Hmm, does anyone like this even remotely? *sigh*
The Funniship of the Ring. Book 7.
Or, In Which Wimpy Develops An Unnatural Fear Of Blobbits.
Hoho awoke to the smell of burnt hair. He opened his eyes and sat up. The funniship were gathered around the fire laughing and chatting. Legless sat away from them with a hat pulled way down and a scarf wrapped way up so that only his nose showed.
Handoff was blowing bubbles with a pipe. There was a huge mass of bubbles above his head. Suddenly they all popped and Handoff was suddenly very wet.
"Spies!" shouted Arrogant.
"They're attacking the leader of our company!" shouted Tom.
"No they aren't," said Arrogant.
"Yes they are!" blubbered Handoff.
"That's not what I was led to understand," said Arrogant folding his arms stubbornly and sticking his nose in the air.
They could get no word out of him for some while. Finally Handoff decided to start the journey for the day.
"Let's go," he said.
But before the sentence was fully out of his mouth Arrogant leaped up and shouted.
"I have decided that we should get started!" he yelled. "Follow me!"
He jumped up and stalked off.
"Arrogant," said Handoff, "We are not going that way."
"We are if we're leaving," said Arrogant, as if he thought the blizzard was stupid, which he did. "All who want to leave follow me."
Mary, Piping, Tom, Hoho, Wimpy, Legless, and Boring jumped up and would have followed him if Handoff hadn't suddenly pulled out a rope and lassoed them.
"We are leaving!" he said. "But not that way. We are going through Amore Land. And anyway, we're more than halfway through. I think. Piping, do you have that guide still?"
"No," said Piping with a Cheerful Demeanor. "I ate it."
"Eew, why?" said Hoho.
"For just such an occasion," he said, standing up to his full three-and-a-half-feet-short-of-a-basketball-player height. He laughed wildly. "Now you have to go my way, for I memorized it, and now I am the only one who knows where to go!"
"Well," said Handoff, "Actually, that isn't quite true. I came in here once, and I can still remember the vague outline."
"I too passed the doors of AmorŽ Land," said Arrogant. "I do not wish to go through it again. It gives me the creeps."
The funniship started off, though reluctantly, Handoff's way. Before they had gone fifteen feet, they came across a tunnel.
"Hmm," said Handoff, "I don't remember this being here."
The funniship peered down the dark passage.
"Do we go through?" asked Boring.
"It seems we must," said Wimpy.
"There's a light at the end of the tunnel!" cried Legless.
"And it's coming closer," said Mary.
"It's probably nothing," said Handoff.
When Hoho came to, he found himself upside down against a wall. He got up and noticed the rest of the funniship scattered here and there like random leaves after a windstorm. He stumbled over to the nearest form and gently shook it. It was Arrogant.
"Y'know," he croaked, "I could really use some asprin right now."
As Hoho went around reviving his companions, that statement seemed to be the common thread of their mumblings more often now than at any previous time during their journey.
Now the funniship, bruised but not seriously hurt, gathered around their leader and started making threats. Just as things started to get nasty, Wimpy noticed a door.
He wandered over and went inside. It seemed to be an office, with all sorts of controls and buttons and things. It looked like it had been looted. The desk was overturned in a corner, papers were scattered on the floor, the rug was torn to shreds, and there was at least an inch of dust covering everything.
"What'cha doing?" said a voice.
Wimpy gave a little shriek and whirled around. There were Piping and Mary, looking at him with suspicion.
"I'm looking around," he said beating his chest, trying to get his heart started again.
"I see," said Piping, walking in and moving a shred of rug with his foot. "And what exactly were you looking at?"
"Well, this stuff," said Wimpy.
The two blobbits walked up to Wimpy.
"Listen, Daft," hissed Mary, "Don't start getting any funny ideas now. We wouldn't want you to leave us, would we Piping?"
"No," said Piping solemnly shaking his head.
"You see, Wimp," said Mary, putting his arm around the Daft's shoulders, "There's been talk of a split. We don't want that. It would leave our good cousin Hoho with less protection than he deserves. So see here, if there was a division, you'd like to go with Hoho, wouldn't you? I mean, you don't want Hoho to get eaten, or captured by Corcs, or anything, would you?"
"No," said Wimpy reluctantly.
"Of course not," said Mary. "And that's what we're hoping for, isn't it Piping?"
"Yup," said Piping solemnly.
"I'm glad you chose willingly," continued the blobbit, "I wouldn't like to have to, shall I say, persuade you. I am a very persuasive person, aren't I Piping?"
"Yup," said Piping rubbing his arm.
Mary smiled at the Daft. "I'm glad we understand each other."
The three walked out of the office. Mary whispered in Wimpy's ear.
"Let's keep this conversation our little secret, shall we?"
The rest of the funniship were done with Handoff, and they looked up as they approached.
"Where have you been?" growled Arrogant.
"In sort of a control room thingie," said Wimpy.
"Control room?" said Handoff, "Take me there."
The funniship filed in slowly. The blizzard surveyed the mess. He went over to the desk and started going through the drawers. Out of the third one he pulled out a thickish book. He righted the desk and set the book on it and started to read it.
"You aren't reading that now, are you?" asked Hoho.
"It seems to be an account book of some kind," said Handoff ignoring him. "Well! It seems that they only made a small profit for the first three months! That is very bad for business."
He flipped through, making snide comments every once in a while.
"Here's the last page. I can barely make anything out.
They have taken the then there's a scrawl, it looks like slide. I fear the end was cruel and nasty. Listen! We cannot have any fun, we cannot have any fun. A shadow moves in the dark. Look! there it is again! The thing in the water took the pizza delivery guy. Another scrawl, it looks like horrible, lamentable, starve, and suffer. Poor little Dafts! Flooey tripped on his own shoelace and fell down a and I can't read the last word. Fiddlers, fiddlers on the roof. I wonder what that means. There's one last trailed off scrawl. We are bored..."
He paused reflectively.
"What do you think happened to the Dafts?" queried Hoho.
"Well, that's easy to surmize. Apparently, AmorŽ Land attracted very few visitors. That is also very bad for business. So I think the Dafts excavated too deeply into the caverns deep underneath the floor to find new attractions, and awoke something that should have been left to nap. Then they very foolishly shut themselves into this room here. I think probably they all died of boredom."
Piping, meanwhile was looking around the room. He felt curiously intrigued by the heat vent close to the floor. He sidled over to it and nudged it with his toe. The cover fell off. He bent over and looked into it. A long shaft met his gaze, lighted from some crack in the joints. Compelled by something he did not understand, he stuck his face into the hole and yodeled at the top of his lungs.
Echoes magnified throughout the heating system bounced around the entire maze of caverns. The funniship looked up in fear and astonishment. They saw Piping kneeling by the heat vent with a sheepish look on his face.
"Fool of a Take!" shouted Handoff. "You will bring doom upon us! Doom! Doom! Doom!"
But even as he lunged at the defenceless blobbit, a noise was heard. Not more echoes of yodeling, a new sound. It came from high up, a hideous scraping noise. All the lights suddenly went out.
"EEK!" shouted Wimpy.
"Cool!" yelled Legless.
"Fiddlers!" shouted Handoff, "Run for your lives!"
The funniship now noticed a small door marked with a glowing exit sign. They squeezed through and ran down the long hallway. All of a sudden, Corcs poured Stooge-style out of a small doorway and started fighting with them. The funniship were outnumbered by about eighty million to nine when a rather large Corc jumped out of the doorway. As he went for the blizzard, he happened to brush up against Hoho. Hoho was thrown against the far wall, and he was left gasping for air.
Arrogant, moved by an extremely rare display of unselfishness, picked up the blobbit and strapped him to his back.
"Whew!" he said. "This blobbit must be sixty-four-and-a-half pounds overweight!"
The funniship was in a bad position. Tom was once again forced to take control of the situation.
"Look!" he cried, pointing off to the direction they had just come from.
They Corcs looked back.
"We don't see anything," they said. When they turned back around, they were alone in the hall.
It started getting very warm. At the end of the hallway there was a bend. As the funniship rounded the bend, a terrible sight met their eyes. A wide room with carved pillars, far as the eye could see. At the far end, they could see daylight streaming through a doorway.
Unfortunately, twenty feet from the door, there was a wide and deep fissure that went from wall to wall, blocking them off from escape. Fortunately, someone had built a bridge across the crack. A narrow bridge to be sure, but a bridge nonetheless. Paved roads streched from dozens of doors in the walls, all connecting to the bridge.
"Now for it!" cried the blizzard.
As they came out from their place of seclusion, a hurtling missile flew through the air and landed right in front of Handoff.
"Someone is throwing water balloons!" roared Arrogant.
The funniship looked to their left, from whence the object had been thrown, and to their horror they saw not one, not two, but at least three thousand Corcs streaming out of a large door. The funniship rushed and made it to the bridge. They were almost over it when the screams of the Corcs turned from glee into fear. They turned to see what made them change their tune.
Two large Dinner Rolls came out of the door, bearing a red carpet. They spread it on the ground. Then Corcs and Rolls alike shrank from the door as a dark shadow issued out of it, in what looked to be a snappy red sports car. It raced towards the bridge.
The funniship quickly ran across the bridge, but Handoff stayed in the middle.
"It is as I feared," he said. "A dangerous foe beyond mortal thought. And my shoe is caught in a crack!"
He struggled wildly with his shoe, as the shadow raced closer and closer.
"What is it, Handoff?" cried Arrogant.
Handoff gave one more desperate yank on the shoe, and then stood up to meet his doom.
"It is a Roadhog," he said grimly.
The Roadhog rushed up to the bridge, and pulled rather rapidly up until he was three feet away from the blizzard. It flashed its lights, and honked its horn.
"You cannot pass!" cried Handoff. "Do you see the two solid yellow lines on the pavement? You cannot pass!"
The Roadhog, fed up with this childish nonesense, got out of the car and he and the blizzard started shouting at each other. Then, the Roadhog shoved the blizzard. Handoff toppled, swayed, and plummeted into the depths shrieking "Fly, fools, fly like little birds! Cheep cheep cheep..." and he was gone.
Then the Roadhog looked at the remaining funniship. It stomped back to the car. But instead of getting in and driving off, it reached under the seat and pulled out a tire iron. He started towards them, but they were already out the door and away.
Outside, the funniship soon caught their breaths.
"I can't believe it," murmered Tomfool.
"Can't believe what?" whooped Legless.
"Handoff was carrying our food!"
"Handoff!" screamed Hoho, trying to run back in but not succeeding because he was tied to Arrogant's back.
The funniship screamed in agony, some throwing themselves on the ground and weeping bitterly, others standing grim and silent, shaking their fists towards the caverns behind them.
"Someday, Handoff," growled Arrogant. "Just you wait!"
Then he turned, and it seemed to Piping that he looked almost like he was the younger brothers' cousins' best friends' nephews' uncle twice removed on his mothers' side of a king as he squinted into the light.
"We must go to The Loth L—ri Inn, for Sellrond had made reservations," he said with a trace of fear in his voice.
Hoho felt weak for no reason at all, and he saw Legless's face twist up.
"Do not name that place!" said Legless, his voice dark, harsh as stone.
It was with these thoughts that Hoho fell asleep. (Although with some difficulty, because Arrogant was sleeping on his back.)
The Funniship of the Ring. Book 7.
Or, In Which Wimpy Develops An Unnatural Fear Of Blobbits.
Hoho awoke to the smell of burnt hair. He opened his eyes and sat up. The funniship were gathered around the fire laughing and chatting. Legless sat away from them with a hat pulled way down and a scarf wrapped way up so that only his nose showed.
Handoff was blowing bubbles with a pipe. There was a huge mass of bubbles above his head. Suddenly they all popped and Handoff was suddenly very wet.
"Spies!" shouted Arrogant.
"They're attacking the leader of our company!" shouted Tom.
"No they aren't," said Arrogant.
"Yes they are!" blubbered Handoff.
"That's not what I was led to understand," said Arrogant folding his arms stubbornly and sticking his nose in the air.
They could get no word out of him for some while. Finally Handoff decided to start the journey for the day.
"Let's go," he said.
But before the sentence was fully out of his mouth Arrogant leaped up and shouted.
"I have decided that we should get started!" he yelled. "Follow me!"
He jumped up and stalked off.
"Arrogant," said Handoff, "We are not going that way."
"We are if we're leaving," said Arrogant, as if he thought the blizzard was stupid, which he did. "All who want to leave follow me."
Mary, Piping, Tom, Hoho, Wimpy, Legless, and Boring jumped up and would have followed him if Handoff hadn't suddenly pulled out a rope and lassoed them.
"We are leaving!" he said. "But not that way. We are going through Amore Land. And anyway, we're more than halfway through. I think. Piping, do you have that guide still?"
"No," said Piping with a Cheerful Demeanor. "I ate it."
"Eew, why?" said Hoho.
"For just such an occasion," he said, standing up to his full three-and-a-half-feet-short-of-a-basketball-player height. He laughed wildly. "Now you have to go my way, for I memorized it, and now I am the only one who knows where to go!"
"Well," said Handoff, "Actually, that isn't quite true. I came in here once, and I can still remember the vague outline."
"I too passed the doors of AmorŽ Land," said Arrogant. "I do not wish to go through it again. It gives me the creeps."
The funniship started off, though reluctantly, Handoff's way. Before they had gone fifteen feet, they came across a tunnel.
"Hmm," said Handoff, "I don't remember this being here."
The funniship peered down the dark passage.
"Do we go through?" asked Boring.
"It seems we must," said Wimpy.
"There's a light at the end of the tunnel!" cried Legless.
"And it's coming closer," said Mary.
"It's probably nothing," said Handoff.
When Hoho came to, he found himself upside down against a wall. He got up and noticed the rest of the funniship scattered here and there like random leaves after a windstorm. He stumbled over to the nearest form and gently shook it. It was Arrogant.
"Y'know," he croaked, "I could really use some asprin right now."
As Hoho went around reviving his companions, that statement seemed to be the common thread of their mumblings more often now than at any previous time during their journey.
Now the funniship, bruised but not seriously hurt, gathered around their leader and started making threats. Just as things started to get nasty, Wimpy noticed a door.
He wandered over and went inside. It seemed to be an office, with all sorts of controls and buttons and things. It looked like it had been looted. The desk was overturned in a corner, papers were scattered on the floor, the rug was torn to shreds, and there was at least an inch of dust covering everything.
"What'cha doing?" said a voice.
Wimpy gave a little shriek and whirled around. There were Piping and Mary, looking at him with suspicion.
"I'm looking around," he said beating his chest, trying to get his heart started again.
"I see," said Piping, walking in and moving a shred of rug with his foot. "And what exactly were you looking at?"
"Well, this stuff," said Wimpy.
The two blobbits walked up to Wimpy.
"Listen, Daft," hissed Mary, "Don't start getting any funny ideas now. We wouldn't want you to leave us, would we Piping?"
"No," said Piping solemnly shaking his head.
"You see, Wimp," said Mary, putting his arm around the Daft's shoulders, "There's been talk of a split. We don't want that. It would leave our good cousin Hoho with less protection than he deserves. So see here, if there was a division, you'd like to go with Hoho, wouldn't you? I mean, you don't want Hoho to get eaten, or captured by Corcs, or anything, would you?"
"No," said Wimpy reluctantly.
"Of course not," said Mary. "And that's what we're hoping for, isn't it Piping?"
"Yup," said Piping solemnly.
"I'm glad you chose willingly," continued the blobbit, "I wouldn't like to have to, shall I say, persuade you. I am a very persuasive person, aren't I Piping?"
"Yup," said Piping rubbing his arm.
Mary smiled at the Daft. "I'm glad we understand each other."
The three walked out of the office. Mary whispered in Wimpy's ear.
"Let's keep this conversation our little secret, shall we?"
The rest of the funniship were done with Handoff, and they looked up as they approached.
"Where have you been?" growled Arrogant.
"In sort of a control room thingie," said Wimpy.
"Control room?" said Handoff, "Take me there."
The funniship filed in slowly. The blizzard surveyed the mess. He went over to the desk and started going through the drawers. Out of the third one he pulled out a thickish book. He righted the desk and set the book on it and started to read it.
"You aren't reading that now, are you?" asked Hoho.
"It seems to be an account book of some kind," said Handoff ignoring him. "Well! It seems that they only made a small profit for the first three months! That is very bad for business."
He flipped through, making snide comments every once in a while.
"Here's the last page. I can barely make anything out.
They have taken the then there's a scrawl, it looks like slide. I fear the end was cruel and nasty. Listen! We cannot have any fun, we cannot have any fun. A shadow moves in the dark. Look! there it is again! The thing in the water took the pizza delivery guy. Another scrawl, it looks like horrible, lamentable, starve, and suffer. Poor little Dafts! Flooey tripped on his own shoelace and fell down a and I can't read the last word. Fiddlers, fiddlers on the roof. I wonder what that means. There's one last trailed off scrawl. We are bored..."
He paused reflectively.
"What do you think happened to the Dafts?" queried Hoho.
"Well, that's easy to surmize. Apparently, AmorŽ Land attracted very few visitors. That is also very bad for business. So I think the Dafts excavated too deeply into the caverns deep underneath the floor to find new attractions, and awoke something that should have been left to nap. Then they very foolishly shut themselves into this room here. I think probably they all died of boredom."
Piping, meanwhile was looking around the room. He felt curiously intrigued by the heat vent close to the floor. He sidled over to it and nudged it with his toe. The cover fell off. He bent over and looked into it. A long shaft met his gaze, lighted from some crack in the joints. Compelled by something he did not understand, he stuck his face into the hole and yodeled at the top of his lungs.
Echoes magnified throughout the heating system bounced around the entire maze of caverns. The funniship looked up in fear and astonishment. They saw Piping kneeling by the heat vent with a sheepish look on his face.
"Fool of a Take!" shouted Handoff. "You will bring doom upon us! Doom! Doom! Doom!"
But even as he lunged at the defenceless blobbit, a noise was heard. Not more echoes of yodeling, a new sound. It came from high up, a hideous scraping noise. All the lights suddenly went out.
"EEK!" shouted Wimpy.
"Cool!" yelled Legless.
"Fiddlers!" shouted Handoff, "Run for your lives!"
The funniship now noticed a small door marked with a glowing exit sign. They squeezed through and ran down the long hallway. All of a sudden, Corcs poured Stooge-style out of a small doorway and started fighting with them. The funniship were outnumbered by about eighty million to nine when a rather large Corc jumped out of the doorway. As he went for the blizzard, he happened to brush up against Hoho. Hoho was thrown against the far wall, and he was left gasping for air.
Arrogant, moved by an extremely rare display of unselfishness, picked up the blobbit and strapped him to his back.
"Whew!" he said. "This blobbit must be sixty-four-and-a-half pounds overweight!"
The funniship was in a bad position. Tom was once again forced to take control of the situation.
"Look!" he cried, pointing off to the direction they had just come from.
They Corcs looked back.
"We don't see anything," they said. When they turned back around, they were alone in the hall.
It started getting very warm. At the end of the hallway there was a bend. As the funniship rounded the bend, a terrible sight met their eyes. A wide room with carved pillars, far as the eye could see. At the far end, they could see daylight streaming through a doorway.
Unfortunately, twenty feet from the door, there was a wide and deep fissure that went from wall to wall, blocking them off from escape. Fortunately, someone had built a bridge across the crack. A narrow bridge to be sure, but a bridge nonetheless. Paved roads streched from dozens of doors in the walls, all connecting to the bridge.
"Now for it!" cried the blizzard.
As they came out from their place of seclusion, a hurtling missile flew through the air and landed right in front of Handoff.
"Someone is throwing water balloons!" roared Arrogant.
The funniship looked to their left, from whence the object had been thrown, and to their horror they saw not one, not two, but at least three thousand Corcs streaming out of a large door. The funniship rushed and made it to the bridge. They were almost over it when the screams of the Corcs turned from glee into fear. They turned to see what made them change their tune.
Two large Dinner Rolls came out of the door, bearing a red carpet. They spread it on the ground. Then Corcs and Rolls alike shrank from the door as a dark shadow issued out of it, in what looked to be a snappy red sports car. It raced towards the bridge.
The funniship quickly ran across the bridge, but Handoff stayed in the middle.
"It is as I feared," he said. "A dangerous foe beyond mortal thought. And my shoe is caught in a crack!"
He struggled wildly with his shoe, as the shadow raced closer and closer.
"What is it, Handoff?" cried Arrogant.
Handoff gave one more desperate yank on the shoe, and then stood up to meet his doom.
"It is a Roadhog," he said grimly.
The Roadhog rushed up to the bridge, and pulled rather rapidly up until he was three feet away from the blizzard. It flashed its lights, and honked its horn.
"You cannot pass!" cried Handoff. "Do you see the two solid yellow lines on the pavement? You cannot pass!"
The Roadhog, fed up with this childish nonesense, got out of the car and he and the blizzard started shouting at each other. Then, the Roadhog shoved the blizzard. Handoff toppled, swayed, and plummeted into the depths shrieking "Fly, fools, fly like little birds! Cheep cheep cheep..." and he was gone.
Then the Roadhog looked at the remaining funniship. It stomped back to the car. But instead of getting in and driving off, it reached under the seat and pulled out a tire iron. He started towards them, but they were already out the door and away.
Outside, the funniship soon caught their breaths.
"I can't believe it," murmered Tomfool.
"Can't believe what?" whooped Legless.
"Handoff was carrying our food!"
"Handoff!" screamed Hoho, trying to run back in but not succeeding because he was tied to Arrogant's back.
The funniship screamed in agony, some throwing themselves on the ground and weeping bitterly, others standing grim and silent, shaking their fists towards the caverns behind them.
"Someday, Handoff," growled Arrogant. "Just you wait!"
Then he turned, and it seemed to Piping that he looked almost like he was the younger brothers' cousins' best friends' nephews' uncle twice removed on his mothers' side of a king as he squinted into the light.
"We must go to The Loth L—ri Inn, for Sellrond had made reservations," he said with a trace of fear in his voice.
Hoho felt weak for no reason at all, and he saw Legless's face twist up.
"Do not name that place!" said Legless, his voice dark, harsh as stone.
It was with these thoughts that Hoho fell asleep. (Although with some difficulty, because Arrogant was sleeping on his back.)