Discover: The Secret Tunnels (Bedtime Story)

Captain EJ has a special superpower...his incredible voice! In this episode: In this twisting and turning mission, Captain EJ receives an unexpected emergency call from his trusty pup, Cadette. What starts as a simple dig in the backyard turns into an extraordinary discovery of medieval ruins! With Cadette's keen nose and the aid of Mr. Honeybee's ingenious inventions, the team uncovers an ancient underground city. But the adventure takes a dark turn when they stumble upon a hidden connection to the nefarious Knuckler brothers. How will you and Captain EJ unravel the mystery and protect the Honeybee Neighborhood from looming danger? Dive into this captivating episode filled with history, high-tech gadgets, and heroic deeds to find out!

Voices by: Captain EJ and Amanda Fobbos

Transcript

EJ 9-1-1,

Captain speaking.

Cadet,

Is that you?

Do you have an emergency?

A real emergency?

Your favorite ball bouncing over the fence is not an emergency.

I told you before.

Wait,

You're supposed to be in the backyard napping.

Oh,

You found that in our backyard?

That does sound like an emergency.

I stand corrected.

What do you mean am I sitting?

Okay,

I misspoke.

I am sitting.

So I sit corrected.

No humans don't get treats for sitting.

I guess I'll meet you in the backyard.

Give me a sec.

We're on it.

Transferring to dispatch.

Yes,

You do too have to go through dispatch.

We have a protocol here,

Cadet.

Just sit.

Sit.

We'll be back there to see what kind of history you dug up.

And no more digging.

We talked about this.

Transferring now.

Hero,

This mission is right around the corner.

Captain EJ's pup,

Cadet,

Seems to have dug up some sort of history.

A sharp sniffer has happened upon medieval ruins that she dug up while ruining Captain EJ's backyard with her digging.

Oh my goodness.

But in the process,

She seems to have unearthed some kind of mysterious object that requires our investigation.

Because it gave her paws.

Gave her paws.

Paws.

And she says there's much more to discover underground.

I stand behind that nose of hers.

Well,

I'm sitting down.

But I believe her excitement at the prospect of finding more underground.

Because dogs can smell in 3D.

When they sniff something,

They smell its shape and size and all of the stories it contains.

I'm going to grab my ground penetrating radar,

And maybe a shovel,

And head on over.

Maybe I'll bring the Millennium Squawkin' too.

Just in case we need a bird's eye view.

Never know when you'll need a lift.

We'll meet you over there in a jiff.

EJ.

Captain EJ and Hero to the rescue.

Let's begin.

You are here.

Walking the last few steps up to my backyard gate to join me and Mr.

Honeybee in my backyard.

The birds are singing.

The sun is shining.

This should be a pretty straightforward mission.

And then once done,

You have with you everything you'll need for an afternoon in the pool.

It's the perfect day to make a splash testing a new prototype.

Mr.

Honeybee installed a water slide that goes all the way from his backyard to Captain EJ's and you're excited to try it.

The pool is deep enough for cannonballs from the rooftop where we lay out and look at the stars.

So there is a lot to do after this mission that Cadet's nose stumbled upon.

Take a slow deep breath in through your nose.

Imagine what it'd be like to smell like we perceive in three dimensions as we see with our eyes.

Take in the invisible layers of your innermost being and outermost surroundings.

And slowly breathe all the way out through your mouth.

And reach up to unlatch the gate to my backyard.

Before you can step in through the gate,

Cadet bursts out excited to see you again.

So excited that she completely abandons the mission for some of your famous belly rubs and snout kisses.

Crouch down to her level to be the loving recipient of slobbery dog kisses.

You can hardly look up to see me join you on the side of the house.

And from here,

You cannot see the mounds of dirt that used to be my backyard.

Cadet insisted it was an emergency,

But all I see from down here is dirt.

Dirt that should be grass,

But isn't anymore.

Anything to say about that,

Cadet?

Let's go up on the roof for a bird's eye view of the damage and findings.

Did someone say bird's eye view?

It's definitely not a bird.

Not quite a plane.

It's Mr.

Honeybee,

Who appears out of the clear blue sky aboard some kind of mechanical bird-shaped contraption.

Before I can lower the ladder up to our spot on the roof,

He swoops down and with two surprisingly feather-soft wings and scoops us up into our very own bird's eye view.

Welcome to the Millennium Squawking Team.

I was going to go with Falcon for the name,

But it's more of a raven-looking bird machine.

I'm surprised we're not aboard the Edgar Allen Crow instead.

This looks a lot like the raven from his poem.

What?

Did you just come up with that?

That's good.

I need to reconsider everything.

Couldn't we have just looked down from the roof,

Mr.

Honeybee?

We could have,

But I got into so much research on how dogs' noses work that I went down a,

Well,

Rabbit hole and got into the incredible mechanics of birds and insects and even rabbits.

So I figured this would be more appropriate.

Look,

The wings flap with the same aerodynamics as an actual crow.

Did you know that crows don't just use tools,

But they also create their own tools?

Watch this.

From the ground,

It appears as if the biggest crow ever seen just reached into its feathers with its right wing and pulled out the biggest pair of night vision goggles we've ever seen.

This is Mr.

Honeybee's version of ground-penetrating radar,

And it's almost as shocking as what we see in X-ray through Edgar Allen Crow's goggles.

Cadet is down below running in circles trying to get our attention over a particularly aromatic section of my previously pristine backyard.

She's digging furiously because she cannot hear my command not to through all the machinery.

But underneath the ground,

Invisible to our eyes but flashing in neon lights to Cadet's nose,

We see the outline of what looks like an underground city.

There are winding tunnels that seem to sparkle as if glitter bombs are being released continuously.

These tunnels,

Which go deeper than our technologically enhanced vision can detect,

Span my entire backyard,

Even under the pool,

And extend to the edges of our block in the Honeybee neighborhood.

We cannot see where they end,

But looking off into the distance,

We see the familiar purple-shaded mountains that form the Dormier Valley.

Cadet alerts us to something else down in the ground,

So Mr.

Honeybee lands us on the pool cover that pulls out into a helipad.

Apparently,

Without my knowledge,

He has also installed a perch apparatus on top of the stone waterslide for Edgar Allen Crow to land and sit comfortably.

About 15 feet down into the ground,

Cadet hears us approach and comes out of her excavation trench with a metal tool in her mouth.

She gallops over to us and sits in front of you,

Expectantly waiting for a headpat to let her know she's done a good job.

As we inspect the tool,

You give her three good headpats,

And she wags her tail before running back,

Furiously digging in that same spot.

This blackened tool is thinner at the bottom,

Looks to be some sort of wedge or chisel.

As we each look this over,

Cadet then proceeds to bring an enormous wooden device wrapped in leather with a small pipe sticking out at the end.

The leather wrapping makes this look like some type of bag.

Mr.

Honeybee takes the contraption from Cadet and immediately opens and closes it,

Intuiting its function from sight alone.

Captain EJ,

Not having the gift of tool intuition,

Stands opposite Mr.

Honeybee.

At the end of the contraption where a small copper pipe protrudes,

Cadet quickly sniffs out the situation and sits behind Mr.

Honeybee,

Shepherding you along with her.

Captain EJ,

I don't know if you want to stand on that side.

Huh?

I want to see how this thing works.

What is it?

If this is what I think it is,

You don't want to be standing over there.

This thing opens and closes,

But it doesn't look like it's been opened in hundreds and hundreds of years.

Mr.

H just opened and closed the dang thing.

We could have already been done by now.

I'll watch this side.

Okay,

If you say so,

Captain.

Mr.

Honeybee expands the bag-like device open wide and then closes it rapidly.

When he does,

A big puff of musty,

Dusty air funnels out of the pipe and blows me backwards with a surprising force.

I am covered in soot and dust and all manner of medieval sediment.

Mr.

Honeybee and you try to stifle your laughter as I wipe the dust from my face and give you both a look that only the best of friends can understand.

A stern look in search of compassion that says,

Don't you dare say a word.

I dart Mr.

Honeybee an extra look as if to say,

Don't say I told you so,

Mr.

H.

Just don't.

Having received the messages loud and clear,

We quickly get back into investigation mode in a tense silence,

Which teeters on the verge of hilarious laughter every time you and Mr.

Honeybee catch a glimpse of me struggling through the soot.

An invisible light bulb that eternally lives above Mr.

Honeybee's head flickers and a moment of recognition flashes.

We know that look and it gets both of our attention.

Mr.

Honeybee has an idea what this is.

He runs over to where Cadet was digging and proceeds to climb down.

We watch as he lightly touches the layers of earth with his fingertips,

Following reflective streaks in the sediment.

Wherever he traces,

There seems to be a wooden structure below that area.

He continues to follow it down further and further,

Digging deeper where needed until he is completely out of sight.

Then,

In an instant,

He pops his head back up with excitement.

Team,

This is a mine,

And it seems to be a pretty old one.

Maybe from the Middle Ages,

From the look of these iron tools with wood handles.

That thing that we found that.

.

.

Don't say it,

Mr.

H.

Don't say it.

The thing that coughed in Captain EJ's face is a bellow.

It was used to dry out the mine so miners could literally set the area on fire,

Heat up the rock,

Then rapidly cool it so the rock cracks,

And they could dig deeper.

That's what this tool is,

A wedge.

They'd hit this flat end with a hammer,

An iron hammer,

And this pointy end would open up the cracked rock.

There's an exact mining shaft that leads to who knows where down there,

And it is remarkably preserved.

I don't see any signs of settling or an unstable foundation.

Want to follow where it leads?

Here,

Hand this to Edgar Allan Crowe,

Hero.

He'll take it to the garage,

And Roger Robot can use my accelerator mass spectrometry system to measure the beryllium.

Let's see how old this thing is.

While we wait for the advanced carbon dating method to process these tools,

We take more cutting-edge contemporary technology into our hands and put on the night vision goggles with advanced risk analysis.

Now,

When we descend into the medieval mine,

We can look at the wooden scaffolding,

And our goggles will ensure the structure is sturdy for us.

I bet the miners who dug this mine would have loved to have had these things.

It takes a moment for our eyes to adjust to the darkness,

And without notice,

The goggles transform into a face mask with fresh oxygen cycling.

Mr.

Honeybee,

These goggles are covering our whole face.

That's supposed to happen,

Right?

Of course.

The sensors must have detected low oxygen or polluted air.

These will keep the fresh air circulating while we're down here.

Even Cadet has a pair of night vision goggles that cover her snout in an impromptu face mask.

Through her mask,

She can still sniff a way around,

And between her nose,

Mr.

Honeybee's historical prowess and our bravery,

In the face of entire new underground situations,

We continue deeper and deeper into the mine,

Carefully inspecting the wooden frame we use to climb down and follow across rickety bridges.

Looking through your green-tinted night vision goggles,

Take your slowest,

Deepest breath in through your nose.

Focus through your goggles as a shimmering cloud of neon green wafts into view like a storm of glitter moving in.

Reach out your hand to see your hand shimmer and sparkle like a kaleidoscope,

Then slowly breathe all the way out through your mouth and watch as the sparkling specks flutter away from your powerful exhale.

From behind us,

Mr.

Honeybee shouts out that he got word from Roger Robot.

This mine is at least 500 years old.

We continue walking back through time,

Not sure of where this adventure into medieval times will lead,

But determined to reach the end wherever it leads.

We walk for what seems like an eternity,

Bombarded by neon green glitter through our night vision goggles,

Which we come to realize are floating silver particles because this is a silver mine.

A shiver runs down our spine,

Remembering all that we learned from defeating the Knuckler brothers the first time,

That their parents,

Dr.

Mrs.

And Dr.

Mr.

Knuckler,

Do high-level scientific research on silver with the aim of mining microscopic particles from the air.

Could the Knucklers' elder or younger have something to do with these mines?

It doesn't look like anyone's been down here recently,

But it is very well maintained.

The risk analysis in our goggles displays a little checkmark next to our view of each structural component.

Finally,

And rather abruptly,

We cross the last bridge,

Which looks like it passes over a pitch-black abyss and reach a solid rock wall.

Confused,

Cadet sits down to let us know that this is where her scent ends.

This seems to be where the medieval miners sort of packed up shop and left so long ago.

What happened to make them stop?

We are underground,

But what's above us right now?

Petting Cadet's fluffy ears,

You scan your immediate surroundings through the night-vision goggles to spy any sort of exit point or something above us that will lead us back to the surface.

The earth above us is soft,

It's not rock-solid.

You reach up to touch the cool earth with your fingertips,

Following silver ore that's still present and streaks in the ceiling.

That's when you stumble upon a tiny flash of light That's when you stumble upon a tiny flash of light beaming through a sliver in the ceiling.

You lightly tap-tap-tap it with your hand until.

.

.

You jump back just in time for the loose dirt ceiling to fall into the abyss below the rickety wood bridge and reveal a wooden ladder with a faint light at the end of a long tunnel.

Cadet leaps up onto my back,

A trick I'm grateful that I taught her,

And we all ascend the wooden ladder rung by rung.

Right hand,

Right foot.

Left hand,

Left foot.

The light at the end of the tunnel gets brighter and brighter.

The air becomes more and more fresh.

The night-vision goggles and attending mask retract into sunglasses when,

Together,

You and I punch open the cover of the ladder and peek our heads out into the afternoon.

What we see takes us by surprise.

A surprise that we are stuck still in the shock of so much so that Mr.

Honeybee cannot see what it is.

What is it?

What do you see?

I can't see anything but your shocked faces.

Hero,

Is that what I think it is?

At ground level in the dense forest,

We can peer out through the shade of the trees to see not only the shady valley of Dormir,

But the Knuckler compound.

Mr.

Honeybee squeezes up in between us,

Determined to get a look at what we're seeing since neither of us has said a word.

He is just as shocked.

We all three sit in stunned silence,

Running through endless scenarios and questions in our minds.

Do the Knuckler brothers know about this mine and the snaking tunnels?

Have they used them to get to us?

Where else do these tunnels lead?

What's under the Knuckler compound if we found what we found underneath my backyard?

The time for swirling questions passes in an instant when,

Out of the side of our eyes,

We see movement at the eastern fortress wall.

We duck down below the earth like frightened groundhogs,

And to our dismay,

Happen upon a literal groundhog.

It wasn't as random as it seemed to us because we accidentally disturbed his burrow,

Which is off to the side just a bit.

Mustering all the covert spy skills we have,

You and I peek just our eyes above the soil line while Mr.

Honeybee fumbles through his prototype pack for a submarine part he's working on.

With that ingenious development,

We can now see further without being seen.

Off in the distance,

We see Pinky and Thumb emerging from behind their fortress walls of the Knuckler compound,

Approaching something that looks a lot like Edgar Allen Crow,

Which is likely back to its perch on my waterslide in the backyard by now.

Mr.

Honeybee cannot contain his shock and awe,

And quite frankly,

Annoyance,

At the Knuckler brothers.

Team,

I've had it up to here with these Knucklers.

Did they steal the blueprints to your prototype?

Hero,

I thought we were the only ones who knew how to get in the garage when it was triple locked.

What?

You got through all three?

It's a wonder I get anything done with all this sneaking around.

Look at that thing.

It looks nearly identical to the Millennium Squawkin'.

I thought we were going with Edgar Allen Crow.

That's beside the point.

Well,

If they've copied your prototype blueprint,

Then we know that it can't do anything that evil.

Not so fast.

I already see what they've added.

Look here.

See that little protrusion right there?

This is where you attach drones,

Meaning they can have eyes,

Ears,

And their grubby little hands everywhere,

And potentially without us even knowing.

I think we'll see a gigantic mechanical crow,

Mr.

H,

But I get your point.

One sec,

I know exactly what to do.

Hiro and I are the only ones who are allowed to sneak into your garage.

This ends now.

No one should be sneaking in.

No!

Mr.

Honeybee thought he was introducing us to Edgar Allen Crow,

But we long knew about it,

Didn't we,

Hiro?

So when I reached into Mr.

Honeybee's prototype pack he wears on his back like a backpack,

An activated flight for the mechanical bird,

Then summoned it with a specialized whistle sequence,

He just shook his head back and forth in feigned disappointment.

There's only one way to fight for what's right in this strange situation,

And that's a standoff between robots.

That's really more of an ambush.

Meanwhile,

We keep our periscopic eye on the brothers.

They've definitely lifted the blueprints from Mr.

Honeybee's garage,

But there are additions that concern us greatly,

Namely what Pinky has hunched over tending to now while barking orders to Thumb.

He orders his brother to retrieve drone after drone which Pinky is attaching to the undercarriage of the bird,

Which is a lot smaller than Mr.

H's and thus a lot more covert and worrisome.

We have to get this out of their evil hands and into ours.

Just as Pinky is attaching some kind of canister to the bottom of his mechanical bird plane,

Which will spray some unknown obnoxious and frankly probably noxious aerosol from the sky,

We hear the comforting sounds of Edgar Allan Crowe approaching in the distance just in time.

When Thumb brings back the wrong kind of drone,

Pinky berates him and insists that if you want something done right,

You must do it yourself,

Which all of us can relate to in this moment as a team.

I hand the controls over to you because while I got the whistle down,

You're a master of the landings,

And this landing needs to be perfect and swift.

With eyes on the mechanical bird plane,

Take a slow,

Deep breath in through your nose.

Feel your chest and your spirits lift as Edgar Allan Crowe prepares for the swoop.

Hold your breath at the top for a moment,

Then slowly breathe all the way out through your mouth and extend the wings out,

With one lowered to dive toward the ground just as Pinky angrily leads Thumb away,

Telling him all those terrible things his frustration thinks are real at this moment.

In one fail swoop with you at the helm,

The bird plane gracefully plunges to the ground and just before it makes contact,

Launches up into the air carrying the Knuckler brothers' copycat prototype.

Fine,

Copy bird prototype.

When Pinky and Thumb return,

They are dumbfounded at the disappearance of their evil twin prototype.

They quickly turn against each other even more before their parents have to break up the brawl ensuing in the front yard.

We slink back underground and put all of our heads together as to how we can seal up this mineshaft so the Knucklers' reign of terror can finally be over.

Using all the prototypes in the pack at our disposal,

We settled on something Mr.

Honeybee is calling ground glue,

Which is a stickier version of mud that is a bear to handle for us,

But Cadet loves it.

Good thing she's just as good at burying things as she is at digging things up.

We'll need to put that to good use in my backyard.

But for now,

We make our way back down the tunnel,

Over all the abyss bridges and back to my yard when you point out that there are several turn-off points in both directions.

We weren't able to see them before because we were too focused on taking it all in,

But this time,

We must do our due diligence.

We meander down each of these turn-offs and pop our heads out of the ground in the most random outposts of the Honeybee neighborhood.

One of those spots looked awfully familiar,

A hidden treehouse out in the middle of the forest.

That looks like a Knuckler enclave we've seen before.

We apply extra ground glue to that opening because now we're certain these obnoxious brothers know about these mine tunnels.

When all entrances and exits have been sealed,

We leap out of the ground into my backyard.

The mission is almost complete,

But there is still one very important thing to do,

Cannonball from the roof.

You,

Of course,

Go first because you are not only an expert at the remote controls of Edgar Allen Crowe,

But you're also the cannonball champion.

Standing on top of the roof,

Looking down at the deep blue,

Sparkling pool,

Take your biggest,

Slowest breath in through your nose.

Send the fresh air down to your belly as you prepare to jump.

Then slowly breathe all the way out through your mouth and launch off the roof into the biggest cannonball you can muster.

I go next,

Then Cadet.

But when we look around for Mr.

Honeybee to go after us,

We can't find him anywhere.

We walk to the other side of my roof where we are able to see into Mr.

Honeybee's garage,

But he doesn't know we can see from here,

So we know exactly when he turns in for the night.

And when the coast is clear to test our prototypes,

There he is,

Sitting next to Edgar Allen Crowe and across from the evil twin of Edgar Allen Crowe.

He looks so pensive,

Contemplating something very serious,

So much so that we're surprised to hear our Battle Buzz helmet watches beep.

Captain,

Hero,

I couldn't possibly cannonball right now.

I'm working on something very important.

I need your help.

Sure,

Mr.

H.

What is it?

What do I call this thing?

It needs a name.

I'm going to take it apart to figure out how it works and remove all the evil stuff.

But when I put it back together,

It needs a name,

And I'm stumped.

You're right.

That is important.

Hmm.

Nothing is coming to me,

Hero.

What do you think it should be named?

E.

J.

That concludes our adventure.

I can't wait to see you again.

Captain E.

J.

,

Over and out.

Reviews

How about we name it Eguralin crow 2.0!
P.S.did I spell it right?P. P.S. I thought this was before the big 10 part mission.