at this. “Is that some kind of walrus… thing?” Bushroot asked.
Darkwing rolled his eyes and sighed. “It’s—It’s a reference. You know, the Beatles? I am the walrus, goo-goo-g’joob?”
Quackerjack shook his head. “But if you were really going to go for a clever Beatles reference, why didn’t you just say-" (Here, he posed as if holding a gun) "-‘You say hello, I say goodbye’?”
“Because it wasn’t about walruses.”
“Why does it have to be about walruses?” Liquidator asked.
Darkwing Duck was losing his patience. “BECAUSE your prisoner is TUSKERNINI, who HAPPENS to be a WALRUS! THEREFORE. THE PUN. WAS ORDAINED. TO BE. ABOUT. WALRUSES.”
Negaduck groaned. “Oh for cryin’ out loud! Can’t we just go ONE SENSELESS MURDER without YOU getting in the way with your convoluted Beatles references?!”
The winged scourge that pecks at your nightmares waved his gun in the air impatiently. “The Beatles reference was just a bonus!” he shouted. “IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A PUN ABOUT WALRUSES BECAUSE TUSKERNINI IS ESCAPING INTO THAT—curious—portal—thing…”
The Fearsome Five turned around to see that indeed, Tuskernini had taken advantage of the delay and jumped through the portal. It was beginning to close. Liquidator, ever the salesman, quipped, “Escaping walruses! Get ‘em while they’re still hot!”
Suddenly, just as the Fearsome Five shot for the portal, a mighty heroic figure stood before them. They cowered in fear as the awesome sight towered above them, radiating its powerful—
—OK, I’m joking, it was just Launchpad.
"I'll get 'em for ya, DW!" he chimed. He assumed that stance he'd learned during his time on a soccer team: the Goalie. He remembered his training, his mantra. He is the tree. He is the tree that moves. He is the tree that moves and stops the ball. He is the tree that got trampled by the Fearsome Five and dragged into the portal anyway.
As the portal began to close, Darkwing Duck leapt over the emptying theatre and with a graceful twirl he learned from watching the ice-skater marathon on TV, he jumped through the portal in the knick of time and was flung into an alien world!
An alien world where there were ponies.
Now, Twilight Sparkle never considered herself a messy pony.
No, she was studious, industrious, ambitious, yes, but she was NEVER messy. Maybe a book got misplaced or perhaps some of her parchment and quills would go missing. But Twilight Sparkle was never messy! She was just… too preoccupied to clean up after herself.
Fortunately, she had an assistant to do all that.
“Spike!” she called. “Spike, have you seen my copy of ‘Absolutely Nothing You Ever Wanted to Know About the Universe’?”
A pile of books in the corner moved. Twilight began to come near it. “Spike, have you been sleeping under a pile of books again?”
“No, I just heard you calling,” Spike said from behind her.
Twilight looked to Spike, then back to the moving pile of books. Suddenly, the books began to slide off the person it was covering to reveal a giant walrus wearing a dapper coat and top hat. He looked at them and grinned heartily.
“And now the time has come,” said the walrus, “to talk of many things.”