Dusty Gulch Gazette – Chapter 2
Shadows in the Frangipani
By Roderick Whiskers McNibble, Chief Nibbler & Correspondent
Filed under: Moonless nights, feathered insurgencies, and domestic diplomacy.
Folks, if you thought our last episode’s serpent strike was the low point, buckle up and bolt the chook shed.
The water tower - now officially rechristened The Tower of Honks by everyone with a grievance and a megaphone - loomed over Dusty Gulch like a monument to bad decisions and worse planning approvals. Banners flapped in the night breeze, mocking us with slogans nobody could quite remember voting for.
Up top, Mayor Dusty McFookit was trussed like a Christmas ham at a budget barbecue, muttering insults and outrage through a gag fashioned from recycled virtue-signalling pamphlets. The Honklanders had him strapped to a feather altar, demanding a gazillion lamingtons or his head. Possibly both. They weren’t detail people.
Across the scrub their chant echoed like a goose choir from hell:
“HONK! HONK! Pay up or flake out!”
But Dusty Gulch doesn’t do surrender.
Not when the missus is involved.
Mrs McFookit stepped out of the kitchen like destiny had finally found the right postcode. Apron dusted with flour. Rolling pin in one hand. Expression capable of curdling milk at fifty paces and souring treaties at a hundred.
The Curious Case of Mrs McFookit
Now, sharp-eyed readers may have noticed a minor detail. Last time Mrs McFookit appeared in the Gazette, she looked… different.
Some said Asian. Some said local. Some said she looked like she could negotiate peace treaties with a frying pan.
The truth, dear readers, is far more unsettling. Like Prentis Penjani, Maureen McFookit is trained in the ancient and highly bureaucratic art of shapeshifting.
Not the flashy Hollywood sort. No glowing portals. No mystical chanting.
Just subtle, strategic adjustments in appearance, accent, and emotional temperature depending on the threat level, the political climate, and whether the kettle has boiled.
Experts believe the technique originated in ancient bureaucratic monasteries somewhere between Canberra, Singapore, and a secret Department of Something Nobody Understands.
Maureen herself refuses to comment, except to say: “People see what they deserve to see.”
Which, frankly, did not make anyone feel safer.
Word around the Dusty Dingo Pub (and the pub knows everything) was that Mayor McFookit's wife Maureen wasn’t always just the mayor’s better half. Back when Sir Joh was running the show and chooks were getting uppity, she’d rolled with Cat Force Five - the ghost squad that made foreign fowl reconsider their life choices. They say she once stared down a rogue emu so hard it laid an egg out of sheer existential dread.
That night, she reached into the old biscuit tin and pulled out something far more dangerous than shortbread or gingernuts. She had also prepared a map for her troops.
She did not think she would ever need to use it again. Yet here she was. About to save her beloved McFookit ... the man who she loved and who fellow Gulchas loved.
It was a simple whistle. Or was it?
She blew. One sharp tweet. And the shadows answered.
Cat Force Five materialised like heat haze with attitude - five spectral felines, fur shimmering, eyes burning green. No porch-yowling amateurs here. These were professionals.
Agent Whiskerfatale - codename Shadowpaws - took point, sliding through the frangipani with the grace of a ninja and the paperwork of a classified operation. Prowler, Clawhammer, Stealthstrike, and old One-Ear fanned out behind her. One-Ear had lost the ear to a Honkler beak back in ’89 and had been emotionally unavailable ever since.
Meanwhile, on the ridge, Trevor “Titanium Knees” the Wallaby was done hopping mad.
Those knees? Forged in the fires of bureaucratic nonsense. Tempered by pub yarns, council meetings, and too many “free” government initiatives that came with side effects and fine print.
He rallied the vigilantes: utes idling like growling dingoes, laser pointers duct-taped to rifle barrels (because innovation never sleeps), and a slab of stubbies for morale and strategic clarity.
Trevor climbed onto a rusted Holden like a prophet of poor decisions.
“Righto, fellow Gulchers,” he roared. “Those Honklanders think they can snake our mayor, perch on our tower, and turn Dusty Gulch into an aviary? No. Tonight, we send a message wrapped in lead and lamington crumbs. Trevor doesn’t bounce. Trevor thumps.”
The plan was simple.
Which meant it was doomed to work.
Whiskerfatale infiltrated first. She slipped past Honkler sentries who were too busy honking at their own reflections to notice reality. Up the ladder she climbed, paws silent, tail flicking with professional contempt.
Inside the tower she found the mayor mid-rant about free speech, bitumen melting and enemy drones disguised as killer sandflies.
One snip. Gag gone.
“The missus send ya?” Dusty whispered.
Whiskerfatale winked.
Translation: Shut up and follow the ghost cats.
Down below, Trevor launched the charge. Utes roared up the track, lights off, engines purring like angry possums. Laser sights danced across the tower base like fireflies on questionable substances.
The Honklanders panicked.
One tried to drop a feather bomb. Trevor launched himself like a missile. Titanium knees met Honkler torso. Feathers exploded. History was made.
Chaos erupted. Cat Force Five surged from the shadows - claws flashing, hisses roaring like steam trains with unresolved trauma. Whiskerfatale dragged the mayor through a secret maintenance hatch (every water tower has one if you know where to scratch).
The vigilantes laid down suppressing fire - mostly warning shots, insults, and deeply personal comments about Honkler ancestry.
Then it appeared.
The Grand Honk. Himself...
Massive. Crested. Regal. Furious.
Its beak curved like a scythe forged in a think tank.
“You will never take our perch!” it screeched.
Trevor wiped dust from his whiskers and grinned.
“Mate, we don’t want your perch. We want our mayor back. And a refund on lamingtons you never even earned.”
One titanium bounce later ...
CRASH.
The Grand Honk achieved unexpected flight, soaring over the scrub like a bad policy with wings. The rest scattered, honks dissolving into existential whimpers.
Dawn broke.
Mayor McFookit staggered home - dusty, bruised, but politically intact. Maureen greeted him with a cuppa and a stare.
“Next time,” she said calmly, “fix the bloody Starlink before climbing roofs.”
The tower still stood. The banners were shredded. The altar smashed. And a fresh sign hung crookedly on the fence:
HONK AT YOUR OWN RISK
Dusty Gulch Property
Trespassers Will Be Nibbled
Trevor limped back to the ridge, knees dented but proud. Whiskerfatale vanished into the frangipani grove. Ghosts don’t linger for applause.
But whispers were already spreading. The Honklanders weren’t finished.
Something bigger was moving.
Prentis Penjani’s labs? Maurice E. Duck mobilising reinforcements? Or worse - elites preparing to deploy the clowns?
TO BE CONTINUED…
Chapter 3: The Bounceback Begins
Will Trevor’s knees hold? Can Cat Force Five remain spectral? And will Dusty Gulch survive the ultimate weapon:
A flock of virtue-signalling budgies?
Stay tuned, Gulch folk. The outback’s got more fight than a cornered feral cat.
And this war?
It’s only just begun.
Stay alert Dusty Gulchers. Whiskers twitching and sleep with one ratty eye open: This is just the first battle of a war that has only just begun.
