Menu

Episode 01x33 - The Power of Cheese

Malex:

Up and up the stairs we climbed. Eventually we came upon a platform which jutted outward from the tree at a distance which was twice as long as the staircase was wide. This platform joined four distinct stairways - two going up, and two going down. To allow full access, the staircases approaching the platform from below smoothly widened to twice their normal width. Thusly, it was possible to proceed upward or downward in two separate directions.

We had come from below and I had the feeling that the inside of the tree could be reached from above, so I wanted to lead the troupe upward, but in which direction? Clockwise or counter-clockwise?

I stood on the platform pondering the situation while the rest of the weary group slowly joined. Poo, who had been hugging the tree during the entire ascent, started weeping.

“What the hey is wrong with you?” Linus rebuked. “Just come up here!”

“I can’t come up! I’m scared!” mumbled Poo, whose mouth had only just stopped swelling too badly to speak.

Of course. He’d have to walk away from the tree to avoid smashing his skull on the staircase above him, which was gently sloping downward to meet the platform.

“What are we gonna do?” Icepunk asked.

I shrugged.

“Leave him there to rot, perhaps?” Linus offered delicately.

“Leave it to me,” Boof sighed, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a hunk of hard cheese. “Here ya go little fella!”

“How is that going to help?” I sneered.

Suddenly, Poo got a blank look on his face and started mumbling, “Cheese! Cheese!”

With his brain processes severely repressed, Poo no longer feared the height and was able to scramble up to the platform in a heartbeat. Boof tore a bit of the cheese off and handed it to Poo, who ate it greedily.

I shook my head in disbelief.

As soon as Boof put the remainder of the nasty cheese in his pocket, Poo ‘woke up’.

“How did I get up here?” Poo asked. “Boof! You didn’t use the cheese trick again, did you?! That’s cheating!” He started to pout.

Boof explained, “The aliens did a lot of experiments on us while we were up there.”

“What?” Icepunk said. “You were abducted by aliens?! Sweet!”

“Yeah, I guess,” Boof continued. “Anyway, Poo here really got the short end of the-”

“Shut up! Shut up!” Poo screamed. “You’re not supposed to tell anybody! You promised!”

“Let’s go this way!” I pointed and started off hurriedly.

Many Hours Later:

We came to a dead end. Linus, who had been a ‘good boy’ for hours now, unleashed a torrent of well-crafted, expletive-based dissertations. Poo started screaming.

“It’s a maze!” Icepunk yelled. “How are we gonna beat this game now?”

I looked at him. “Game? GAME?! All of our lives are at stake, and it’s only a GAME?”

I must confess that I tried to strangle him on the spot.

The rest of our journey is somewhat vague in my head. Mainly we just wandered around, trying to avoid running into dead ends, getting more and more weary, and watching fearfully as Boof ran slowly out of cheese.

“Well guys, we’re out of cheese,” Boof said solemnly as he pressed a tiny crumb of cheese into Poo’s trembling palms. “It’s gonna be really difficult to go through any more of these intersections unless Poo manages to get a hold of himself.”

“We could always leave him to rot!” Linus suggested cheerily.

“Oh hush guys,” I said. “I think I see something up ahead.”

Indeed there was something. The tree trunk abruptly ended, leaving a charred, jagged edge looming just above our heads.

Our staircase spiraled around the broken remains of the tree until we reached the top. It was apparent that the tree had been struck by something like a massive bolt of lightning, which caused it to be shorn off where we now stood. Something had entirely hollowed out the trunk and filled it with lava, which was bubbling only a few hundred feet below us. Something had suspended a metal platform in the air above the lava by huge chains that anchored it to the dead wood of the tree every hundred feet. And - last, but not least - SOMETHING was sitting on the platform waiting for us.

“Help!” Echofly yelled to us from a corner of the platform. “It’s got me, and it’s horrible!”

Indeed it was horrible. It vaguely resembled a dragon, only it had two heads. One head looked like Robb, and the other looked like Bobb, which meant that I couldn’t really tell any major difference.

It snorted at us defiantly.

“Well Icepunk,” I said. “You’re always playing those first person shooter games... What should we do?”

“Well, normally we’d have, you know, guns. But heck, what have we got to lose?” Icepunk started climbing down the nearest chain.

“Uh, our lives?” I asked, but started down the chain anyway.

Icepunk:

We all climb down the chains to the platform below and face the dragon.

I immediately concoct a fool-proof plan for defeating the dragon and rescuing Echofly. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. Linus, you distract the dragon while Malex and I try to kill it. Boof and Poo, grab Echofly and take her out of this crater to safety.”

Thubthub asks, “What about me, Ice?”

“Thubthub, you have the most important job,” I say. “You need to make sure Linus doesn’t pass out from the extreme pain he’ll feel when the dragon smacks him around. Got it everyone?”

Everybody nods, except Malex, who asks, “Why are we listening to him? He has the worst plans ever. Come on, guys, don’t tell me you think his idea is good.”

Boof, Poo, Linus and Thubthub shrug and look confused. I cross my arms and scowl at Malex. “Do you have a better idea?”

Malex blinks. “No. Nonetheless, if anything goes wrong, I will of course blame you.”

“Deal,” I say. “Let’s go.”

Linus runs over to the dragon and kicks its shins. “Take this! And that! And some of these-”

The dragon steps on him in contempt. We hear a resounding ‘crunch’. The dragon lifts its foot and we hear Linus whimpering, “Ouch ouch ouch ouch...”

Thubthub scurries over and starts giving him a pep talk on how to deal with pain and dismemberment, while Malex and I run over to the dragon. Just before we pierce the dragon with our spears, a thought occurs to me. “Say, Malex, what if we threw our spears and got it in the eye? Would that work?”

Linus begins piecing himself back together and rasping a song, “Okay, the tailbone’s connected to the spinal cord, the spinal cord’s connected to the rib cage-”

Malex interrupts by saying, “Shut up, Linus, we’re trying to think here.” To me he replies, “But all of the important organs are in its belly. If we stab that, all of its guts will leak out and it’ll die.”

The dragon stomps Linus into the ground as soon as he finishes healing. “Ding-dingetty!” Linus curses.

“What does that even mean?” I inquire of Linus.

“Oh, nothing,” he responds casually.

“How about this...” I say thoughtfully to Malex. “What if you jab his gut while I aim for one of his heads? That way, we kill two nerds with, um, two pointy sticks.”

Malex looks disgusted at my choice of metaphor, but agrees anyway and begins stabbing the monster repeatedly. It screams and tries to step on him, but he nimbly dances out of the way. I toss my spear at it, but it misses and glances off the scales on its neck. Further enraged, it stumbles around, trampling Linus again and falling off the platform into the lava.

Linus limps over to us and grimaces. “I’m gonna be sore in the morning. How do we get out of here?”

As if in reply, reality blinks away, and we are all transported back to the lab.