Friedrick, Fluff, and... Roderick?

Once again, Lovely Lola is about to take another adventure, and aren’t we all just oh-so-excited? Lola was reading. Lola was writing. Lola had a lot of reading and writing to do. She was also daydreaming. She was having problems concentrating on all of the things she had to do. While she was staring out the window at the lovely Utah landscape (actually, IT WASN’T ALL THAT LOVELY. It was really quite boring, but Lola only had the one window in front of her), Lola saw something strange out the window. It was a small teddy bear, somewhat like Friedrick, yet… not somehow. It was all very strange, not to mention that the small look-alike bear was tiptoeing about rather surreptitiously, as if he had something to hide. Lola narrowed her eyes, and rolled up her sleeves. “This is a situation calling for SUPER LOLA!” she roared. She rushed towards the small bear, and…

...ran into the window. Lola fell to the floor, quite unconscious. And the little bear looked up and grinned slyly. He knew that Lola lay in her room, unconscious, and that he would be able to sneak into the room. Carefully, so as not to wake “the girl,” as he called her, the bear snuck into the room. He rubbed his paws craftily, and began to jump on Lola’s bed. “Hee hee!” Roderick giggled, for Roderick was his name. Not only did his face look like Friedrick’s, and his name sound like Friedrick’s, but he was also Friedrick’s evil döppelgänger! He began to run about, wreaking havoc upon every inch of Lola’s room. As Lola began to stir, Roderick quickly left a fake paw-print—one of Friedrick’s! With an evil döppelgänger laugh, Roderick jumped into a nearby toilet, and flushed himself away to make more mischief elsewhere. Lola sat up, and rubbed her forehead, where she had hit the window. She was forming a lump on the point of impact. She groaned, and opened her eyes fully. She gasped in shock. “Someone has trashed my room!” She stood up, and turned around several times. Suddenly, she stopped when her eyes rested upon a strangely familiar paw-print… “Friedrick!” she exclaimed as her eyes narrowed in a terrifying look of revenge. Lola knew that she would have to avenge this act of college terrorism in some manner. “And after I was his campaign manager…” Lola muttered angrily. She began to clean up, and plot revenge…

* * * * * * * * * *

Time had passed. Lola was now ready to perform her act of revenge upon the innocent and unsuspecting Friedrick. Carefully, carefully, she traveled to his home, and followed him for three hours before she had him exactly where she wanted him. “Join me! Come to the Dark Side!” Darth Vader whispered. “We shall rule the Galaxy as Father and Son!” And then Luke shouted… Whoa! Where did that come from! I must apologize. Where was I? That’s right… HERE! Lola snuck up on Friedrick and tackled him to the ground. Friedrick had a look of surprise as Lola did her dastardly deed, and ran away cackling, and muttering to herself about “The Dark Side.” Friedrick was completely astounded! He had no idea what had just happened to him. Then he looked down, and shrieked. He was wearing a miniature version of Merv the Fairy God-Cabbie’s tutu outfit, but the difference was that the tutu was a multicolored, hideous polka-dotted thing, and that Lola had put make-up on him as well. Friedrick fainted. As he did so, Roderick leaped out from behind a tree, and rubbed his evil little paws together. His plan had worked! He disappeared, and ran off to celebrate.

* * * * * * * * * *

Friedrick was sad. He thought Lola had been his loyal Campaign Manager. In confusion, he went to the only person he thought he could trust: Wodin, because she was oh-so Wise. Wodin sat Friedrick down, and listened to him explain the whole thing. Wodin sighed, grasped Friedrick by his two small shoulders, and looked deeply into his eyes. “Friedrick,” she said gravely, “you have an evil döppelgänger. You were separated by some events early in Life, and Roderick, (that’s his name!) feels he has been shorted in life, and that you have received all of the perks.” Friedrick looked shocked, and then vengeful, as he began to plot his own revenge…

* * * * * * * * * *

“Ri-i-i-ng!” Lola picked up the phone and, when she heard who it was, spat, “YOU! What do you think you are….” She was obviously interrupted and she sat down as her eyes widened. “You don’t say!” she whispered in an awed manner. Then, for the third time in this story, she narrowed her eyes. “Well, we’ll see about THAT.” She said, and hung up, and rubbed her hands together.

* * * * * * * * * *

Roderick was at home, at his desk, drafting plans for yet another reprehensible exploit. “No,” he mumbled to himself. “The water balloons should come from over there…” Roderick drew an arrow in his plans, depicting the trajectory of the balloons, and then added an ‘x’ where the target was. “Now… the tub of pudding should land somewhere over there…” and Roderick sketched in a large tub, directly over a picture in the likeness of Fluff! Roderick cackled and raised his paws over his head, and then brought them down and rubbed them together. “My plan to destroy the Two Tenacious Teddy Bears is almost complete!” Unbeknownst by Roderick, however, his every move was being watched…

* * * * * * * * * *

Back at the home base, Stan Q. Fitzhubert, Masked Mal, Claudette the Crazy, Merv, the fairy god Cabbie, Gordon the Goob, Confused Chris, Wodin the Wise, and Lovely Lola stood around a table, at the head of which sat Friedrick and a studious looking Fluff. Fluff pushed her chair away, and, repeatedly smacking a riding crop into her open palm, began to speak. “Now,” she said crisply, “we have all been informed of the situation. And we have devised a plan.” Fluff gesticulated with the riding crop towards a blueprint at the center of the table. She leaned forward, placing both paws and her riding crop on the table. “I need all of your help to make this plan work, to allow it to come to fruition. If there are any of you present not willing to participate in this mission, raise your hand, and we will have you… taken care of.” Fluff grinned, and Gordon gulped. He didn’t particularly want to help out, but he didn’t want to be “dealt with” in the way that Fluff meant. So his hand remained at his side, as everyone else’s did also. Fluff stood up. “Good. We shall now go about the task of assigning everyone a position…”

* * * * * * * * * *

It was The Day. The Plan was about to be enacted. They were ready. Well, mostly. They had asked Merv to produce some smoke effects, and as yet, this had not occurred. But that was the least of their worries. Outside of Roderick’s house, there were four posts: Confused Chris and Gordon the Goob (reluctantly) stood outside the front door in case of Roderick’s escape. Stan and Wodin guarded the rear entrance, and Lola stood on the corner, nonchalantly whistling and playing with a Yo-yo. She was to signal to Merv, down the street, when the plan had been put into force. Masked Mal waited in the top of a nearby tree, dressed in black (and wearing a bandit’s mask, of course) with a pair of binoculars. From her vantage point she could see directly into Roderick’s planning room. Claudette the Crazy, whom Roderick had never met, was going to arrive in five minutes posed as a door-to-door Friedrick and Fluff Action Set saleswoman. Chris and Gordon were concealed in bushes just beyond the door, and were carefully staying still. Stan and Wodin stood back-to-back, hands clasped in the shape of pistols, like Charlie’s Angels. Stan looked very mercenary, and Wodin just looked excited. Nothing like this ever happened to her. Claudette was dressed very professionally. She smoothed her skirt, and got into her car, about to drive to the Point of Rendezvous, or the corner where Lola was standing. She drove, and as she did, Lola saw her approaching and began to whistle the Secret Code Tune: “Dixie.” At the sound, Merv conjured the smoke so it rolled like fog. The house was soon enveloped with Fog, and Roderick could not see the actions of those outside of his house. Meanwhile, Claudette walked up to the door and, with a wink to her beloved Chris in the bush, rang the doorbell. Roderick came down and answered the door. He looked annoyed. Claudette flashed a winning smile, and opened her briefcase and began to expound upon the wonders of the Friedrick and Fluff Action Toy Set. Just as Roderick was about to slam the door in Claudette’s face, Gordon and Chris leapt from the bushes and tackled Roderick. At this point, Claudette and Lola marched into the house and shut and locked the door behind them. Lola went and let Wodin and Stan in the back door; they were still posed like Charlie’s Angels. They strode in confidently, and Stan deftly whipped out a pair of scissors and began to “trim” Roderick’s fur. Lola searched the house for some bed sheets, which she found, strangely enough, on a bed. She removed them and took them downstairs. Friedrick and Fluff arrived at this point, ready to help. Mal, at her vantage point in the tree, alerted the group to the arrival of an ice cream truck, so they all ran out to get some ice cream while Gordon guarded the mussed Roderick. They brought him back a fudgescicle. At that juncture, they wrapped it all up. Roderick, I mean. In the sheet. And then they left.

* * * * * * * * * *

Wayne Newton was recently returned to the Las Vegas Circuit. He was enjoying the crowds again, and he rarely ever had nightmares about tiny bears anymore. He rested in bed on a weekend, feeling quite lovely. He decided to get out of bed and go check to see if the newspaper had arrived. On the doorstep was a baby bassinet. He was slightly confused, but he bent down, and lifted the blanket from the face of the Baby… Wayne screamed, first with fear, then with triumph. He finally had the little bear! He would show them!

* * * * * * * * * *

About a week later, as Fluff was relaxing in the sun on her back porch, sipping lemonade and reading the paper, she came across a small article about Wayne Newton in the Gossip Columns. “Friedrick!” she cried. “Listen to this: ‘Last week, Wayne Newton, known for his rendition of “Danke Shön,” was arrested for Improper Conduct with a Teddy Bear. Recently released from a mental institution, Newton has pleaded not guilty to the charges of First-Degree Unstuffing. The unnamed Teddy Bear is being treated in the Intensive Care Unit of Roosevelt’s Hospital.’” Friedrick looked at Fluff and smiled. Then he said, “That is what you get when you try to take someone’s pickles from them.” Fluff nodded, and added, “Yes, and especially if you try to smear them with peanut butter.”

And that was that.