It was Wednesday afternoon in the fourth week of the school year, and an afternoon of celebration, for Fern Walters had returned unharmed from her ordeal as a kidnap victim. A multitude of her friends gathered at her house to welcome her and express gratitude that she had survived. All of her classmates were present, including Van, whose upper beak was in a cast. Although he couldn't speak intelligibly due to his injury, his emotions upon seeing his friend Fern again were clearly visible.

"After a week, they simply decided to release me," Fern related to Buster. "They never told me why they were holding me. They knew nothing about Mansch."

"Or pretended to know nothing," said Buster suspiciously.

"I'm sure you did your best to find me," said Fern, rubbing the rabbit boy's shoulder flirtatiously.

"I had Alan, Beat, and Odette to help me," Buster replied. "We called ourselves the BrainBusters. But there wasn't much we could do without your help."

"I'm positive Mansch is behind it all," said Fern. "The kidnappers let me go, Binky and Molly are released from juvie, and Molly's dad is arrested, all on the same day. Coincidence? I think not."

Also present at the joyful gathering were Sue Ellen and her good friend April Murphy, who looked like a twelve-year-old copy of Sue Ellen owing to the fact that she WAS a twelve-year-old copy of Sue Ellen. April had traveled from the future in hopes of preventing the murder of her parents, but had, unfortunately, only accelerated it.

"So you're back, April," said Fern, eyeing the girl warily. "I hope we don't have to save the world from you and Augusta again."

"Don't count on it," was April's friendly response. "One of the Augustas is imprisoned on another planet, and the other has lost her powers."

Only three of the guests had reason to be unhappy—Alan, Beat, and Dudley. Alan, because he had inadvertently lost his older sister Tegan as a result of the stratagem that had brought Fern back; Beat, because she was trapped in Dudley's body; Dudley, not because he was trapped in Beat's body (a fact which delighted him), but because he felt sorry for Beat.

"I understand you tried to help Buster find me," Fern said to Alan when she found the boy drowning his sorrows in a Sarah Soda.

"Yes," the glum boy replied, "but in the end, I had nothing to do with it."

It was a lie. He had become the catalyst for Fern's rescue by allowing Tegan to telepathically scan Mansch's mind, against the express orders of his parents. He had told no one. Now Tegan was gone, and with her all hope of exposing Mansch's crimes and clearing Molly's father.

In another corner of Fern's living room, Beat (or rather, Dudley in Beat's body) was trying to cheer up Dudley (or rather, Beat in Dudley's body), who seemed unwilling to talk to anyone. Beat was wearing a festive silk dress, while Dudley was clad in the nicest shirt and pants he could find in the wardrobe that now belonged to him.

"Why the long face, Dudley?" Fern asked the rat boy. "You should be happy."

"Yes, I know I should," said Dudley in a miserable British accent. "But a terrible thing has happened."

"You're not speaking in your usual accent," Fern observed. "You sound like Beat now."

"I was Beat," the boy mourned. "But not anymore, unfortunately."

"We exchanged bodies," explained Beat in a colonial accent. "It wasn't a very equitable trade."

Fern stared at the two in amazement. "Then you're really Dudley...and you're really Beat..."

The mixed-up kids nodded.

"So now it's your turn to be stuck as a boy," she remarked to Dudley. "If this keeps going around, I'll get a turn sooner or later."

"We're looking for a way to change back," said Beat. "But in the meantime, I'm enjoying myself immensely."

"Don't enjoy yourself too much," Dudley cautioned her. "Remember, you're a ten-year-old girl with..."

"Hey, Fern," said Prunella, who had suddenly appeared with a hand full of jelly beans. "I'm glad you're all right."

"So am I," said Fern glibly.

"Pardon me, Prunella," Dudley interjected, "but I wonder if I could ask a favor of you."

"Why are you speaking with a British accent?" Prunella asked the boy.

"I'll explain later."

----

Later came, while Dudley and Beat were following Prunella to her house.

"But when the transfer was complete, I found I no longer had Putnam's memories," Dudley recounted. "Without them, I can't operate the device to switch us back. But it occurred to me earlier today that his memories might have been accidentally copied to some other part of my brain, like the subconscious."

"I see what you're getting at," said Prunella as she led the two kids through her front door. "You want to be hypnotized."

"That's right," said Dudley. "If Putnam and Mavis are wandering around somewhere in the dark regions of my mind, hypnotism should bring them out."

Once inside, Prunella called to her sister Rubella, who was watching the video release of 'Mateless in Manhattan' for the fourteenth time. "Hey, Rubella. Can you do a hypnotism?"

"Sure, Prunie," replied her teenage sister, hitting the pause button on the remote.

"How are things going with you, Rubella?" Dudley asked the girl as the foursome ascended the wooden stairway to the attic.

Rubella shrugged. "Okay, I guess. I'm practicing my cooking so I can open a restaurant after I graduate from high school."

"You're not going to become a professional psychic like your mother?"

"I was never one to follow traditions," the curly-haired rat girl remarked.

When they were all seated around the crystal ball table, Beat spoke up. "I think you should hypnotize both of us. It's possible this Putnam fellow never left Beat's brain to begin with."

"Good idea," said Rubella. "Prunie, you hypnotize her, and I'll do Dudley."

"I'm Beat," Dudley reminded her.

"I don't want to," Prunella groused. "I can never get the mystical stuff right. Remember when I almost destroyed the world?"

"Please, Prunie," Rubella pleaded.

After some initial hesitation, Prunella agreed to perform the task. Shortly Rubella was seated across from Dudley, and Prunella from Beat, as the sisters dangled crystal pendants before the faces of their subjects.

"Look into the pendant," they intoned. "You see nothing but the pendant. You hear nothing but my voice." The reflected light from the candles danced about the pendants, dazzling Beat and Dudley into subconsciousness. "You are now in a state of deep hypnosis. Tell me your name."

"I'm Dudley Green," droned the rabbit-aardvark girl.

"I'm Beat Simon," mumbled the rat boy.

"Do you have any other names?"

"No," said Beat.

"I...I..." Dudley stammered. He began to glance around the dimly lit attic, confused. "Where am I?"

"You're in my house," Rubella told him. "You're safe. Now tell me your name."

"Uh, I'm not sure," said the dazed rat boy. "I want to say Andrew Putnam, but I also want to say Mavis Cutler. But I'm a boy, so I can't be Mavis. How did my nose get broken?"

"Prunie, you take it from here," said Rubella, rising from her chair. Prunella quickly snapped Beat out of her trance and took her sister's place.

"Let me talk to Mr. Putnam," she said to Dudley.

"I'm right here," said Dudley with sudden calmness.

"It's working," Beat marveled. "Now Beat will have her own body again."

"How old are you, Mr. Putnam?" Prunella inquired.

"I'm eighty-six," was Dudley's response. "Or I was, before I copied myself into this body. I must be nine or ten now. Is my old body dead?"

Beat nodded in Prunella's direction.

"Listen carefully," Prunella continued. "You were in Beat Simon's body, but you used your device to switch yourself into Dudley Green's body. Do you remember?"

"Yes," Dudley answered.

"But something went wrong, and you can't remember how to reverse it."

Dudley thought for a moment. "Interesting," he said analytically. "I seem to have become a subconscious presence in the boy's brain. I think I can fix that."

"Rubella, get a pen and paper," Prunella ordered her sister. Then she asked Dudley, "How do you fix it? How do you switch Beat and Dudley into their regular bodies?"

Beat hastily pulled the Opticron device from her knapsack as Dudley began to speak. "Before I tell you," he said in a mildly sinister tone of voice, "I have something to ask of you."

"What's that?"

"Alan's sister," said Dudley with a smirk. "What are her powers?"

----

Only a few minutes after he returned home from the party at Fern's, Alan was summoned to the phone by his mother. "Hello?"

"Alan, this is Dudley," came a girl's voice.

"Hi, Dudley," said the slightly befuddled Alan. "Why do you sound like a girl?"

"Never mind that," said the voice on the line. "I have an important question for you. Someone here is asking about your sister Tegan. He wants to know...what kind of powers she has. I don't know what that means."

As Alan pondered the request, he recalled the cryptic words that Beat herself had spoken to him—"Keep her secret. Keep her safe. Don't let anyone near her...especially me."

"Goodbye, Beat," he said accusingly, and hung up....

...only to be called again a few seconds later.

"Alan, this is Prunella. Don't hang up on me, okay? I need to know about Tegan's powers."

Without a word, Alan hung up the phone again...

...and it rang again.

"Alan, my name is Andrew Putnam."

It was obviously some kind of joke—the voice was that of Dudley Green. Yet the accent was one hundred percent modern-day American.

"What do you want?" Alan demanded. "Where are you?"

----

He found out soon enough, as he stood in Prunella's attic in front of the still-mesmerized rat boy.

"Your sister Tegan and your friend C.V. are Brainchildren," Dudley explained. "There are about two thousand Brainchildren in the world, each with a unique mental gift. C.V., for example, has the unenviable talent of triggering the fears of others."

"I haven't a clue what you're talking about," said Alan firmly. "Tegan doesn't have mental powers. She's just a girl."

"You take me for a fool," Dudley snapped. "She wears a neuroblocker—a device that inhibits the exercise of her powers. I know it because I invented it."

"That's ridiculous."

"I think you should listen to him," Beat urged.

"Okay," said Alan skeptically, "let's suppose you're telling the truth. What do you want with Tegan and her so-called powers?"

"They call you The Brain," Dudley replied. "You figure it out."

The mystified Alan pondered the things Dudley had told him...

"Wait," he suddenly spoke. "You said you started out as an old man, then you copied your mind into Beat, then you switched from Beat to Dudley."

The entranced rat boy nodded.

"I get it," said Alan with satisfaction. "You want to copy yourself into Tegan, so you can take advantage of her powers."

"With her consent, of course," said Dudley. "But that depends on the nature of her powers, and whether they would be useful to me."

"I'll tell you the nature of her powers," said Alan sharply. "She doesn't have any. End of discussion."

"Very well." The rat boy spoke in a menacing tone. "If you refuse to tell me what I want to know, then I will reciprocate in kind."

As Alan sighed incredulously, Beat jumped to her feet and stared at him with pleading eyes. "Please, Alan. You must tell him, or Beat will remain a boy forever."

"What are you complaining about?" was Alan's facetious reply. "You get to be a girl again."

As he trudged out of Prunella's house, he wondered if his life could become any worse. "I can only think of one way," he said silently. "The body-switching stories are true, and I'm next in line. I'll end up as Muffy...or even worse, Sue Ellen." He chuckled grimly at the thought.

"Hi, Mom," he greeted his mother upon entering. "Any news about Tegan?"

"No," Mrs. Powers answered from the kitchen. "But Molly called again. I think it's important."

With an exasperated sigh, Alan dropped himself in front of his desk and tried vainly to concentrate on his homework.

Before he knew it, another unwelcome distraction appeared on the scene—Dudley Green, de-hypnotized and almost on the verge of tears. "I'm begging you, Alan," said the rat boy earnestly as he stepped into the room. "Unless you tell Putnam what he wants to know, I'll be trapped as a boy for the rest of my life."

"I'm trapped as a boy for the rest of my life," was Alan's callous response. "You don't see me whining about it."

"Look at me!" Dudley gestured frantically with his hands. "Look at this ugly, broken-nosed, flat-chested male body! Is this how you want Beat Simon to spend the rest of her days?"

As much as he feared that the boy might be telling the truth, Alan dared not add to the damage he had already done. "I'm sorry," he said sympathetically. "Tegan has no special powers. If Putnam won't accept that answer, then you'll have to get your body back some other way."

After a long, painful "how could you do this to your friend" gaze, Dudley turned and walked out of Alan's room. The sound of the front door slamming followed sooner after.

His mind clogged with worries, Alan found his homework impossible to accomplish. He wandered about the house for a few minutes, looking for something to distract him from thoughts of Tegan, and finally settled upon watching TV. It was a Dark Bunny repeat, in which the evil Webmaster created a website which would switch the bodies of any two people who logged in at the same time. His first victims—Dark Bunny and the recently reformed Rat Woman.

"She's even better looking from this side," remarked Dark Bunny in Rat Woman's body.

Alan sighed impatiently. "These body-switching plots are getting stale," he commented.

As he stared idly at the screen, his mother entered the room and surveyed him with satisfaction. "I'd ask if you finished your homework," she said to him, "but I know I don't need to."

Alan only grunted.

"I know you're really worried about Tegan," Mrs. Powers continued. "Now that Fern's back, maybe you can get together with her, and your other friends, and do your 'pint-sized sleuth' thing again."

"I haven't told Fern," Alan replied. "I haven't told anyone."

"Why not?"

It was as good a time as any to come forward, Alan decided.

He picked up the remote and switched off the television.

"Mom," he said solemnly, "I have something to tell you, and you're not gonna like it."

----

To be continued in Arthur Goes Fifth III