P Is For Plot Twist

Today I'm going even further down the rabbit hole with the ongoing Muppet epic.... you might find yourself thinking that I've gone and ruined your childhood by the time I'm done. Just saying.

A sprawling old mansion, deep in the woods somewhere in the wilds of Alberta. It's late at night, and fog and mist have rolled in, casting the whole building and its surroundings into shadow. Lightning flashes overhead, and inside, there are few lights, except in the attic. There we find a man, strangely familiar, moving about. The walls are painted with occult symbols and scientific diagrams. A television is on in the background, with footage from the UN, where Beaker the Muppet is addressing the General Assembly. Arcane lab equipment is everywhere, and at the center of the working space, a platform is set on hydraulic lifts. Above, a doorway in the roof is open to the elements. On top of the platform, hooked up to wires, is a small shape beneath a sheet. The mystery man walks up, draws back the sheets, and sees the felt and stuffing of what was once a Muppet, recently stolen from its grave. He has sewn it up to the best of his abilities. It's a face he has known, in a way, from a previous life. He smiles to himself, walks to a nearby machine, and pauses before pressing a button.

Mad Scientist: If this works... and I expect it to work, then I will do the impossible... I will do what they said could not be done... I will bring the dead back to life! And I know impossible... considering that I too, am utterly impossible! Yes, I most certainly am! Mwah ha ha ha ha ha! Maybe then those buffoons who called me deranged and unethical will think twice! I wonder though... might I get sued by the descendants of Mary Shelley for co-opting her motif? No... couldn't be. It's not as if anyone's watching this through a fourth wall or anything, right? Right?

He looks around, as if wondering if someone is watching him.

Mad Scientist: Of course not.

He presses the button, and the hydraulic lifts raise the platform up through the opening, into the night sky. The scientist looks up, smiles to himself (in an evil, sinister way; he is, after all, a mad scientist), and starts pressing other buttons on other machinery, sending currents up above. He chants in an arcane, occult language, raising his hands to the sky. Lightning flashes. Thunder rolls. His chanting grows louder. There's more lightning to come. The platform is struck. The mad scientist looks at his machinery. Numbers and graphs indicate a response in the body. He smiles.

Mad Scientist: He lives! He lives! He lives!!!!!

He presses the button to lower the platform back down to floor level, and presses another button to close the overhead doorway. As the platform descends, he walks towards it, and looks at the Muppet.

Mad Scientist: Mr. Johnson? Fred? Can you hear me?

The Muppet supervillain Mr. Johnson gradually stirs, opening his eyes.

Mr. Johnson: Where... where am I?

Mad Scientist: In my lab, in northern Alberta. You're all right now.

Mr. Johnson: I was shot... that damned Mountie shot me.

Mad Scientist: Yes, that awful Inspector Ulrich. Well, we'll get even with him, I promise. You were dead, Mr. Johnson. But I raised you up from the dead.

Mr. Johnson: Wait... I was dead...? But how did you...?

Mad Scientist: A combination of arcane science and witchcraft spell casting. It's not all that  important. What is important is that you're alive, and we can unleash our revenge on all of our enemies.

Mr. Johnson sits up, staring at the mad scientist, as if to try to remember where they've met.

Mr. Johnson: I know you, don't I?

Mad Scientist: In a manner of speaking. You met my... predecessor. My progenitor. My creator. You had no idea that he was a sheer genius decades ahead of his time in genetics and cloning. He needed a cover for his work, after all. By night he worked on his secret experiments, cloning long before anyone had heard of a sheep named Dolly. By day, he was the kindly shopkeeper, whose building hid his secret lab.

Mr. Johnson: Wait... Mr. Hooper???

Mad Scientist: Yes. I'm Harold Hooper's clone Damian Hooper. Young and implanted with all of his true personality and memories. Everyone chalked him up to being a friendly shopkeeper in that infernal children's television show, never dreaming that he was a malevolent scientific genius! Before his death, he made sure his work would live on through creating me. And so I have resurrected you, my friend. You and I share some of the same enemies. My creator hated Grover and Kermit, though he didn't show it. And he truly despised that damned Big Bird... always turning up around his store, mispronouncing his name as if it was funny...

Mr. Johnson: So I'm alive... and we're going to work together?

Damian: Yes.

Mr. Johnson: And your name is Damian?

Damian: Yes, my creator thought it was really evil.

Mr. Johnson: Well, good, very good... let's see what that blue bastard thinks when I catch up to him this time! I'll have my revenge... on Grover and everyone he cares about! So, time to get back to work, right?

Damian: Oh, yes, plenty of evil schemes to unleash. Mwaha ha ha ha!

Mr. Johnson: Mwaha ha ha ha ha!

Damian: Mwaha ha ha ha ha ha!!

Mr. Johnson: Mwaha ha... hey, why is Beaker addressing the General Assembly?

Damian: He just got appointed chief negotiator in the Middle East peace talks.