Baby Noddins rushed to the front room when the bell rang, and quickly opened the
door. "Come in quick, Baby Falling Leaves,"
the little pony urged, stopping suddenly when she realized her friend was not alone. "What's he
doing here?" she scowled.
"Baby Leaper's television is broken, so I said he could watch with us," Baby Falling
Leaves informed Baby Noddins, coming into
the house.
"Hi, Baby Noddins," Baby Leaper said as he followed Baby Falling Leaves into the
room. "Where's the TV?"
Baby Noddins forgot her annoyance at seeing the colt with her friend as she realized the
time. Superspritz would be on any
second!
The three foals hurried to the family room where the TV was already on; they had just
made themselves comfortable when the
nerve-tingling sound of the theme song to their latest favorite animated show came on.
"Quiet!" Baby Noddins hissed as Baby Leaper cheered. She cast a glance of total
distaste in his direction.
"Oh, isn't he handsome?" Baby Falling leaves swooned. Baby Noddins followed
suit.
Baby Leaper snorted. "Handsome? Superspritz doesn't care about that. He cares about
winning and conquering evil!"
"But he is handsome," Baby Noddins shot back. "And that's why me and Baby Falling
Leaves like him!"
"His hair is simply the greatest!" Baby Falling Leaves asserted. "He'd be my hero even if
he wasn't strong and powerful."
Baby Leaper rolled his eyes. "Fillies!" he commented as he moved closer to the
television and sat on the floor just as the latest
episode began.
The three sat in rapt silence as Superspritz and his companion, Coombie, appeared in a
quiet, park like setting. The maroon colored
superhero stallion with a yellow mane that reached skyward appeared to be smelling the flowers
that fringed the pathway he was following.
"Isn't he wonderful?" Baby Falling Leaves whispered to Baby Noddins. Without taking
her eyes off the screen, Baby Noddins
nodded a yes.
A smaller creature walking behind Superspritz was doing all the talking. "I tell you,
Superspritz, something is going to
happen. I can feel it in my tail-rings."
"You're just saying that, Coombie, because it's Saturday morning," Superspritz
responded. "Just because bad things usually
happen to us on Saturday mornings, doesn't mean they always will."
Coombie, who was a brilliant yellow raccoon with black tail stripes and black face mask,
shook his head defiantly. "Trust me,
Superspritz; I'm not your sidekick for nothing, you know." He kept a wary lookout for the
unexpected.
Just as Superspritz bent to sniff the fragrance of an especially large blossom on a purple
hyacinth, a burst of fine white powder
materialized seemingly from nowhere, and Superspritz was surrounded with the substance.
"Coombie, it's..."
Superspritz could say no more. The normally robust stallion seemed to lose
consciousness, and dropped listlessly to the
ground.
Baby Noddins and Baby Falling Leaves screamed in agony as they saw their champion
fall.
Using a paw to shake Superspritz's shoulder, Coombie tried to awaken the insensible
pony, but to no avail. While his
attention was focused on reviving Superspritz, a fearsome figure of blue and orange suddenly
appeared as if from nowhere.
"Ha, ha, ha!" the evil-countenanced stallion laughed mirthlessly. "I've got you now,
Superspritz!"
Coombie reacted with anger. "How dare you do this awful thing?" he screamed as he
placed himself before the limp body on
the path.
"I do as I please," the stallion replied; and taking a gold band from his foreleg, he held it
high. In a flash, both he and
Superspritz disappeared, leaving behind a completely stupefied Coombie.
As the commercial break came on, Baby Noddins exhaled as if she hadn't breathed since
Superspritz had been hijacked by the
enemy. "I hope he's alright," she said anxiously.
Baby Leaper seemed stunned that Superspritz had fallen into yet another trap. "He
should have listened to Coombie!"
Baby Falling Leaves defended her hero. "That bad stallion doesn't fight fair."
"Coombie will have to save the day," Baby Leaper determined.
"Oh, he must save Superspritz," lamented Baby Noddins.
"Quiet! Quiet!" hissed Baby Falling Leaves as the show returned on the screen.
"I must enlist the aid of Coral Blaze," Coombie decided, after staring in disbelief at
the ground from where his leader had
just disappeared. He set off with determination to find this superpowered friend of
Superspritz.
Coombie had not gone far when he happened to run into-- literally-- the very
superheroine he was searching for.
"What's the big hurry, Coombie?" Coral Blaze asked with a dazzling smile, her coral
coat gleaming in the morning sun, and
her blaze-orange mane curling attractively around her magenta eyes.
"Superspritz! Fatal Rogue has him!" Coombie managed to gasp.
"Hmm. So Total Rogue is up to his old tricks, is he?" Coral Blaze pondered. "I wonder
what he's up to this time?"
"We must hurry and find where that villain has taken him!" Coombie exclaimed, anxious
to be on the trail of his lost
companion.
"Oh, I think I know where we will find them," a knowledgeable Coral Blaze responded.
"Follow me, Coombie."
As the scene switched to the lair of the notorious Fatal Rogue, Baby Falling Leaves
collapsed onto the sofa with a stricken heart as
she beheld her hero held captive behind a luminous force field. The evil Fatal Rogue paced
assuredly before his victim.
"Ha, ha. I have you now, Superspritz. But I bet you don't feel so ‘super' now, do
you?" laughed Fatal Rogue
fiendishly.
"You will never succeed!" called Superspritz as he lunged toward Fatal Rogue, and was
mercilessly repelled backward by the
force field's power.
As he hit the opposite wall with a thud and sank to the floor, Baby Noddins sobbed,
"No-o-o!"
"Prepare yourself to meet your doom," declared Fatal Rogue, his depraved laughter
now replaced with a vicious
snarl.
Immediately, a grating noise was heard coming from above Superspritz, and a giant cold
steel claw came down to latch onto
the noble steed.
Baby Falling Leaves and Baby Noddins screamed, and threw their forelegs around one
another, their eyes still following the scene
on the television screen. Baby Leaper raised his eyes skyward contemptuously.
Back in adventure land, the entire west wall of Superspritz's prison moved aside and
the ensnared stallion was carried by
the brute claw over the abyss outside of Fatal Rogue's haunt.
Baby Falling Leaves and Baby Noddins screamed louder. Baby Leaper covered his
ears.
With one mighty roar of power, Fatal Rogue pressed the button that opened the
claw, allowing Superspritz to fall... fall...
fall... into the icy depths that waited below.
As Baby Falling Leaves and Baby Noddins watched their mighty warrior drop endlessly
into the waiting water, they both sat up in
horror-stricken realization, and said simultaneously:
"Superspritz's hair will be ruined!" The two girls' very souls were distraught at this cruel fate that
awaited their flawless knight.
"Give me a break," muttered Baby Leaper.
And two tiny hearts were crushed as Superspritz hit the water, and disappeared into its
frigid hold.
Meanwhile-- back at Fatal Rogue's post-- the ruffian had his hooves full as Coral
Blaze and Coombie burst into his
domain.
"You're too late!" yelled a disconsolate Baby Falling Leaves.
"Yeah! Where were you when Superspritz needed you?" an anguished Baby Noddins
cried. They forlornly watched with bleary
eyes, their world shattered.
"You two are so gullible," Baby Leaper shook his head disbelievingly.
The television now showed the smooth expanse of water that entombed Superspritz.
Suppressed sobs shook Baby Falling Leaves
and Baby Noddins as they searched the scene for any sign of their beloved hero, but the surface of
the water was devoid of any life.
But as the foals watched, a tiny ripple broke the smooth stretch of fluid terrain. Their
eyes grew round, and they sat up straight in
hopeful anticipation. Suddenly, the familiar body of Superspritz shattered the calm sea, creating a
vortex as he shot skyward with astounding
speed.
Baby Falling Leaves was ecstatic. "Go get him!" she called excitedly. "I knew you
could come back, Superspritz!"
Baby Leaper groaned, and distanced himself even further from the fillies.
In no time at all, Superspritz had taken control of the still unsettled situation in
which Coral Blaze and Coombie had
embroiled themselves, and Fatal Rogue was marched off by the police ponies who had obviously
been alerted to the plight of the
superheroes.
Baby Falling Leaves and Baby Noddins cheered boisterously, grinning and dancing
around the sofa.
Fatal Rogue did not go willingly, of course, as he turned one last time toward
Superspritz and vowed, "We'll meet
again!"
For his part, Superspritz was pleased with a job well done. "The world is safe again,
Coombie. Fatal Rogue can no longer try
to amass all the world's treasures for himself. If we remember to share, we can all be
happy."
He threw a foreleg across Coral Blaze's shoulder, hoisted Coombie on his back, and the
three of them walked off into the
spectacular sunset.
"Oh, it's so romantic!" sighed Baby Noddins. "Superspritz is so handsome!"
"And brave," added Baby Falling Leaves. "He's just perfect."
Baby Leaper turned the TV off in exasperation. "You girls are strange," he stated,
eying the two still staring dreamily at the now
blank television screen.
When they didn't respond to his comment, Baby Leaper added, "I gotta go home now.
Mom's taking me to the store to buy a
Superspritz action figure this morning."
Two dainty heads swiveled in unison to face the colt, eyes wide, mouths open. "They
make Superspritz action figures?" Baby
Noddins asked in awe.
"Yup. And Mom said I can use my allowance to get one." He held up a hoof full of
jangles.
"Oh, can me and Baby Noddins come with you?" asked Baby Falling Leaves.
"You'll have to ask your moms," Baby Leaper replied.
So it turned out that Toad Lily could be found late that Saturday morning in the
company of three energetic foals at Toys 4 Ponies R
Us.
Racing into the action figure aisle, the trio scampered directly to the pegs boasting the
bright, well-packaged Superspritz toys. The
display was loaded with figures of the regular Superspritz, Battle Damaged Superspritz,
Underwater Assault Superspritz, and Aerial Combat
Superspritz; each of the foals grabbed a figure. Then Baby Noddins whined, "I want Coral Blaze.
She was pretty."
"I want Fatal Rogue." Baby Leaper had his own ideas. "He was cool!"
Enlisting the aid of Toad Lily, who could reach the higher pegs without climbing the
display stand, the search party uncovered one
Fatal Rogue and one Coral Blaze. Baby Falling Leaves grabbed the heroine before Baby Noddins
knew what was going on.
"There must be another doll here somewhere," Toad Lily said anxiously as Baby
Noddins began to cry and stomp her hooves.
"Probably not," said Baby Leaper wisely. "Fatal Rogue and Coral Blaze are both
short-packed meaning there is only one of them in
each box of twelve figures, while there are ten of the assorted Superspritz."
"That doesn't make any sense," mused Toad Lily.
"I won't give up Coral Blaze." Baby Falling Leaves was now holding the action figure
high over her head in an attempt to keep it
away from a certain little lavender pony.
"Maybe we could find one of that cute little furry guy... Coombie, is it?" Toad Lily
hopefully queried.
"Nope," her son replied absently as he read over the package back of Fatal Rogue.
"Coombie isn't coming out until the second
assortment."
As Baby Noddins and Baby Falling Leaves continued their antics, a store employee,
Ages, came up to Toad Lily and asked, "Is
there a problem here?"
"Yes, there is," she stated rather angrily. "Both fillies want a Coral Blaze figure, but
you only had one on the rack. Do you have
more in the storeroom?" Her voice was pleading.
Ages shook his head. "No, ma'am. All the figures are on the display, except for the
extra Superspritz ones."
"I'm confused," Toad Lily said in exasperation. "Doesn't the toy company know that the
foals will want one of each figure?"
Ages shrugged his shoulders. "Pasbro's been marketing action figures like this for years,
and ponies keep on buying them."
"When will you be getting more in?"
"Won't know until the delivery cart comes in next week," Ages admitted. "There will be
a second assortment, though," he added
helpfully. "Let's see; that one will have Coombie, four recolored versions of Superspritz, and-- let
me think-- I heard that the sixth figure has been
dropped; he was a new character from the second season that hasn't been aired yet."
Ages moved on to help another customer while Toad Lily shook her head in disbelief.
"Who would think that buying toys for foals
would be so difficult?"she murmured incredulously.
"Leaper's Mom, make her give that to me!" Baby Noddins said as she stood imploringly
at Toad Lily's hooves, her tear-stained face
peering hopefully upward.
"I'm sorry, Baby Noddins," Toad Lily sighed, "but you and Baby Falling Leaves will
have to work it out on your own."
"If Superspritz were here, he'd want you two to share," Baby Leaper judiciously
advised. "Remember what he said this
morning?"
Baby Falling Leaves looked at Baby Noddins, then at her package of Coral Blaze. She
thought about Superspritz's words and
looked at the Superspritz figures on the rack. Suddenly, she held her package out to Baby
Noddins. "Here, Noddins, you take Coral Blaze. I'll get
Aerial Combat Superspritz. He is so-o-o handsome when he's flying, you know!"
Baby Noddins accepted the packaged figure, then looked longingly at the Superspritz
that Baby Falling Leaves held. Her thoughts
were torn: Should she accept this change of heart from Baby Falling Leaves or should she, too,
stick with Superspritz? He was her hero, too, after
all.
Toad Lily intervened. "Just a suggestion, Baby Noddins. But why don't you buy Coral
Blaze today while she's available; and the
next time you get an allowance, you can come back for one of the Superspritz figures. It looks
like they'll be hanging around awhile."
A radiant smile spread across Baby Noddins' face as she saw the sense behind Toad
Lily's words; she hugged Coral Blaze to her
heart, and grinned at her two playmates. "Let's get home and start playing," she advised.
"Great idea," the other two agreed. And Toad Lily breathed a sigh of relief.