Archive of Our Own ^beta

Natasha had been on many assignments. She had stopped biological weapons and defeated an alien army. She had recruited Bruce Banner/Hulk. She had fought countless men who wanted power, influence, and money. She had fought a robot army. But, in all her years, in all of those missions, she had never once encountered a flying elephant.

Why was a superspy sent on a mission to find a flying elephant? Apparently, there had been an enormous fire at the circus from which the elephant had escaped. Since the elephant had been in a circus, SHIELD hadn’t paid much attention to the headlines claiming an elephant could fly, but now...there were video recordings of a flying elephant on the cameras stationed in the Indian forests. The cameras were originally meant to prevent poaching and to keep track of the endangered animal populations. Now, they would be Natasha’s eyes.

She was to find the elephant, determine the source of its powers, and whether or not it was a threat. Elephants could be extremely dangerous; see Lord of the Rings. Her first step would be in investigating the young children who had apparently trained the elephant to fly. After a bit of digging, Natasha found that they lived in a circus.

(AN: I am putting the Dumbo universe into the modern world, so this is not only a crossover, but also an AU)

The Medici Family Circus looked to be a very humane establishment. They believed that no animal should be kept in captivity. Natasha, under the guise of Reporter Lucy Johansson, managed to get a private interview with the family who had trained the elephant.

“Hello. I am a reporter with the Guinness Book of World Records. This circus has many things I think should be mentioned in the book, including a certain elephant.”

The younger boy looked up at me, excited. “My performance of the flying elephant is going to be put in a book?” he asked excitedly.

“No, silly,” his sister told him. “She’s asking about Dumbo.”

“Dumbo?” I ask.
“The real flying elephant. He’s free now, thanks to us.” The girl said.

“What did you two have to do with the elephant escaping?” I ask, genuinely interested.

“Well, first we taught him to fly.” Said the boy.
“Yes, using the scientific method. Whenever he sneezed on a feather, he would flap his ears like wings, and he would fly!” the girl seemed excited to talk about it.

“Milly, dad said that we shouldn’t talk about it” The boy suddenly looked worried.

“You’re the one who said he could fly, Joe!” Milly responded.

I needed to get her to tell me more about the escape, so I interjected “How did the elephant escape?”

The kids stopped arguing, and both blushed slightly. Finally, Joe said “Dad cut a hole in the tent, then Colette flew him to the lights tower to kill the power so that the troupe could rescue Dumbo’s mom from being sent away to die -”

“Wait what? Dumbo’s mom? Who was going to kill an elephant? They’re an endangered species!” I certainly hadn’t expected to learn this. I cemented the next words I heard into memory.

“Vandemere was going to kill her because she was distracting Dumbo from his act. He was an evil man! He also fired the entire troupe except for Dumbo, and wasn’t following safety procedures at all. But attempting to kill Mrs. Jumbo, Dumbo's mom, was the last straw. We had to rescue her. So we did.”

I was seriously impressed with these kids. They were very young, and yet they had risked themselves to save a life. Everyone involved in the situation deserved recognition for their courageous acts. I still had some questions about the situation.

“Where did the fire come from? That entire circus burned to the ground.”

“Colette said that Vandemere was so upset that the power was out that he started randomly pulling switches, causing the power to surge.”

“We would have died in that fire if Dumbo hadn’t saved us. When Dumbo’s feather burned up, I threw my mom’s key into the fire to show him that the feather and the key were just symbols, and we could succeed without them.” Milly is on the brink of tears. She touches her chest, as if the key still hangs there.

“Where did Dumbo and Mrs. Jumbo escape to?” I ask softly.

“Somewhere in Asia,” says Joe. “We miss him, but he is free there.”

We hear a knock on the tent. “Kids, what are you doing in there? We have a performance in ten minutes!”

“That’s our dad” says Joe, a little unnecessarily. “We should probably go.”

“Sorry,” adds Milly.

“Thank you for giving me this time,” I tell them. We all stand and exit the tent. The kids head off to the performance tent, but their dad remains. “They’re good kids.” I tell him.

“Yeah, the best.”

“Do you have something to add to the story they told me?”

He shuffles his feet for a moment before saying “Dumbo is free. I don’t ever want to hear anything that says otherwise. Elephants are smart. He knows the difference between freedom and captivity. He deserves to be free.” With that, he walks away.

I am definitely talking to many people about how a prestigious man thought he could get away with intentional murder of an endangered species. There will be many, many charges against this Vandemere. And Dumbo is an innocent creature. There might be a genetic mutation to make his ears strong enough to lift him off the ground, but I highly doubt that it was genetic engineering. Research determined that he was born in the circus, and Mrs. Jumbo had never had any experiments done on her. Elephants were evolving. Maybe the entire species would someday be ably to fly.

Our world is very strange. We have super soldiers, Norse gods, Magic staffs, aliens, and now, a flying elephant. What's next?