4. The Wabbit on the Foggy Platform

The Wabbit was no longer at a sunny tram stop. He was on a foggy rail platform and he shivered in the cold air. A train thundered in and the platform shook as wheels shrieked to a halt. Station announcements barked information. The Wabbit recognised none of the stations but one thing was certain. He was a long way from home. He didn't like the look of this at all - and he shook his head with vigour. The doors opened with a loud hiss but the Wabbit declined to get on. He hung from a platform light and waited. The guard's door opened, and a man stepped out. He looked up and down the train, and when he caught sight of the Wabbit, he said, "All aboard now, all aboard." The Wabbit shook his head again. "Where is this train going?" he asked. The guard beckoned. "Come on now. There won't be another train for quite some time." The Wabbit was reluctant. "I've got no ticket." He hopped back a little. "The guard waved a machine. "No bother, I'll sell you a ticket when we're underway." The train blasted its horn three times and some of the doors hissed closed. "Last chance," said the guard. The Wabbit hopped back once more but the guard pressed him. "Look all around. Do you see anything?" "No," confessed the Wabbit. "This is the middle of nowhere," shrugged the guard. He waited. "Join all your friends on board," he suggested. That was enough for the Wabbit and he hopped on. The doors hissed shut behind him as the train took off and hurtled into the fog ...

3. Skratch and the Shaking Stairs

The day was hotter than expected. It was only April but it seemed like a scorching day in August. So Skratch the Cat went in search of air conditioning. "Where else but the cinema?" he thought. He wandered down Via Nizza and strolled into 8 Gallery at Lingotto. It was very quiet and Skratch smiled to himself. "Excellent," he murmured. But when he reached the sales desk there was no-one there. "Afternoon break," he thought and prowled on. As he made his way down to the auditoriums, he could just hear movies playing above the rumble of the escalators. "I'll pay on my way out," he meaowed. Although the atmosphere was electric, he met not a soul. The place was as empty as the devil's heart. "I must be in a  film." Skratch hissed. His purring increased along with his heartbeat. "This is so weird," he growled. He adopted a crouching posture, just in case. Then the escalator lurched and the whole cinema began to shake, pitching him forward. Amid the chaos, the escalator kept going but with enough noise for three. Perspex panels vibrated and tiles fell from the ceiling. Skratch sprang forward and out of the way as the escalator stairs groaned, coiled and collapsed behind him. He twisted in mid-air, landed on his feet and looked back. Then he grinned. "Good thing I'm a cat..."

2. Lapinette and the Construction Site

Lapinette hitched a lift on the hoist of a building site. She knew the Wabbit needed wood for his shed and a friendly contractor had promised as much as she wanted. The crane operator lowered her down. "Bit to the left, bit to the right," she yelled. Lapinette sniffed the air. Something wasn't right but she didn't have a clue what it was. Something fell and the load shook. She looked up but the operator was no longer there. The load swayed outward and tilted. Lapinette clung on to the chain as it swung back and glanced down. It was a long way to the ground. A plank fell from the roof and missed her by a centimetre. A link broke on the chain, followed by another. Lapinette looked at the scaffolding and calculated the distance. Then she jumped, clung on and clambered inside the scaffolding as the load dropped to the street. But the scaffolding shook too and the bolts that attached it to the framework of the building began to pop. First one, then a second, then all of them. The scaffolding sagged and dropped with Lapinette on board. She jumped again and rolled along the sidewalk in a cloud of dust. Behind her, the scaffolding folded like a concertina. Metal struts fell around her like rain. She picked herself up but the ground under her feet trembled like a leaf. She looked for cover but every building warped to and fro. Then the noise and the shaking suddenly stopped. Now Lapinette found herself listening to the loudest silence she'd ever heard ...

1. The Wabbit and the Tram Stop

The Wabbit waited at the tram stop a long time and eventually he got bored. It was so long that he wondered whether all the trams were cancelled. Things seemed too quiet, but it occurred to him that it had already been a busy year for mild peril, in which he'd encountered Tremor worms, monster fish attacks and bad dragons. Maybe it was OK to be quiet for a while. He hopped up and down the platform, hoping his radio would crackle into life. Nothing came through. He studied everything intensely, but eventually he found himself reduced to counting fence posts. "May as well walk," he thought. It was then that he spotted the yellow box and he was uncertain why he'd never noticed it before. He looked it up and down. It had a red button and a loudspeaker so he stretched out a paw. It lingered over the button. "To press or not to press?" he mused. He looked at the arrow that said stop. "What's the worst that can happen?" he murmured. It was a short jab but it was effective. The speaker shrieked with a deafening alarm and voice spoke. "What would you like stopped?" The Wabbit covered his ears and yelled, "Stop the alarm please." The alarm stopped and the loudspeaker barked. "Anything else you'd like stopped?" The Wabbit thought of lots of things, few of them practical. "I'd like a tram to come." The speaker barked again. "It's not my job to start things, only stop them." The Wabbit considered. "Maybe you could stop me being bored." The speaker chuckled in a malevolent tone. "No problem, Commander Wabbit ..."

The Wabbit at his Adventure Caffè

It was fun and games at the Adventure Caffè. Wabsworth produced a vial and told everyone it was full of bad dragon drops. No-one believed him and they all pushed the vial around. The Wabbit laughed and laughed. "But what sort of adventure was that what we just had?" he asked. Skratch leaned back and draped a paw across the back of his chair. "I'd say it was irreal." Wabsworth draped his paw in exactly the same way. "As opposed to unreal?" Lapinette poked the vial again. "Dragons are real enough and symbolic too." Skratch meaowed long and hard. "Then your story was but a structure of signification." Wabsworth was now quite excited. "A concept signifies - but a thing is expressive and a dragon is a thing." Lapinette span the vial round and round. "That's Metz. And he would want to know what kind of dragon thingyness you mean." Skratch butted it. "Your story sequence of images is a horizontal fluid discourse in which thingyness occurs." The Wabbit rapped on the table and the flask jumped up and down. "Therefore our episodes present a sequence of discontinuity which mobilises discourse through construction." Lapinette shook her head because it was beginning to spin. She was getting thirsty and felt in need of a drink. "Wabbit, sometimes you go to far." The Wabbit looked at Wabsworth. "I take it that vial no longer contains bad dragon drops." Wabsworth snatched it back and grinned. "Well I wouldn't recommend drinking it!

5. The Wabbit and the Last Bad Dragon

The Wabbit wandered through a strange landscape, clearing up bad dragons. Without their leader they were a spent force and the 400 Rabbits took care of most of them. But an enclave remained in Lingotto and since the Wabbit was especially fond of the area, he'd gone to supervise. With a happy heart, he slung his Snazer gun over his shoulder and whistled a merry tune. The atmosphere was yellow with dragon fumes but now it was clearing and that's how he came to see the shadow. With a terrible roar, a shape loomed over his shoulder breathing fumes. The Wabbit didn't bother to turn. With his paws behind him he pulled the laser's trigger and it fired a salvo that blasted a dragon to shreds. Bits dropped all around him and all over the car park. The Wabbit found himself looking down as a severed head with a tongue that continued to snake in and out as it tried to speak. The Wabbit shrugged because he was tired of bad dragons. "Any last words?" The tongue waggled to and fro. He nudged the dragon head with a foot and it rolled back and forward like a football. The Wabbit sighed. He took the Snazer from his back and pointed it. The head lurched forward and its tongue moved once more. This time it spoke. "We'll be back." The Wabbit leaned forward to look it in the eyes. "And on that occasion, we'll be ready." The eyes closed. The tongue lay still. The Wabbit shrugged again. "I hope .."

4. The Wabbit and the Dragon's Ointment

The Wabbit and Lapinette racked their brains for a way to defeat the dragons. They scoured the Internet and unearthed ancient tomes to locate a suitable method but they came up with nothing. Lapinette looked up. Dragons of various hues circled the skies but there was one bigger than the rest and he seemed to be in charge. She pointed. "We have to bring that one down." The Wabbit held up a paw. "I think I have it. Dragons are impervious to magic, but can't stand ointment." Lapinette rummaged in a drawer and clutching a new tube of ointment, hurried to the hanger where Susan the Biplane was ready to take off. Susan circled just below the ferocious dragon. It batted it's giant wings and flew straight towards them but Susan was nimble as only a biplane could be. "What's that ointment for?" asked the Wabbit. "Eczema," snarled Lapinette. "That'll peel its scales," chuckled the Wabbit. Lapinette scrambled onto a wing and unscrewed the cap. Susan hung in the air and waited. "Here it comes," yelled the Wabbit. The dragon's tongue snaked towards Lapinette's head and it was just the moment she'd been waiting for. The tube spat ointment on the dragon's chin and into its mouth. A cry of anguish rose to the heavens. The dragon's neck twisted and thrashed but it couldn't get rid of the ointment. Then its wings drooped as it it turned tail and fell screaming to the city below. "Flew in the ointment?" laughed the Wabbit.
[Dragons (except for Terni the Food Dragon) are courtesy of http://clipart-library.com/dragon-clip-art.html ]