Work Text:
“Hobbes? HOBBES?” When no one responds to his call, Calvin props his hands on his hips and throws his head back to yell with as much energy as possible. “HOOOOOOOBBES!”
When his tiger friend still doesn’t appear, Calvin decides to take matters into his own hands. He drags his chair over to his closet. He stacks the stepping stool on the chair, but it still isn’t high enough for him to reach the top shelf of the closet. His mom’s using the tall ladder to do g-d knows what in the kitchen, and as much as Calvin would like to take the ladder anyway, the little voice in the back of his head that sounds like Hobbes says that would be a very bad idea. It wouldn’t be worth all the trouble he’d get in.
So Calvin takes the stepping stool off the chair. He lifts a cardboard box full of his winter clothes onto the chair, then puts the stepping stool on the box, like the cherry on top of the sundae Calvin’s mom never lets him get at the ice cream shop. (And what’s the deal with that, Calvin would like to know! It’s just ice cream! And chocolate sauce, and caramel sauce, and a banana, and a cherry that’s actually a chocolate truffle dipped in shiny red glaze, and three kinds of sprinkles, and a crushed-up candy bar, and--)
Spaceman Spiff clings to the edge of a cliff, painstakingly climbing to the top hand over hand. His goal is the nagbork, the only thing that can save the galaxy from the evil Zogwargs. Spiff looks for a new foothold as the rock of the cliff crumbles beneath his feet. Luckily, he’s clipped his safety rope to a sapling at the top of the cliff. The nagbork is within his grasp when the Zogwarg ship shoots its lasers at him. A stray laser beam clips the sapling, sending Spaceman Spiff to the ground far below. Our brave Spaceman doesn’t scream as he falls, stoically inventing a plan to deal with the boulders tumbling down around him. He pulls out his blaster to shatter the rocks into pieces, but it jams after he fires his first hit. Spiff doesn’t have much time--can he save himself?
Spiff hits the ground with a thud, boulders of all sizes hitting the ground around him. Little blue and yellow stars swirl around his head. But Spiff can’t be kept down for long! He hauls himself to his feet and realizes that the nagbork had tumbled down with the rest of the debris. Triumphant, Spaceman Spiff reaches for the box. He has the box halfway open and is reaching for his cape when--
Hobbes snatches the box away.
If it had been his mom, or (g-d forbid) Suzie Derkins, Calvin could have woven them into the narrative as an alien, but he can't paint Hobbes as his enemy.
"Hey! Give it back, I need my cape."
"Nuh-uh." Hobbes shakes his head and holds the box up as high in the air as he can manage.
"Stupendous Man isn't Stupendous Man without a cape!"
Hobbes shakes his head resolutely.
Calvin lunges for him. Thus begins the Great Cape Chase of 'xx! Hobbes runs out of Calvin's room and along the second floor until he hops onto the banister and slides down to the first floor. Calvin slings himself onto the banister and slides after Hobbes. They weave between furniture in the living room, under the dining table and between the chairs, over the couch and under the coffee table, and finally out into the back yard. Calvin throws himself at Hobbes' knees and manages to bring him crashing to the ground, but Hobbes tucks himself into a little tiger ball around the box. Calvin can't pull his arms apart.
Calvin gives up and crosses his arms across his chest, panting and frowning. He gives Hobbes the stink-eye. "It's MINE, Hobbes. Gimme my cape!"
Hobbes uncurls himself sufficiently to say, "Won't."
"Why?"
"...I put your Christmas present in here."
Calvin's anger annoyance dissipates in a second. "Christmas present! Why, Hobbes, you shouldn't have." He worms his head in between Hobbes' arms and puts his ear to the box, as if he can tell what it is by the sound. "You HAVE to show me, it's the rule."
Hobbes stands up and puts the package behind his back. "Not this year."
Calvin sighs, then smirks up at his friend. "Can I peek if I make you a tuna fish sandwich?"
"Noooo," Hobbes says slowly, but Calvin can tell he's tempted. His canine teeth (how ironic a cat's teeth are canines!) gleam with more drool than usual (and the usual amount of drool is a LOT).
"That's it, come on, Hobbes," Calvin coaxes. "Here, kitty, kitty!"
"Not a kitty." Hobbes frowns. "I am a TIGER."
"That's right, and tigers love their tuna fish sandwiches!" Calvin wheedles.
Hobbes slowly nods. He walks to the house as if in a trance, grip on the box slowly loosening.
Calvin runs ahead to pretend to get the sandwich started. When Hobbes comes in, eyes half-glazed, Calvin's busy taking bread out of the bread box. (The weird grain kind, obviously; Hobbes doesn't deserve white bread today, even if it isn't actually going to be a sandwich.)
"Huh, we're out of tuna," Calvin announces, as if to himself. "I’ll go get more from the garage!" He walks past Hobbes, now settling onto a kitchen chair, and goes out into the backyard. He sees the box lying innocently on the grass.
Calvin smirks as he picks the box up and takes it around the corner of the house. Once he's out of Hobbes' line of sight, he opens the box. The cape is on top, right where Calvin left it; he drapes the shiny red cape over his shoulders and ties its ribbons in a bow around his neck. But underneath that is a plain blue journal that he's never seen before. Surely Hobbes wouldn't get him a plain journal for Christmas? Unless it was for drawing more snow castle floorplans or blueprints for spaceships, maybe. Stupendous Man picks it up and flips through it.
DAY 95
There is not much more to report. Subject #1 (CALVIN) spends most of his time doing homework and goofing off. Subject #2 (STUPENDOUS MAN) is not often present. When he does make an appearance, Subject #2 does "good" things like saving an elementary school from a meteorite. The thing that confuses this operative is that Stupendous Man seems to appear out of nowhere and disappear just the way he came, often in Subject #1's closet. This operative has thoroughly examined the closet in question and determined that it does not contain a teleportation machine, wormhole, portal, or transportation device of any kind besides Subject #1's pogo stick. The closet also does not appear to contain a device to make Stupendous Man invisible. From time to time, Subject #1 does store a machine, variously known as the Transmogrifier, Duplicator, or Time Machine, in the closet. However, this operative does not believe that Stupendous Man has been escaping by using the--
Hobbes snatches the journal from Stupendous Man's hand and runs off with it. For once, Stupendous Man doesn't immediately run after him. Instead, he sits on the grass, frowning. If he had to guess, he would say it sounds like someone--multiple someones--are watching him and Mild-Mannered Calvin. Aliens? It has to be aliens. And if it's aliens, why then it's a job for--
Spaceman Spiff checks his blaster to make sure it won't jam like last time. He can't protect Mild-Mannered Calvin and Stupendous Man with a malfunctioning weapon! Once he's satisfied that the gun is working, he hops into his spaceship. He doesn't know where the enemies are yet, of course. He doesn't even know who the enemies are. But that isn't going to stop him from solving the mystery. He racks his brain to remember the alphabet the journal was written in. It was Zogwargian, if he wasn't mistaken, and Spiff rarely is. He sets his navigator to Zog Alpha.
Luckily, it's only a hop, skip, and a jump to Spiff's destination. He'd recently taken the ship in for a tune-up, and the new engine was faster than just about anything in the known universe. It doesn’t give him much time to consider the facts of the case. One: Mild-Mannered Calvin and Stupendous Man were under observation. Two: Hobbes took the journal away from Stupendous Man. It doesn't take long for Spiff to put two and two together, though he really hopes he’s wrong. Hobbes couldn't be the spy, could he? Surely not...Hobbes, President and First Tiger of G.R.O.S.S., would never betray Dictator-for-Life Calvin.
The way to crack this case, Spiff thinks, would be to let Mild-Mannered Calvin take the reins for a moment. Spiff lands on the dusty green surface of Zog Alpha and pulls up the parking brake before letting Calvin take over.
"Thanks, Spiff!" Calvin says. He digs back through his memories of his time with Hobbes. He can't remember anything particularly odd, except...oh! Oh no! Hobbes had fallen into a mud puddle a few months ago and had have a bath. Could he have been kidnapped and replaced with a duplicate? Oh no, could the aliens have cloned Hobbes with Calvin's very own Duplicator?! If so, where was the real Hobbes?!?
Spaceman Spiff takes over once again as Mild-Mannered Calvin's bravery begins to waver; after all, he’s just a kid, and Spiff is an experienced adventurer. He's dealt with hundreds, no, thousands of covert alien operations! He could take down their ringleader with his hands tied behind his back. He just has to FIND the ringleader...and on a planet as big as Zog Alpha, that is no easy task.
Spiff knows he’s up to the challenge, however. He releases the parking brake and sets the spaceship to hover mode, ready to fly over the surface of the planet for as long as it takes. He opens a bag of popcorn he'd brought along and munches on the kernels while he flies.
With his speedy spaceship, it's only 2 minutes or so before Spiff finds his first Zogwarg building. It's covered with satellite dishes and other, weirder, surveillance equipment, which seems like a good sign. Spiff parks his ship and sneaks around the outside of the building.
An elderly alien from next door waves at him over the crooked metal fence between their buildings. It croaks something at him in Zogwargish, waving one long tentacle. Spiff ignores it; it could easily be a distraction sent by someone in the spy organization.
Spiff's prepared to tackle the back door with his lock pick, or, failing that, his blaster, but he finds it unlocked. Briefly he wonders if he's walking into a trap, but surely the Zogwargs would know he'd be smarter than to walk into an unlocked building. If it is a trap, it has to be a very simple one. So Spiff walks on in, blaster extended in front of him. There are no aliens in sight, which is a relief, but Spiff's suspicious. He quickly clears the first floor, then the second, before sweeping each room for any information he can find. There's a room on the first floor that seems promising. While the Zogwargs generally have technology as advanced as the rest of the universe, this room's filled with surprisingly outdated tech: something Spiff thinks is called a phax machine and another one that looks like an ancient prrnter.
Spiff approaches the bookshelf and flips through it, looking for evidence of the spy operation. It's easy as pie to find a binder labeled Family Photos. Spiff opens the binder and gasps at all the images of Calvin, Stupendous Man, Hobbes, and even Calvin's parents! Would these aliens stop at nothing to find the information they seek?
Spiff flips through the pages of photos to see if they had any particularly incriminating ones. From what they wrote in the journal, the Zogwargs didn't like Stupendous Man's acts of heroism. There are surprisingly few photos of Stupendous Man: just a few shots of him standing on a rock, cape rippling behind him, and one of him mid-air, presumably on his way to save somebody. There are many more photos of Calvin: the disastrous ones they'd taken for the Christmas card (which, if Stupendous Man wasn't mistaken, Calvin's dad had wanted to delete), candids of him wrestling with Hobbes, and the few pictures Calvin had taken of himself when he'd stolen his dad's camera (mostly Calvin posing like he was Godzilla about to step on a city).
Spiff takes out the photos he thinks Calvin wouldn't want them to have. Leaving out the binder, he moves on to interfering with their surveillance equipment by hitting random buttons and unplugging all the plugs he can find. Before he can sabotage many machines, though, he hears heavy footsteps out in the hallway.
Spiff tip-toes to the door and peeks through the crack between the door and the frame. There's a Zogwarg headed right for him! He throws himself behind the massive winged armchair in the corner (and by winged, he means it has a giant pair of leathery alien wings coming out from the sides).
The Zogwarg comes slumping into the room and sets its strange alien bag on the desk. "Hey, who took the photos out of the album?! CALVIN?" it bellows. Spiff crunches into an even smaller ball behind the armchair and holds his breath.
The Zogwarg takes some papers from its bag and puts them on the desk before stomping out of the room. Spiff takes a relieved breath before tiptoeing out from behind the chair and into the hallway. Before he can hide, the alien turns and looks right at him.
"There you are, Calvin," it sighs. "Did you take the pictures out of the album?"
Spiff stands in front of the Zogwarg, frozen in place. He checks for other aliens to the left and right before dashing to the door and out into the putrid air of Zog Alpha. The Zogwarg doesn't seem to be in pursuit. Spiff sighs in relief and hops back into his spaceship. He's happy with the sabotage he did; they didn't seem to have any particularly juicy knowledge on either of their subjects, and hopefully hitting random buttons will mess with their machines for a bit. That'll have to do. Spiff settles back into his chair and sets the navigator to Earth. He'd like to give Calvin the news.
Just as his ship lifts off, Spiff hears the revving of engines behind him. He looks in the rearview mirror to see the Zogwarg in hot pursuit! It's bellowing something, though he can't hear it over the sound of engines warming up.
It's time for some ace flying.
Spiff takes the ship between alien rock formations, flying through spaces too small for the larger Zogwargian ship. He risks a glance in the mirror to see that the other spaceship is far behind him. Spiff takes the opportunity to shift his ship into hyperdrive and head for Earth.
He parks his ship at Calvin’s house just in time to see Hobbes fighting with an identical tiger. Fur and grass fly everywhere from the pair of them, tussling in the dirt, pulling each other’s ears and tails.
Spiff grabs his blaster and prepares to shoot the imposter, but he can’t tell which one is really Hobbes. He decides to pass the talking stick to Calvin, who knows Hobbes infinitely better than he does.
Calvin can’t tell at first, either. Where Hobbes has a scar below his right ear where Calvin’s mom had to sew him up, other Hobbes has a scar, too. They both have a grape juice stain on one white paw and a crooked whisker on one cheek. Calvin’s heart leaps in his throat as he watches his best friend try to take down the evil clone.
Finally, Calvin comes up with a desperate plan. “Tigers are mean! Tigers are fierce! Tigers have teeth and claws that pierce!” he shouts.
One of the two Hobbeses pulls his teeth from the other Hobbes’ ear long enough to sing, “Tigers are great! They can’t be beat! If I was a tiger, that would be neat!”
With that, Spiff dives into the fray and separates the tigers. He tackles clone Hobbes to the ground. “Die, Zogwarg scum!” he shouts, holding the tiger down with one hand while he takes out his blaster. Before he can shoot, though, a beam of green light shimmers into existence around the clone, dissolving him into a cloud of orange-and-black particles. Spiff cranes his neck to look at the Zogwarg ship high above them.
“I’ll get you next time!” he shouts up at the sky.
Calvin wastes no time in tackling real Hobbes in a great big bear hug.
“Hobbes! I was so worried!”
“Never fear, Hobbes is here!” Hobbes ruffles Calvin’s hair with one soft paw. “I had everything under control.”
“Where were you?” Calvin asks, lifting his head off Hobbes’ warm tummy to look up at him.
“I was eating tuna fish sandwiches after that bath your mom gave me,” Hobbes says, waving one paw in the air. “I may have lost track of time, but I’m here now!”
Calvin pulls Hobbes in for another squeeze before letting him go. “I’m glad you’re back, buddy.”
“Me too.”
“Calvin! Dinnertime!” Calvin’s mom calls.
“C’mon Hobbes, lemme get you that sandwich.”
With that, the two of them walk into the kitchen in search of their next adventure.