Strong Bad sat at his hilariously simple computer. He was somehow able to connect to wifi and access the internet with this device (the wonders of outdated technology!). One afternoon of boredom caused him to sweep through his Twitter feed, going through months of tweets and shares. Despite being called Strong Bad, he never posted anything that got him banned. He wondered whether or not this seriously harmed his "street cred," if he was using that term correctly. But he wasn't so concerned about expectations from the public, at least not now.
"Haha," he said, "Guys getting attacked by squirrels get me every time."
He scrolled through his feed until he finally got to July of 2014. That month was notable in that he opted to do something… good.
He did the Ice Bucket Challenge and took a video of it.
"Oh, yeah… I did that thing, didn't I?" he asked.
Goodness just wasn't his thing and yet, for whatever reason, he posted it on the internet anyway. And that reason was attention. Anything for that syrupy taste of attention.
He clicked on the video to relive those memories frame-by-frame.
Take one:
Strong Bad was standing on the familiar grassy field in front of that picket fence with Homestar standing behind him. Homestar was carrying a massive blue bucket with his invisible arms. Or did he not have arms and he held it up with telepathy? He was never totally clear about that. In whichever way he was doing it, he was doing it correctly.
The footage very clearly came from an old-school camera since there was a blinking "Record" symbol along with the date incorrectly listed as 09/09/1999.
"Is that thing on?" he asked.
"BWAA!" said Strong Mad from behind the camera.
"Greetings, Ladies and Germs," he said, "Your friendly neighborhood Strong Bad here. I am about to do the latest challenge that everyone on the internet seems to be subjecting themselves to."
"Do you want to say why you'we doing it?" asked Homestar.
"Attention. I'm doing this for attention and nothing more."
"Awe you suwe?"
Strong Bad sighed. "All right… We're doing this challenge to spread awareness about the debilitating disease of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in the hopes that we can raised donations for the research and cure blah blah blah but most of all WE'RE DOING THIS FOR SHAMELESS ATTENTION! WOOOOO! So let's get this started, shall we?"
Homestar propped the large bucket into the correct position.
Strong Bad held out his arms and awaited the onslaught of frigid wetness.
"Incoming!" said Homestar.
He tipped the bucket on Strong Bad… and out came a cascade of live mice. The squeaky rodents bounced off of Strong Bad's body and scurried away in multiple directions.
"Wha?" said Strong Bad, "What is this?"
"We'we doing the Mice Bucket Challenge, wight?" asked Homestar.
"No, Crap-for-Brains, it's supposed to be the Ice Bucket Challenge."
"Ooooh… Let's twy this again."
Take two…
Once again, Strong Bad and Homestar were standing on the green grass with Homestar holding the bucket.
"Okay…" said Strong Bad, "Now, we are going to try this again. We are more prepared than ever! WOOOO! You ready Homestar?"
"You bet!" said Homestar.
"One… two… three… ICE BUCKET!"
Homestar tipped the bucket. This time, out spilled something that wasn't immediately obvious at first but if one squinted really hard, they could see it.
"Homestar, what did you fill this bucket with?"
"I filled it with wice! The Wice Bucket Challenge!"
"You fill it with lice?"
"Yeah. Howevew, I couldn't find enough wice, so I added in some fweas. It tuwns out The Poopsmith has an entire menagewie of itchy cwittews."
Suddenly, Strongbad started itching himself all over. He was able to do this just fine with boxing gloves, much like how he was able to type just fine with them. "Homestar!" He contorted in various positions all for the sake of reaching every last itchy place.
Take Three…
This time around, the sun had set and the purplish hue was starting to overtake the orange and red. And red was precisely the color of Strong Bad's skin from all the itching he had done earlier.
Homestar was back in his usual position.
"Okay…" said Strong Bad, "Now that I've had a therapeutic bath, we can get back to the Ice Bucket Challenge. And I checked. The bucket is filled with actual ice water this time." Strong Bad was starting to develop annoyance in his greetings to the camera. "Are you ready, Homestar?"
Homestar looked behind him and then set down the bucket of ice water. He walked into the other direction.
"Wha?"
The Cheat snuck by the camera holding a covered cauldron over his head.
"Where are you guys going?"
The Cheat stopped and gave his answer in his usual rodent-like garbles.
"Mulligatawny Stew Under the Stars Night?"
Strong Mad panned over to his left, where tents and campfires were set up, along with a banner reading what The Cheat had told him. Over each fire were couldrons of hearty, bubbling stew. Strong Sad slurped from his bowl slowly by one of the tents. Marzipan ladled some into a bowl for herself.
"Made with cruelty-free ingredients and free-range vegetables!" she proudly proclaimed.
Homestar, who had just ladled some soup into his own bowl, was mesmerized by the makeup of his meal.
"Just you wait, guys!" he said, "I'm gonna get all the mulligatawnies. Then I'm gonna be a weal champion!"
"That's not the point of this night, Homestar," said Marzipan. "The stew is secondary. Tonight is all about us looking at Mother Sky in all her glory, identifying constellations and realizing that we're all so insignificant in this universe."
"I didn't need a night of stew in order to be reminded of that," said Strong Sad.
Strong Mad then pointed the camera at the ground and focused on a blade of grass.
"GRASS BLADE!" he shouted as the video went in and out of focus, "GRASS BLAAAAAAAADE!"
"All right, Bro," said Strong Bad's voice, "It's not that interesting."
Take four…
The next morning, Homestar and Strong Bad were back with the bucket of ice water, standing in the correct positions.
"All right," said Strong Bad. "We're going to do it correctly this time. No miscommunications. No interruptions. Just ice water on Strong Bad. One… two… three… ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE!"
Strong Bad spread his arms and Homestar dumped bucket onto his head… only for the bucket to be empty.
"What the crap?" he asked. He then looked to his left and got his answer. "Ooooh, I see."
Strong Mad panned to the right and found an overly-hydrated King of Town. He lay on the grass, huffing and puffing.
"I apologize, my good subjects," he said, "But that water just had to go into my body to properly restore my energy."
"Why?" asked Strong Bad.
"You see, I walked up two flights of stairs. TWO FLIGHTS OF STAIRS. Those two flights took everything out of me."
"Aw, great. We're gonna have to get more water and freeze more water to put into that water."
"Let's do what Mawzipan does and wecycle!" said Homestar.
"What do you mean?"
"We fweeze watew, wait a half an hour and then use the King of Town's—"
"NO. NO. SEVENTY MILLION TIMES NO. We're gonna have to go with Plan C."
Take Five…
The video now showed Strong Bad up close with the tipped bucket near his head. Somebody (most likely Strong Mad) had cut the bottom out of the bucket and somebody (most likely Homestar) was chucking pieces of cardboard shaped like water and ice cubes at Strong Bad's face.
"Aaaaaaah…" said Strong Bad as a feigned horror and anguish, "It's so wet and cold, I can't take it." He squinted his eyes as board after board lightly tapped his face. There was a number of people that he successfully convinced with the fake water, fake ice and fake emotions. Because zero is a number.
The video then cut to the aftermath, complete with the bucket laying on the ground and showing its cut-out bottom.
"And thus, we have completed Strong Bad's Ice Bucket Challenge," he said to the camera.
"You don't look wet!" said Strong Sad from offscreen.
"And before I gloriously beat up Strong Sad, I will challenge someone else to The Ice Bucket Challenge."
"Challenge Biscuitdoughhandsman!" said Coach Z's voice from offscreen, "That guy owes me BIG!"
"Uh… no. I challenge Senior Cardgage to do The Ice Bucket Challenge. Uh… goodbye, I guess."
And thus ended the old video. So did Strong Bad still have "Street Cred" from doing this one good thing on the internet? To him, he did. After all, he beat up Strong Sad afterwards off-camera and that made up for any good that the video did. That was how it worked, right?
To this day, he never knew if Senior Cardcage took up The Ice Bucket Challenge. Frankly, he didn't want to know what such a cursed video would look like and he wasn't going to let curiosity lead him to those parts of the internet.
And so, Strong Bad kept on scrolling through his Twitter…