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"What the-?!" Electra exclaimed, jerking up from her precarious position on top of an oddly shaped machine. Her foot slipped off a bent metal rod and she fell to the 'floor' attached to the machine.
"I'm sorry, El!" Zippy gasped, jumping onto a large control panel nearby. "Are you oka-"
"Don't touch that button!" Electra shrieked, just as Zippy stepped on a large red button.
"Oops," Zippy said in a small voice as the small sphere suspended from the top of the machine suddenly glowed and enveloped Electra in a bright beam of light.
When the light faded, Zippy stared in surprise at the person standing where Electra had been. They looked kind of like Electra.
"Pest, if I have been drastically altered in any way, so help me..." the person growled. They even sounded kind of like Electra, though their voice was a little deeper.
The little sense of logic Zippy possessed told her that this person was probably Electra. "Are you Electra?" she asked.
"Who else would I be?!" the person snapped in annoyance.
Zippy racked the assorted filaments and wires that made up her brain for an answer. "Um...Electro?" she tried.
The newly named Electro stared at her for a moment before looking at his reflection in one of the smoother sheets of metal lying around. His jaw dropped in horror and a current of electricity arced between the edges of his glasses.
"I--" Zippy started, then finished in a rush as Electro turned to glare angrily at her. "Think I better leave! Bye!" Then she hurried out the door as fast as her tiny little legs could carry her.
Quackerjack looked up curiously, from the blueprints he had been drawing, as the lights suddenly dimmed, then went back to normal. He only had time to briefly wonder who was messing with the electricity this time before Zippy ran in, wailing, and latched onto his ankle.
"Daaaaaddy!" the tiny lightbulb toy wailed. "Ididn'tmeantobutIdidandnowEllie'smadatmebutI'mnotsurewhosheisanymoreand I'm sooorry!"
Quackerjack lifted his leg a little so he could see her easier, and wondered why he had thought it would be a good idea to make her capable of speech. "Huh?" he asked.
"WHERE IS SHE?!!!" someone shouted at the top of their lungs.
"You're in trouble again, aren't you?" Quackerjack asked Zippy flatly.
"It's Ellie," Zippy sobbed. "She got zapped by her machine and now she's Electro!"
Quackerjack was about to ask why getting zapped by a machine would change Electra's name, when he was interrupted by what looked like a flash of lightning scorching the floor in front of his feet.
Zippy gave a tiny shriek of fear and jumped on top of his head, trying to hide herself under the ends of his jester's cap.
The cause of the lightning-like flash stalked up to Quackerjack and Zippy, hands crackling with electricity.
"Electra," Quackerjack commented, oblivious. "You look different."
"Of course I look different!" 'Electro' snarled. "That-that-that-" he pointed a shaking finger at Zippy, who slipped off Quackerjack's head and suddenly found herself hanging from one of the ends of his jester's cap. "Pest turned my machine on while I was working on it!"
"And?" Quackerjack prompted.
"'And'?" Electro repeated, half hysterical. "And?! Look at me!"
"Well, you do kind of look like..." Quackerjack said hesitantly.
"I'm a guy, you half-wit!" Electro shouted, throwing his arms up in the air. "She turned me into a guy!"
"Well you don't have to be insulting," Quackerjack sulked defensively. "What do you want me to do about it?"
"Kill her! Dismantle her! Better yet, let me do it," Electro answered, suddenly grinning wickedly.
"I don't wanna die!" Zippy sobbed, clinging to the back of Quackerjack's head.
Quackerjack crossed his eyes as he was assaulted from in front by Electro insisting that dismantling Zippy was really for the best, and from behind by Zippy who just continued to cling to his head and wail that she didn't want to die.
"Uh, guys?" a confused voice came from the doorway. "What's going on?"
"Help," Quackerjack pleaded in a small voice.
"Megs, QJ won't let me dismantle Zippy," Electro whined, turning to see Megavolt leaning against the doorframe.
"I don't wanna die!" Zippy wailed loudly.
"Electra," Megavolt commented, looking at him curiously. "You look different."
Electro momentarily looked like he might strangle Megavolt, then took a deep breath and calmed a little. "Zippy turned my machine on while I was working on it," he explained slowly. "For some reason, it changed my gender."
"Why don't you just change it back?" Megavolt asked, sounding puzzled.
Electro opened his mouth to answer, then stared at Megavolt in shock as he realized how much sense his suggestion made. "You know, that's really not a bad idea," he replied thoughtfully.
"I don't get it!" Electro exclaimed, stepping off the machine's floor. "I'm still not back to normal!"
"Define 'normal'," Quackerjack couldn't resist commenting.
"I am just this close to zapping someone," Electro growled menacingly, holding his thumb and index finger up about an inch apart.
"Well excuuuse me for trying to lighten the situation," Quackerjack pouted.
While the three supervillains 'discussed' why the machine hadn't worked, Zippy decided that the best place to see what was going on was on top of the control panel. As she began climbing up the side of the control panel, Megavolt stepped onto the floor of the machine to get a better look at the sphere suspended above it.
Zippy was about to tiptoe around the large red button she had suddenly found herself in front of, when she tripped on one of the smaller buttons nearby and fell right on the red button.
Megavolt had a millisecond to wonder why the sphere was suddenly glowing, before a beam of light shot from it and surrounded him.
Electro and Quackerjack turned around in time to see the light fade away, revealing a very unhappy Megavolt.
"I'm afraid to ask," Megavolt groaned, voice a pitch higher than usual, when she saw the expressions on her friends' faces.
"Megs," Electro commented, unable to keep from smirking. "You look different."
"Nooo," Megavolt wailed.
There was a tiny 'ping' as Zippy quickly jumped off the control panel and looked for a means of escape. Electro suddenly swooped down and grabbed her, dangling her in front of him by one of her legs.
"You know," Electro said thoughtfully, a wide grin on his face. "I wonder what would happen to Zippy if we tested the machine on her."
Megavolt instantly cheered up and picked up a discarded wire laying on the floor. "Only one way to find out," she replied.
"I'm sure that, if you really think about it, you don't really want to test it on me," Zippy said nervously.
"Why wait?" Electro smirked.
"Aw, c'mon!" Zippy pleaded from the floor of the machine, struggling to loosen the wire they had tied her up with. "I didn't mean to do it!
"On the count of three," Electro said, hand poised above the glowing red button. "One..."
"Two..." Megavolt continued, hand on top of Electro's.
"Three!" they shouted in unison as they pressed the button.
Zippy glanced up as the sphere glowed and the beam of light surrounded her. "Oh pooh," she commented.
Electro and Megavolt watched eagerly as the light faded, then their faces fell.
"Too bad," Quackerjack shrugged.
"Nothing happened," Electro said unhappily.
"Can I go now?" Zippy asked hopefully.
Quackerjack stepped forward and picked her up, fiddling with the knot in the wire. "I hope you've learned your lesson, young lady," he told her sternly.
"If I'm gonna drasticerly alter Ellie and Megs," Zippy said, stumbling over the larger words. "I should find a really good hiding place till they're fixed."
Quackerjack snickered as he walked out of the room with her. "Close enough," he told her.
As Electro and Megavolt tried to figure out how to reverse the effects of the gender-switching machine, Quackerjack and Zippy alternated between watching TV and listening to the two electrical geniuses.
"Well we got the gender right this time," they heard Electra say sarcastically. "Now could we try for the right species?!"
"What are you talking about?" the still female Megavolt asked.
"Gee, Megs. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a kangaroo."
"Oh yeah, that."
"Think they'll get it right, Daddy?" Zippy asked Quackerjack from her seat on top of his jester's cap.
"Eventually," Quackerjack told her. "But why do you keep calling me 'Daddy'?"
"You created me, right?" Zippy asked, as if it were obvious.
"Well I created Mr. Banana Brain too, but that doesn't make me his dad," Quackerjack pointed out.
"I'm blue!" Megavolt suddenly shouted, still female.
"Whoa, how did that happen?" Electra commented.
Zippy giggled for a moment, then jumped off Quackerjack's head and landed on his stomache. "Isn't Bana Brain just the obnoxious teenage son you never had?" she asked.
"Am not!" Mr. Banana Brain protested suddenly.
"Don't you two start," Quackerjack scolded them.
"Sorry," the two toys said in unison.
"That's better," Quackerjack said cheerfully. "Ooh! The show's back on!"
The three sat mesmerized by the antics of the colorful cartoons on the television as a muffled explosion came from Electra's room and part-time lab.
"I told you not to touch the nitroglycerin," Electra's voice drifted out dazedly.
Disclaimer: I would like to blame--er, thank The Lauderdale for not only telling me this was worth writing, but also laughing at it and the accompanying pictures. If you hate, detest, or loath this fanfic, please send me your address and I will write a full apology on a rabid gerbil and send it to you ASAP.