"We may not have to go to Jimdrabia-" began BæÅüMÃ(-)Ñ. Ducky glared at him, but he continued anyway. "...to learn what happened to Jim. I was there, remember?"
"Well, I assumed you were, but I couldn't be sure." said Speedy, sipping his cup. Now that they had a workable plan, the expressions of disbelief could be removed, and they were.
"As far as I remember, Jim was drawing away the attention of Blagagnga so I could take him out. However, Jim was shot through the stomach by a laser from Blagagnga's hovercraft. I attempted to jump onto the craft, so as to fight him paw to paw, but the hovercraft had a forcefield, and I bounced off. Suddenly, (and I'm not sure why), the hovercraft failed, and the entire thing, Blagagnga included, fell into a conviniently placed void.
"After that happened, I scooped up Jim, and rushed through a hallway to the Shoot/Maim/Hurl machine, where Speedy and Propulsion were battling for the right to sacrifice themselves to save the planet. Jim, as his last dying action, went into the "Hurl" tube, causing the time bomb to stop, and the planet to be saved."
This was all news to Ducky, Kovu, Slayer, and Fquist, who listened with some interest.
"So if the Hurl tube worked properly," said Tyf, "then Jim Drab's lifeless body will have been hurled to.."
"Tubelectric." put in Slayer, wisely. "That's where people always got hurled before. I wouldn't mind going back to Tubelectric, really. Nice tasty ostriches."
"But what about my Cherry Table?" cried Ducky, passionately. "The War Tavern, even if it was rebuilt, would never be the same without it!"
"All of this is in the future, though." said Kovu, after deciding that the Plotline Hotline employee could be of no further use and hanging up the phone. "Before we can go to Tubelectric Or Jimdrabia, we need a spaceship."
"Didn't we have this huge fleet of ships I st- errr, found?" asked BæÅüMÃ(-)Ñ, thoughtfully. "Whatever happened to it?"
"Well, we were going to go to a variety of places.." said Kovu, sitting back down. "But I got ahold of the controls after being all beaten up and we went to Tubelectric."
"But the other ships?" asked the irish rabbit. Although he had not come along that time, he didn't remember hearing about what happened to the rest of the ships on that adventure.
"I think we lost control of them." said BæÅüMÃ(-)Ñ. "The whole fleet blasted off of Carrotus, but then the main ship that I had built was the only one to reach Tubelectric."
"If only we had one of them now...." said Propulsion, a fire in his eyes. Suddenly, there was a big sound outside. Hurridly, the 'Taverners paid the bartender, and rushed outside to see one of the long errant fleet gracefully touching down outside the bar.
"Clockwork!" cried Ducky, exuberantly, and bounced off towards the spaceship to shake the paw of the fox who was, indeed, emerging from the dim interior.
Soon afterwards, Clockwork having agreed to pilot them to wherever they were going, the party sat in a large spacious room with plush couches, discussing where to go.
"We go to Jimdrabia first." said Ducky, decidedly. "Once there, we can rescue my Cherry Table, and examine the "Hurl" tube to see if it really was aimed towards Tubelectric at all."
"It's always been Tubelectric in the past, though." said Kovu. "I'll admit Mr. Continuity was hurled to Carrotus during The Quest for the Stones, but he had been previously hurled to Tubelectric, so it was a second-hand hurling."
"I want to go to Tubelectric again." said Slayer, licking his lips.
"Try as I might," said BæÅüMÃ(-)Ñ, "I can't think of any reason to go to Tubelectric first other then past experiance. And that's not taking into account that all the people hurled to Tubelectric previously were done manually by Blagagnga, and not by some machine. David Orek got taken off of there with us, the ostrich population was mad at us, EAVW was defeated, and we left with the same spaceship we crashed onto Tubelectric with."
"Wait!" said Slayer, brightly. "I left the Warpshield there, and I want it back!"
"And I want my Cherry Table back." said Ducky.
"I know!" cried Fquist, because he not had gotten to talk at all so far. "Let's flip a coin!"
There was general consensus from all but Ducky and Slayer, so a coin was flipped, and it was realized that neither side had called heads Or tails.
"Heads Tubelectric, Tails Jimdrabia." said BæÅüMÃ(-)Ñ wisely, and the coin was flipped to Tails. Slayer went somewhere to sulk as the spaceship blasted off.
Jim Drab blinked sleepily and looked around him. The ground was clouds, the background eyecandy was clouds.. indeed, everything was clouds other then the golden temple standing nearby. Having nothing else to do, Jim Drab proceeded towards it. Other people were milling around, but generally moving towards the temple. Jim recognized several of the soldiers of Blagagnga's evil army, not to mention Blagagnga himself. Picking a number from a dispenser, Jim read "384623452387453" sorrowfully. "Now serving number 38462345287334" read the flashing sign astride the temple. Muttering, Jim joined the group of millers, and after a little while, came across a well dressed fox standing still and keeping an eye on everything.
"Excuse me......." said Jim, causing the fox to turn around. "Where am I? I was assured what I was doing as my last action was certain death, and I feel cheated."
"You don't have to worry about that." said the fox, smiling. "Welcome to Heaven. Or, more accurately, the Great Beyond. The sorting process misses a few, so a few bad sorts get up to Heaven. Thus, here in the Great Beyond, various staff members examine previous actions of all newcomers to see whether or not they belong here."
"But why do I need to do this?" asked Jim, looking once more at the "now serving" number, which had not progressed much. "I'm a good guy! It says so in my contract."
"Everyone says that." said the fox, shaking his head. "In case you get to stay, I'm Xavier, by the way."
"Ah." said Jim, then thought it would be more polite to add his name. "The name is Jim. Jim Drab."
"Pleased to meet you. Anyway, don't take this whole waiting bit so hard. At least you're in one piece, other then the hole through your stomach. We have a rather incompetant squad of workers charged with putting dead people back together, mainly because they're the only guys willing to work with such messy stuff. For example, they once put Tiny Tim - he was a turtle whose head exploded -'s head on his foot.. not pretty. Then we learned he had been sorted into the wrong place-you-go-where-you're-dead, so it's the job of the workers at the evil dead place now, anyway."
Jim tried not to show revulsion as Xavier continued. "Not that the jobs they do are always bad. I used to be a mute, for example. Now I recite the entire epic poem of the Odyessy several times a week, just to keep my voice in practice. Want me to demonstrate?"
"Ah huh. But no thanks." Jim hurried, and slowly walked away, trying his best not to seem rude.
Some time later, Clockwork's spaceship landed on Jimdrabia. There had not been too much trouble locating the not-too-long-ago-unknown-planet, oddly enough. You would think planets that had remained unknown for so long would be difficult to find.
Anyway, the 'Taverners left the ship, the ones who hadn't been there before looking around with various measures of curiosity. Clockwork chose to stay behind and write informative letters to people who didn't know what the letters were informing them about.
"It would probably be best if we avoided civilized areas." said BæÅüMÃ(-)Ñ, wisely. "I don't have a big desire to go through the whole godly visitors bit again."
"Me neither." said Tyf, so they set off towards the crashed round ship, which they found without too much difficulty. There were large signs around it now, reading what would probably have meant "CAUTION" if they could read the signs. Ignoring them, the 'Taverners made their way up to the ship, where they began looking for a way in. Naturally, the fire had stopped long ago.
"Here's a only half caved in entrance!" cried Speedy, after a little while, and the rest hurried over. Indeed, it was an entrance that was only partly blocked off by fallen pieces of the ship. They cleared away the blockage, and entered the ship, several getting unhappy feelings of Deja Vu.
"Now, where was the Cherry Table stored, anyway?" asked Kovu, looking at Speedy, as he was closest. Speedy shrugged. "Han Soda put it somewhere. But he's dead, and we can't ask Gurgi, as he vanished. Shall we spread out?"
Ducky ascented, so they all spread out, looking for passages that were not too blocked to procede through, so that they might be the first to locate the Cherry Table.
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