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Lightning flashed in the distance, and rain lashed at the windows. The wind howled, and so did Discount Scooby-Doo. “Awooo! Awoooo!!!” he cried into the hideous night.

Lightning always bothered Discount Scooby. It reminded him of his birth. Discount Scooby was born in a storm not unlike this one, at a plastic factory near an experimental nuclear reactor. When lightning struck the reactor, it exploded. In the rubble of the once mighty factory, something stirred. A plastic figurine of Scooby-Doo had come to life, animated by the power of nucleons.

Something was wrong, though. This Scooby was mutated, hideous … “not of this sphere”, as the secret, post-accident investigation board would later report. The repressive military government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Lesser Nuclesia knew that Discount Scooby must be kept from the world. Yet they knew his very being held the promise of untold riches. And so they housed him in exile on an isolated atoll in the South Pacific.

Lightning flashed again, silhouetting a distant, Panamax-class freighter ship on the horizon. Then, seconds later, another bolt from the heavens, this one striking directly midship on the S.S. Babylon’s Desire, igniting a terrifying conflagration.

Discount Scooby-Doo ceased his howling as he watched the ship burn. The Babylon’s Desire had suffered a hull breach, and the vessel soon began to list as she took on water. Emergency flares arced across the sky as Scooby, with his eagle-like, radiation-enhanced vision, watched the crew abandon the far-off ship.

Help arrived near daybreak. Orange-and-white coastal defense choppers hovered above the burning hulk. Discount Scooby was transfixed.

And then, one by one, the precariously stacked shipping containers broke loose and fell into the sea. But the real break belonged to Discount Scooby. One of the containers was drifting right toward him, and it was labeled “jet skis”.

TO BE CONTINUED…