A Multiversity of Bungholes
Letting It All Hang Out
What formerly had been a planned dinner date between two people had turned into a miniature class reunion. Ed and Daria sat on one side of the table while Beavis, Butt-head, and Van Driessen sat on the other side.
Under ordinary circumstances, while Daria would've been entertained by the duo, she had never been this fascinated by them until now, for no other reason than the fact they were here before her, still as youthful looking as ever after a near quarter century.
"Go ahead," Ed told Daria. "I'm just as interested as you are."
Finally, Daria decided to break the ice.
"One question," Daria asked them. "Just how did you make it all the way to the New 20s without having aged a day?"
"Well, technically, I'm not allowed for legal reasons to tell you how," Van Driessen remembered the government agent swearing him to silence.
"We time traveled," Butt-head answered plainly. "Uh huh huh huh!"
"Yeah, we went through a black hole and then when we came back to Earth, stuff changed," Beavis answered.
"Huh huh huh, you said hole!"
"Heh heh heh heh heh!"
Van Driessen sighed in relief. Technically, he wasn't the one who revealed the secret. As long as it came from the mouths of the duo, he was in the clear.
"That is very fascinating," Ed rubbed his chin. "You two are one of a kind. You know, my company specializes in scientific research into time and space."
"That's very interesting," Van Driessen noted. "Beavis, Butthead… maybe Ed here can help you two figure out one day exactly what happened in that black hole that sent you to this time."
"Uh… what?" Butt-head looked up.
Butthead had stuck the handles of both his spoon and fork into his nose.
Van Driessen sighed. "Nevermind…"
Instead, the teacher focused his attention on Daria.
"So Daria, could you tell us what you've been up to ever since you left Highland?"
"It's a bit of a story," Daria told them. "I went to the town of Lawndale in the Mid-Atlantic. Met my best friend Jane there. Even got a boyfriend."
"Whoa, Daria scored?!" Beavis exclaimed.
"Not exactly," Daria replied. "I didn't 'score' with my high school boyfriend Tom if that's what you're asking."
"Guys, please be respectful, mmkay?" Van Driessen said gently. "Please continue, Daria."
"Anyways, I graduated high school and went to Raft College," Daria told them. "Got a new boyfriend later on whom I went door-to-door singing carols on Valentines Day with. Sadly it didn't work out and after that, I moved to Hell's Kitchen where I have a cat named Godzilla and work as the only female writer on a late night talk show."
"Sounds fascinating," Van Driessen added.
"Edward and I met at a party hosted by my writing team not long ago," Daria told them. "Since then we've been steadily doing this dating thing."
"Whoa, you did it with this dude?" Butt-head's eyes widened.
"I'll leave that to your imagination, Butt-head," Daria told him with an eyeroll.
"So, like Daria's already had three boyfriends," Beavis frowned. "Butthead, why haven't we had any girlfriends yet?"
"Uh… we were gonna have a girlfriend with Melody," Butt-head replied. "But then she kicked our asses! Huh huh huh!"
"Yeah, you know how it sucks we can't score," Beavis mumbled as the waiter came over and poured some wine for them.
"Now remember," Van Driessen told the two. "I'll only allow you to have some alcohol just this once since I'll be driving us back, mmkay?"
"Yeah, don't mind if I do," Beavis took the wine and started sipping more and more. "You know, not long ago, I met this girl named Serena…"
oooo
"Smart Beavis and Butt-head, what are you two doing?"
The Smart duo looked down at the transmission from their ship that they had received.
The figure that appeared on their screen was Smart Van Driessen.
"Has there been any progress on the capture of Nebulus Algol?" the Smart David Van Driessen asked.
"No Supreme Leader, there has not," Smart Butt-head answered.
"But we are working on it as promised," Smart Beavis added.
Smart Van Driessen frowned.
"I'm beginning to think it was a mistake allowing you on this mission," Smart Van Driessen told them. "So many lives are at stake here and to allow you on a mission like this could prove to be foolhardy."
"Please, Supreme Leader," Smart Butt-head pleaded. "Smart Beavis and I need to prove ourselves in this mission."
"Yes, we must prove ourselves worthy!" Smart Beavis responded pleadingly.
Finally, Smart Van Driessen relented.
"You two have one week to capture him," Smart Van Driessen informed them with a sigh.
"Oh thank you Supreme Leader!" Smart Butt-head said gratefully.
"Yes yes," Smart Beavis smiled. "We have the perfect plan to capture him. Just you wait and see, Supreme Leader!"
"We shall see about that," Smart Van Driessen said soberly. "In the meantime, do whatever is necessary to capture the fiend."
After that, Smart Van Driessen cut the connection.
oooo
"You know, me and Serena had a thing!" Beavis told all the people at dinner drunkenly. "She and I had a connection, you know!"
"Uh, huh huh huh!" Butt-head chuckled. "You've had too much to drink, Beavis!"
"Quiet, Butt-head!" Beavis shouted. "It's not fair! No matter where I go, what time era I travel to… no matter what girl I meet, it never works out for me! I can never establish a connection with a woman! I'll never get married! Never have kids! And probably never settle down!"
By now, Van Driessen, Daria, and Edward Blackwell were listening to Beavis's story of himself and Serena with a mixture of both fascination and sympathy.
Despite herself, even Daria was starting to feel a twinge of pity for Beavis. True she always looked down on the duo back in the day but now that she was older, things were a bit different. For one, she'd matured after two decades. And with that emotional maturity came a newfound empathy for what other people had to go through. Additionally, she didn't have children and with Beavis still being young, a part of her almost viewed him as a lost child she felt compelled to comfort through her primal mothering instincts.
"I traveled through time for Serena!" Beavis shouted bitterly. "Butt-head and I traveled across the country for her! She wanted to be with me and I wanted to be with her! It should have been meant to be!"
"Wow, that's rough," Ed took a tiny sip. "I'm sorry you had to go through all that, Beavis."
"That's not the worst part," Beavis growled drunkenly. "Just when Serena and I were going to get together, this butthole shows up and steals her from me! He left with Serena! Serena left me! I WAS LEFT WITH NOTHING!"
"Uh…settle down, Beavis," Butt-head told him. "There's, like, still plenty of fish in the sea or something. Why do you think I tried to hook us up with Melody?"
"No, I won't settle down!" Beavis shouted. "I had one chance… ONE CHANCE to find love! And some butthole stole it from me!"
At the worst possible moment, a flash of light was seen as Smart Beavis and Smart Butt-head appeared before everyone.
"Greetings puny mortals," Smart Butt-head told them. "I am glad to see you are gathered together."
"Uh huh huh huh, speak of the Devil, Beavis," Butt-head looked at Beavis, realizing that Smart Beavis was there.
At once, Beavis got up in a psychotic rage and screamed at the top of his lungs, surprising everyone.
"YOU! YOU STOLE SERENA FROM ME!"
"Hold on a second," Smart Beavis protested. "Serena is not our main topic of discussion. We wish—"
Beavis would listen no more. To everyone's surprise, the drunken Beavis got on top of the table, tackling his Smart counterpart to the floor. Before Smart Beavis could raise another word in protest, regular Beavis began to physically pummel him.
"Aaaahhh!" Smart Beavis cried. "You must stop this!"
"No way butthole!" Beavis rained punch after punch down on Smart Beavis. "I'm going to kick your ass for what you did!"
As Beavis continued to pummel his Smart counterpart, Van Driessen and Ed finally grabbed Beavis and dragged him off of the more intelligent counterpart to Beavis.
"Beavis, you need to stop, mmkay?" Van Driessen pleaded. "Violence isn't the solution!"
Smart Beavis got up, bloodied and coughing as Smart Butt-head helped him up.
"That was most uncalled for!" Smart Beavis told his counterpart. "It is not like Serena stayed with me either!"
"You still had no right," Daria walked up to Smart Beavis.
"Ah, it is the less intelligent but still relatively genius level Daria of this world," Smart Beavis noted.
At once, Daria smacked Smart Beavis across the face really hard, knocking him down again.
"Huh huh huh!" Butt-head laughed. "Daria slapped that dude!"
"Was that really necessary?" asked Smart Butt-head.
"Let's just say what you did to Beavis crossed a line," Daria told the Smart duo.
"We do not have time for such infighting," Smart Butt-head told them. "We are here tonight because Nebulus Algol will be here soon. And we require your assistance to stop him!"
"Who?" asked Daria.
"He is a dangerous intergalactic criminal from our universe," Smart Butt-head told them. "We were here to stop him but unfortunately, your primitive Earth emotions centered around jealousy have nearly jeopardized our plan."
Ed, the whole time, looked fascinated by the talk of different universes.
"Well, we don't wanna help you!" Beavis spat.
"Yeah, especially since you're always asking us to do stuff," Butt-head agreed.
"But guys," Van Driessen tried to appeal to the duo. "We agreed to help them, didn't we? Don't you want to save the multiverse?"
"Uh… you agreed to help them, Van Driessen!" Butt-head pointed out. "We never wanted to come from the start!"
From her perspective, Daria remembered her time with a former teacher named Timothy O'Neill who always insisted on making her do things of an extracurricular nature even though she usually wasn't in the mood for it. Retrospectively, she realized the duo and her weren't so different when it came to teachers who never quite listened to what they wanted.
At once, a humming sound was heard. Everyone looked up.
Before them was an alien spacecraft with two massive bat-like wings and multiple flashing lights. Physically, it was shaped almost like a manta ray.
"Oh no, he is here," Smart Beavis realized.
"Fascinating," Ed looked up in awe.
The ship looked like it had some rather advanced weaponry. Fortunately for the entire dinner party, it did not open fire on them.
"Okay, this is definitely weirder than that one time I met those bizarre holiday spirits," Daria had to admit.
As the ship continued to hum, another sound was heard next to one of the tables. An electrical net flew out of nowhere and trapped both Smart Beavis and Butt-head.
"Aaaahhh!" the Smart duo screamed as they were electrocuted unconscious.
An invisible, cloaked figure came out of nowhere, grabbing the Smart duo. The entire group could not quite make out what he looked like but based on the proportions of his invisible body, he seemed to be some kind of humanoid.
The figure growled at them with a low rumble before leaping onto the spaceship with the captured Smart duo. Along with the mysterious figure, the alien ship then cloaked itself and disappeared from sight.
"Serves those buttholes right," Beavis grumbled. "Heh heh heh!"
"But guys, we had a mission," Van Driessen told them.
"Uh… it's not our problem anymore, huh huh huh!" laughed Butt-head.
"Yeah, besides," Daria added. "Just think, Mr. Van Driessen. Alien abductions happen to people all the time. It's not like this one is going to have anymore catastrophic consequences than the last alien abduction victim you read about on conspiracy sites."
Finally, as the effects of alcohol settled in more with Beavis, his rage went away, only to be replaced with another emotion… sadness.
"I... I…" Beavis stammered.
At once, he realized his eyes were watering up. Before long, he realized he was crying out loud over what could have been with Serena.
"Huh huh huh, wuss," Butt-head chuckled.
Try as he might, Beavis was still not over Serena, despite Butt-head's efforts to find a new girl.
"Hey Ed, sorry to cut this date short," Daria told her date. "But I think I need to help out an old classmate."
"I understand," Ed agreed.
"Mr. Van Driessen, do you mind if I have a private moment with Beavis and Butt-head?" asked Daria.
oooo
Half an hour later, Beavis and Butt-head walked into Daria's apartment.
"Uh, what's this place?" asked Butt-head.
"Well, for starters, it's my apartment," Daria told them. "And before you ask, Butt-head, no I did not bring you here to 'do it' with me. We're just here to catch up on old times."
"Huh huh huh!" Butt-head laughed before he turned around to an unexpected sight.
"Meow!"
A black cat hissed at Butt-head, smacking him ferociously across the face.
"Ugh!" Butt-head cried out in pain.
"Oh look, Godzilla likes you," Daria smiled.
"Damn cat," Butt-head grumbled.
Godzilla hissed at Butt-head and ran off.
"Anyways Beavis, I heard all you had to say and I have to say," Daria told him. "I'm surprised you'd finally gotten some real life experience, hard though it may have been."
"So, um, what happened between me and Serena was life experience?" asked Beavis curiously.
"It was," Daria informed him. "Maybe you didn't get the results you wanted. Maybe you weren't able to get the girl in the end. And yeah, what happened really hurt. But Beavis, you still lived life and found out the world isn't some happy storybook ending. Life's messy and chaotic. Sometimes you can mess up or you get hurt. But you can still learn and grow from all this."
"You really mean it, Daria?" asked Beavis.
"Hey, I used to think you two weren't able to ever grow up," Daria admitted. "But here you both are, looking decades younger than me and you already know what heartbreak feels like. Well, at least you do, Beavis."
"Yeah, Beavis is a wuss, huh huh huh!" Butt-head chuckled.
"So, like, Daria," asked Beavis. "What kind of life experience did you have in all these years?"
"Some good, some bad," Daria told them. "I've already bored you at the dinner table about my professional life but you know why I slapped that weird looking alien Beavis so hard?"
"Um, why's that?" asked Beavis.
"Let's just say I needed an outlet to channel some unresolved anger," Daria told them. "Back when I was still in highschool… Lawndale, not Highland… let's just say that I betrayed my best friend by kissing her boyfriend. We even started dating not long afterwards too."
"Whoa!" Butt-head's eyes widened.
"Jane eventually forgave me and we're still friends today," Daria told them. "But part of me never forgave myself and that's why I hit alien Beavis as hard as I could. Because he reminded me of what an awful thing I did. I guess I just took out a little bit of self-loathing on him."
"So, like, what happened to that dude you kissed?" asked Butt-head.
"Tom?" Daria shrugged. "We broke up but promised to stay in touch. Though in recent years, I haven't kept up with him. He's probably inherited his dad's firm by now."
"So, like, why didn't you ever do it with Tom?" asked Butt-head. "Huh huh huh!"
"Yeah, good question… don't boyfriends and girlfriends usually do it?" asked Beavis.
Daria winced. What Butt-head asked was a personal question but since these two boys were time-displaced and one of them was traumatized by a recent rejection, she figured there was no harm in explaining to satisfy their male curiosity in an extreme case like this.
"Well Butt-head," Daria explained. "You see, sometimes boyfriends and girlfriends get together in high school but they're not built to last for the long run. Tom and I were one such couple and instinctively, I realized in my gut that we weren't meant to last and didn't go any further with him than maybe kissing and holding hands."
"Oh," Butt-head realized. "Uh… well, that's too bad for Tom! What a dork! Huh huh huh!"
"Yeah, what a wussy! Heh heh heh heh heh!"
"So, like, did you do it with any other guy after Tom?" Butt-head asked Daria. "Like maybe that Ed dude? Uh, huh huh huh huh huh!"
"Okay, I think that's enough questions for the night," Daria told the two, sensing where this was going. "Tonight's my night off and tomorrow I've got to get to work. Beavis, you can have the guest bedroom since you're the guest of honor."
Daria opened up a room to reveal a nice bedroom for Beavis.
"Cool!" Beavis exclaimed.
"Your bed tonight?" Butt-head asked Daria suggestively.
"Actually," Daria gestured for Butt-head to follow her.
Daria opened up a closet.
"You can sleep here tonight," Daria told him. "Godzilla seems to hate you so you're probably not safe sleeping on the couch."
"Damn it, this sucks!" Butt-head scowled.
To be continued.