Bonkers: Of Broken Toes and Broken Ties - Part 3

Act 3

The News Van sped over the street, crossing more than one red traffic-light and eventually found the scene of crime after it had followed several police cars and the eventual ambulance, as there had been a phone call from a distraught woman about an explosion in the area.

The water did not care about the disturbance. It lay calm and untouched, as if nothing had happened. The scene was silent and bloodless. The only sign that a fight had taken place was the gun that had been left behind and a few damaged goods that had been scattered around the place, next to a burning storage-building. The Crew of the News Van furrowed their brows in skepticism, ready to turn around and leave. Whatever had happened here… it was over and past a few pictures for a minor newsflash barely offered them enough material to work with just then.

That was until their ears suddenly caught a gasp for air, a weak splash and a scrawny call for help.
Their senses alerted, the filming crew turned around to find a four-fingered glove clawing at the wet and slick wood of the dock. It was about to slip, when the reporter caught it and pulled the drenched toon it belonged to up on the solid ground. He gave the woman a weary smile and not before the ambulance team had fished out his partner did he close his eyes to rest, the chaos and buzzing people around him for once meaning nothing.


When he came to, his hands were tightly squeezing onto something soft. White fabric of a white sheeted bed in a bright and white room that he had grown far too familiar with in the last few months.
Lucky Piquel had woken up in the hospital.
“Oh, Honey,” a familiar voice sounded next to his ear and a delicate warm hand squeezed his own.
“Dyl!” was the first thing to come over his lips and the detective clung tightly onto his wife. He took a deep breath and felt like the lead laying on his shoulders had finally lifted. And that, it had – literally even, with the plaster surrounding his limbs now being gone.

He remembered the scene at the dock, the explosion, the fire, everything and his grip on her instantly tightened.
“I thought I had lost you.”
She calmly pressed him back onto the bed, silently urging him to rest.
“That was very brave of you,” she then said, “but please don’t do it again.”
He smiled and took her hand, tenderly, yet firm – afraid it might slip away any second and that he might only be dreaming.
“I promise.”
Lucky let his gaze wander around in the room. Bright, white… and Dyl, standing amidst it all like an angel in heaven’s light. He wasn’t dead after all, was he?
“Where is Marilyn?” it slipped out of him.
“Oh, she’s with Bonkers, Dear.”

Sweet cute little Marilyn; Lucky chuckled to himself. He was pretty sure they were having a good time and Bonkers was doing his best to keep her from remembering that dreadful incident.
“They’re in the room across.”
Wait – what?!
“D-did something happen to her?”
Dyl cupped Lucky’s face in her hand to calm him down.
“Marilyn is alright, Dear.”
“But then…”

Before Lucky could word his question Ludwig von Drake made his entrance, adjusting his glasses as he waddled in.
“Aaah, I see you’re awake!” he stated with his heavy accent.
“Vo- Von Drake…” Lucky stammered, as realization hit him. The toon doctor, “Bonkers! How is Bonkers?!” he demanded to know and pulled himself up quickly, only to flinch back down from the pain.
Not THAT healthy just yet, big guy.
“He’ll come around,” the duck answered him, “But this Mc Slime he keeps rambling about sure knew what he was doing.”
Lucky quietly mulled those words over before he fixed his eyes on Von Drake with a determined glare. “What do you mean?”
“You’re a detective, right?” the duck answered, as he took off his pince-nez and pointed it at Piquel. Lucky meanwhile remained still, listening, deducting, “Then I’m sure you noticed what they stored on that depot.”
Lucky opened his mouth to respond… but no words would come out.

The detective soon opted to grit his teeth instead. Curse this Mc Slime, curse him. That crook had been willing to wipe out his partner and then blew up the building to eradicate him and his family. And the worst of it all, despite neither of that working…
He had gotten away. Lucky just knew it, somewhere deep down in his gut.

“You were quite lucky actually,” the duck responded, chuckling at his own pun as he put the pince-nez back on his beak, “All of you.”
That reminded him-
“Dyl!” Lucky eventually blurted and turned to face his wife again, “How did you manage to come out? I- I didn’t see you!”
Bonkers had said that he had found them, so that meant they must have been in the building, right?

“That was Maxim,” a high pitched voice suddenly cut in, and the detective turned to see none other than his fuzzy partner joining them… on a crutch, “We made a toon-hole for them and he stayed to be their guide while I came back to help you. From then on, I just had to stall for a little time.”  
Now what do you say to that. That actually sounded more or less… competent.

“Daddy!” the voice of a girl that had seemed to help Bonkers walk before suddenly cut through and the kid went to jump upon her father’s bed, giving him a tight hug. Bonkers, with a smile on his face limped inside after her.

Hugging his daughter tightly, Lucky managed to sit up on his bed slowly this time. They lasted like this for quite a while; the atmosphere was easy, light hearted. Dialogues mostly focused on how relieved everyone was about all of this being over, but still… one thing seemed unnaturally off – and the detective couldn’t help but be bugged from it.

Eventually Marilyn hopped off from the bed to join her mother and when that happened Lucky’s eyes almost involuntarily wandered over to the bobcat, seizing him up. His gaze never quite left that crutch. This just seemed so… wrong.
“What do you need that for?” the officer asked finally, his voice laced with a concerned suspicion that didn’t quite fit the current mood-setting.
“This?” Bonkers asked as he twirled the aid a bit, nonchalantly.
“Oh,” he exclaimed and eventually began to laugh, leaving his partner quite confused. “I don’t need this at all!” the fuzzy officer explained casually before he tossed it aside and walked up to Lucky’s bed, “I just wanted to know how it was like being here all the time.”
The senior-officer on the bed just blinked at first, before he let out a weak groan and ruffled the bobcat’s head.
“You’re crazy.”
“Thanks for noticing!” the bobcat responded cheerfully.

Von Drake narrowed his eyes, which never once had stopped resting on Bonkers since he had come in.


Somehow, Lucky couldn’t find himself being mad at the little bobcat, so he gave him a collegial pound in the arm before the detective turned to look at his family again. Bonkers showing up had reminded him that they still had business to attend to.

“Now that Dyl and Marylin are safe we can alert the Headquarter and lock Mc Slime up for good!”
“Ah-ah!” Bonkers suddenly interjected and threw himself at Lucky, slamming him back into bed in the process, “You – are gonna stay here – and recover! You earned it!”
Lucky couldn’t help but blink suspiciously.
“Who are you?!”
Bonkers responded with a light-hearted chuckle, as though Lucky had just cracked the joke of the century before he made a big deal of swirling his arms around and pointing at his chest.
“This is your new and improved partner. Don’t you worry, Lucky; we’ll handle this somehow. Together! Whenever you feel fit to do so. In the meantime - take your rest.”
He handed the detective the crutch he had come in with and wrapped Lucky’s hands around it, the expression on his face turning somber.
“These aren’t fun at all.”

Marylin exchanged a glance with her mother, hopped off from her lap and rounded the bed to give Bonkers a hug.
The bobcat responded in kind.
“They say you’ll be ready to bust crimes again in two weeks tops!”
Just so long as Bonkers wouldn’t worsen his state again, the bobcat remembered the nurse’s subtle warning.

And he really didn’t want that.

That was why after he had stayed a little longer, the bobcat left to return to the Headquarters. Bonkers, after all, was still fit to do his job and he had news to tell and colleagues to warn.
Mc Slime wouldn’t be roaming the streets for long. Sure, it might take them a while to recapture him; just consider how long it had taken them to seize him the first time around!
Plenty! Precicely. The Police didn’t call him Slippery Mc Slime for nothing.
But just like back then, Bonkers was sure they’d get another chance.
Another time.

Another story.