Chapter 3: I Don't Think DASTARDLY Signed Up For This

So yeah, here's the kidnapping part I was talking about. The day started out normally enough, but then I fought a demon and got kidnapped by a cartoon dog. I wasn't really in the best mood by that point.

...Gotta say, though: Muttley was better at driving than most cabbies I've ridden with.

I didn't realize that our lives about to get way weirder...


Somehow, Muttley managed to get us onto the highway. Considering he was a dog driving a purple, probably weaponized car with two children dangling from the back in nets, that was quite the achievement. We couldn't really appreciate it, however, as we were a little busy being kidnapped.

"Let us go!" I shouted, thrashing and trying to break the net. Muttley didn't pay attention. In fact, I'm pretty sure I heard snippets of banjo. "Seriously?! Turn off the radio already! Your taste in country music sucks!"

Realizing he wasn't going to respond, I quickly went back to trying to tear open the net with my teeth. Next to me, Tay's eyes went wide.

"Uh, Beth-" she squeaked out. I looked over at her mid-pull, net still between my teeth.

"Yeah? Hang on, I think I'm tearing the-"

"He's driving us towards the woods."

I spat out the net and looked around. Indeed, the road we were on lead to the woods. Panicking, I swung the net into the pole connecting it. I saw Tay's look of panic as I swung. Muttley glanced up at us through the rear view mirror, something resembling interest in his eyes.

"Hey, where are you taking us?! What's going on?!" I shouted, trying to hide my panic. The mutt blinked twice, then turned up the music and went back to driving.

"Oh, you little-" I managed to get out before getting jostled by a bump in the road. Pulling myself into a sitting position, I glanced over at Tay. She had a hand clamped over her mouth and her breathing seemed quick and shallow. "Don't worry, Tay; we're gonna be fine!"

She gave a wide, somewhat forced smile. I returned the grin, then turned to gaze out the holes of the net. As the world passed us by, I felt my stomach clench in doubt.

Could I really promise her that she'd be safe?

I felt the car jostle to a stop.

I opened my eyes-I must have fallen asleep at some point-and glanced around at our surroundings. We were somewhere in the woods, surrounded by trees and other various plants. I couldn't tell exactly where we were; after all, the middle of the woods generally looks the same no matter where you are.

"Why'd he bring us here?" Tay whispered, trying to get as close as me as she could. I shrugged and tried to locate anything that could be used as an identifying feature. There was a tree, a few rocks, something that was probably a shrub-

Snap!

My head whipped towards the sudden sound. The sound came from a group of trees that cast the nearby area in shadow. Next to me, Tay was holding her breath. A few moments passed, and I thought I was just hearing things.

Then the snap! rang out again. Then another.

I tensed up, ready to fight if I needed to. Tay let out a soft whimper, trying to shrink into the net. The snaps continued until a figure came into view.

Dick Dastardly. Dick Dastardly from the Wacky Races reboot just came out of the bushes.

"What the..." Tay muttered, looking just as confused as I felt. He walked out of the bushes and stopped in front of our nets. Leaning in towards the two of us, his eyes landed on me.

"Hm, not exactly what I was expecting..." he mumbled, leaning in close and twirling his mustache absentmindedly. "Muttley, are you sure these two are the right people?"

"Yeah yeah yeah!"

I took this moment to make my feelings known about this situation by kicking him in the face. Dastardly fell over and landed on his back with a resounding thud! There was a moment of silence as Dastardly sat up and rubbed his nose.

"...That was wholly unnecessary, young lady," he finally told me as Muttley snickered. I glared in response.

"Gee, I wonder what came over me? It's not like you kidnapped two kids and brought them into the middle of the woods!" I shot back. The purple-clad man opened his mouth only to immediately shut it.

"Alright, you make a fair point," he replied, "but this was the best way to get you two alone."

"It wasn't! It really wasn't!" I yelled back. And with that, I began arguing with our cartoon kidnapper.

"Oh really? Well, how would you have done it?"

"Text message! Coming with Muttley to meet up with us! Heck, you could've just said 'Hey, I'm Dick Dastardly and we need to talk,' and I would've be totally cool with that!"

"Well, I was chosen to do this-"

"And what a spectacular job you've done so far-"

I cut myself off when I heard a small noise to my left.

"What the-" Dastardly began, cutting himself off as he turned to face Tay. Confused, I followed his gaze to see Tay looking like she was about to have a panic attack. "Muttley, release the nets."

Before I could fully process what was going on, I found myself on the forest floor. I pushed myself into a sitting position and glanced over at Dastardly. He looked visibly uncomfortable and seemed unsure of what to do. He reached out to touch Tay before pulling back a few times. Eventually, Dastardly seemed to settle on awkwardly patting Tay on the head.

Muttley's expression of confusion and disbelief matched my feelings exactly.

"Um..." I said, finding myself more or less speechless. Dastardly glanced up at me and, probably realizing just how ridiculous this looked, quickly pulled away and tried to make himself looked dignified.

"L-look, you two have been brought here for a very important reason, alright?! It doesn't matter how you got here!" he yelped. Sighing, he turned around to talk to Muttley-

-and that was when I took the chance to grab Tay and make a run for it.

"Hey!" Dastardly shouted at our retreating backs. We kept running, however, and tried to find our way to civilization.


"Okay, so I'm pretty sure Muttley was driving down I-95, so we're supposed to go this way to reach the highway! Or was it this way?"

I scratched my head in confusion. Dang, I would've thought getting out of the woods would be easier than this.

We were still pretty deep in the forest when we'd decided to stop and get our bearings. Since we weren't entirely sure how far we were from the road, we decided to take a break and try to figure out our next step.

"Hang on, I just remembered something!" I said, snapping my fingers. Darting over to a nearby tree, I began running my hand up and down the trunk. "I heard somewhere that moss grows on the north side of a tree. So if we find some moss on a tree-"

"Mhn."

I glanced up from the tree. Tay was pacing near some bushes, nervously rubbing her arms; her breathing was worryingly shallow and rapid. I took my hand off of the tree and approached her.

"Um, Tay, are you okay-"

"Of course not! Why on Earth would I be okay right now?!" she snapped, throwing her hands into the air. I guess I flinched a bit because she became a bit quieter. "I'm sorry, but nothing about this situation is 'okay.' We met a living, breathing cartoon character-which is the least insane part of all this, scarily enough-got attacked by some sort of ink demon that nearly killed us, and, last but not least, we got kidnapped by said cartoon character and dragged into the woods! And now we're probably going to die here, and no one will even know what happened to us!"

Tay was now breathing heavily, tears in her eyes. Between each gasp for breath, she kept muttering apologies under her breath. She looked about a second away from having a complete nervous breakdown. Quietly, I walked over to her and loosely held her shoulders-I couldn't be sure how she would react to being touched right now. She flinched for a second before realizing it was me.

"Hey, it's gonna be okay. We're gonna find a way out of here, and we're gonna find a way home, got it? This is not how you're gonna die. I promise we'll both be fine," I reassured. I wasn't sure if I could promise her that, but it was the only way I could think of to calm her down. Staring up at me, she seemed to be forcing herself to breathe evenly. She seemed much calmer after a few seconds before looking up at me.

"Okay," she said, "I'm still feel like I'm about to leave a nervous breakdown, but I think I can keep moving."

"That's good, we can work with that. Now, let's-"

Snap!

I felt Tay go tense in my hands and heard her breath hitch. We turned towards the noise, for the second time today, and saw the bushes move. Quietly, I picked up a rather large branch off the ground and slung it over my shoulder. Tay's eyes widened as she watched me do this.

"Beth, what are you-" she began before I clamped a hand over her mouth.

"Stay here. If I start screaming, you run and hide, okay?" I whispered to her. Realizing what I was planning, she reluctantly nodded and backed away. Turning back to the bushes, I slowly walked over and looked around. The cluster of trees above and around me didn't allow for much light, so I was mostly going by sound. Everything seemed fine; there were no animals, no freaky ink demon things, and no cartoon kidnappers. I began to think that it was just the wind knocking down a branch or something-

-and then something slammed into me and knocked me to the ground, my glasses going flying.

I let out a scream and started swinging the branch around. In my panic, I saw a vaguely human-looking, blurry shape. Remembering the demon that attacked us earlier, I took a swing at where I assumed it's head was and managed to land a pretty good hit.

"Ow!"

Wait a minute, I thought. The demon didn't talk.

I stood up and squinted at the blurred shape. As the figure sat down on the ground, I managed to make out a familiar outline...

"Dick Dastardly?" I asked incredulously, leaning in closer. Indeed, our purple-clad kidnapper had managed to follow us. He rubbed the side of his head and frowned.

"I wish you'd figured that out before you took that swing at my head," he grumbled. Slowly standing up, he stretched out and looked at something behind me. "Muttley, grab her glasses for her."

I felt a tug on the sleeve of my hoodie. Looking down, I saw Muttley holding my glasses in his left paw.

"Thank you," I said, taking my glasses and putting them on. As I adjusted them, I gave Dastardly a glare. "So, about the kidnapping-"

"Will you stop going on about that?!" he shouted, throwing his hands in the air. "I'll admit, it wasn't the best way to get you two here; in my defense, however, we're on a bit of a time limit at the moment, so I couldn't exactly-"

"Hang on," I cut him off, putting my finger on his mouth. "What the heck do you mean by 'time limit', purple man?" Dastardly shot me a glare and pushed my finger away with one of his.

"First off, don't interrupt me or call me 'purple man'." he said, putting air quotes around the last two words. "Secondly, I promise I will explain everything to you two."

And then the ink demons showed up.

"-As soon as we get somewhere safer!" he yelped, grabbing both Muttley and myself before bolting. As we ran out of the clearing, Tay poked her head out of the bushes.

"What the fu-gah! There's more of those things?!" she screamed, falling out the bushes. Dastardly stopped and quickly hauled her to her feet.

"We wouldn't have a time limit if there was only one of them!" he shot back as I grabbed Tay's hand and ran alongside Dastardly. Tay glanced over at me.

"Beth, what's going on?! Why are we following him now?!" she asked over the snarling of the demons. I turned to her for a moment before turning back to ensure I didn't run into anything while guiding Tay.

"I don't know, Tay. I just don't know."