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Old 11-30-2004, 03:12 PM   #225
Rimbaud
The Perilous Poet
 
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Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Heart of the matter
Posts: 1,096
Rimbaud has just left Hobbiton.
Parsnips turn on you, you know.

Face it, Hal, you came out pretty lucky, thought the quarter-elf, inside a half-Elf’s head. Halfemption mused on their predicament, but realised that he was spending most of the musing time working out who was who, or rather who wasn’t who. Or something. He began to feel a little like his late half-brother. He felt a little like the deceased Halfullion as well, but it was his actually-always-late half-brother, Hees Tardierthanthou, that he felt like. Second to every conclusion, first to none. Or in his youngest brother Runt the Monk’s case, first to nuns.

“I wish,” he started out loud, in Vogonwe’s velvet tones, “that all this confusion would just sort itself out and save me the trouble of devising an improbably clever solution to it all!”

*blam!*

There was a loud noise and a blinding flash of light.

They all looked nervously at each other. Sadly, they realised , nothing had altered, they were still the Hellthisissomemixedup-ship.

“Nice try,” said Pimpi-keeper, rubbing her/his shin. “Bad luck – hang on, who are you?”

“Hal,” said Vog-emption.

“Thinking of a way out?”

“I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do,” replied Vog-emption, a little snidely.

“I read you, Hal,” replied Pimpi-keeper.

“Look!” exclaimed Kuru-suwyniel, and for once it wasn’t so much of a pleasure to do so. “We have some priorities.”

Everyone relaxed. It was comforting when Merisuwyniel took control, even when she was trapped inside the somewhat less aesthetically pleasing Dwarven form.
The Heroine-in-a-Halfman continued. “One, we need to find my body. The pretty one. Two – we need to get through this door and escape.”

Vog-emption said, “Since this is the only way out, and it seems we all woke up in here, logic suggests that your body is back whence we came.”

They all looked back down the maze of passages, little rooms and corridors with an under whelming enthusiasm. The sort of enthusiasm that is normally garnered when your unwanted guests suggest another bottle. Of your wine.

Kuru-suwyniel’s hand edged backwards, surreptitiously. No wonder men are always scratching. She caught Kuru-claw looking at her suspiciously and cleared her throat.

“I know in my heart,” she began.

“My heart!” squawked a dwarf in a parrot’s body.

“…in my heart, that we need to find my body before we can leave. And what anybody would want to do with my body is quite beyond me,” finished the be-dwarfed wielder of the Ent that was Broken.

There was some liberal shuffling of feet after this last bit, and few met her eye.

But the usual suspects for tedious heroism stepped up to the metaphorical plate, although they looked an even more motley crew than normal: Orugum Two, Cirk-onwe, Vog-emption and Half-Leninia volunteered to explore for hijacked Elven waifs, while the others remained behind worked out a way of overcoming the fearsome bureaucracy of the only way out.

And so it was that on Stardate, um, three-ish, that the Company known as the ReallyConfused-ship split asunder, if only for a short time.

The Hero Searchers

Those that would seek the Elf that was Hijacked, named themselves the Body Snatchers, after a brief but passionate row. The corridors of their strange new prison were duly invaded by the Body Snatchers, who decided after tripping over each other for a while to divide into two further sub-groups. After more bickering, the two sets were the Aggressively Deadly Duo, comprising Half-Leninia and Vog-emption (Halfemption felt proud to be wholly included), and the Concern of the Alliance of Grundor and Elves, comprising Orugum Two and Cirk-onwe.

The ADD moved absent-mindedly off to the left, and the AGE Concern shuffled off to the right.

The search was long and not especially funny to describe, not even the scene where the ADD found themselves in a sauna with a small penguin, a priest and a rabbi. It was, the ADD mustered the attention to be annoyed by, the AGE Concern who discovered her body. Piloted, it seemed, by a rather confused rodent, she had simply curled up and gone to sleep. Orugum Two cursed his weaker body, as he saw Half-Leninia effortlessly hoist the fair maiden upon her shoulder and trek back. She, naturally, was rather pleased by the whole affair.

When they arrived back, they came across a scene that can only be described by someone with the willpower to do it, so we’ll skip right to the dialogue.

“Why on earth…?” began Vog-emption.

“That’s just not right…” said Half-Leninia, depositing the Mouse-in-Elf gently on the ground.

“Oh good grief…” muttered Orugum Two.

“Sweet heavenly Errata of the skies…” mumbled Cirk-onwe.

The Remainder of the Reunited-ship were, frighteningly, writing. Scribing. Scratching. Looking a bit, well, academic. Well, all apart from Kuru-claw who was flying around and landing suspiciously close to everyone’s pockets.

“What the…” began Vog-emption again, still not grasping the true horror of what
he was seeing.

“It had to be done,” sighed Kuru-suwyniel. “We have to fill out these forms. I don’t think there’s another way.”

“Really? replied the Quarter-in-a-Half, divisively. “I was thinking brute force.”

“We don’t have any champagne,” replied Pimpi-keeper, missing an ‘e’.

However, Kuru-suwyniel had her way, and the forms were filled. The Mouse and Grrmoi slept still. The parrot-dwarf flew around, but agreed with them that there was certainly a limited number of options.

Finally, they were done. Forms were filled, and as everyone was thoroughly sick of the whole trans-corporeal experience, they delivered them straight to the quite staggeringly named Mr Smith.

However, as they had not detached the yellow duplicates, he refused to accept the originals. There were further hold ups, before he finally agreed that they had a) no right to be there and further were b) utterly improbable as people so that c) they probably weren’t there at all and therefore d) it mattered not if the door was opened or not.

Vog-emption, Pimpi-keeper and Orugum Two leant their shoulders to the task, and swung the double doors open, as one would open a large pair of double doors.

There were gasps.

They had reached – a superior bureaucrat’s office. Who had a similarly large door at the other end of his office, which was slowly closing. Through which they could see another office. And another.

“This won’t do,” said Kuru-suwyniel, slumping to the ground. “This isn’t the answer.”

“Brute force?” asked several of the Company of Lost Souls again, and she wearily acquiesced. Several splintered doors and satisfyingly dead bureaucrats later, they all confessed that that probably wasn’t the key either.

“What do they want?” asked Pimpi-keeper frantically. “What is it that has caused this?”

It was, oddly, Grr-moi, who solved it. Or rather, Kuru-caw, who was pecking at his finger. At the large gold ring on his finger. The large unfamiliar ring on his finger. This sentence is redundant.

“Um,” said Cirk-garn Two. “I don’t remember Neemoi having any jewellery.”

Then, slowly, they all realised they had identical rings on. Kuru-suwniel gasped.

“There are fourteen of us! And fourteen rings! This is the work of the mysterious Saturday the Fourteenth Gang. This is the band of pirates who were not quite as hard as the Friday the Thirteenth Crew. The Saturday Gang forged fourteen rings of power, to enslave all who wore them.”

“But,” said Pimpi-keeper, sounding increasingly Blanchettian. “They were all of them…deceived. For another Ring was made…”

“One so shiny and glittery that only the tasteless would wear it!” shouted Vog emption.

“The Status Symbol of the Small Minded!” bellowed Cirk-onwe.

They all cried, “The One Bling!!!”

“Handy, really,” said the Parrot-Dwarf Kuru-claw, settling on his mind’s true body.
“Because I bought it at a jumble-sale just two months past.”

“You mean?” said Kuru-suwyniel blankly.

“Yep,” said the Parrot. “It’s in that bag on your back. My back. Your back. You know.”

Kuru-suwyinel dug around in the pack, and eventually came up with the gaudy great Ring. As soon as she pushed it onto her thick, gnarled finger, everything turned white around them and then black, and then some static, and then a small snippet of a Radio Four program about tourism in Hull, and then darkness, and then they were back on the beach.

In their own bodies. Which made everything a lot easier. Except. They. Had. Lost. Both. Syntax. And. The. Damn. Boat.

Yep – couldn’t see it anywhere. In the words of Marcel Proust – shucks.
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