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The Aimless Quest of Bungston Shag
Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4. Chapter 5. Chapter 6. Chapter 7. Chapter 8. Chapter 9. Chapter 10. Chapter 11. Chapter 12. Chapter 13. Chapter 14. Chapter 15. Chapter 16. Chapter 17. Chapter 18. Chapter 19. Chapter 20. Epilogue.Chapter 3
The humming machine moved smoothly through the water, going deeper and deeper. Inside its confines there was a little light, apparently emitted by the coil itself, but soon it became too dark to see out. Although there seemed to be a permanent bubble inside the strange vehicle, the coil was a scant four feet across, and the air soon took on Robigus' musty odor. Both men squirmed constantly in an effort not to be flipped over by the rotations of the coil. They bounced into each other and into Bungston's soggy Voyageur pack; quarters were close for two and a half. Eventually a small hook on Robigus' armor caught a golden strut and the warrior spun around with each rotation. Bungston watched with interest, then put on his Human Cannonball Helmet, seized a piece of coil and spun also. The ride was boring after that; the only thing to watch was the grimly spinning warrior opposite him. Then Bungston realized that Robigus might get sick, and that would be plenty nasty, considering the close quarters and the centrifugal force.
The whirling wizard began to shout as Robigus watched helplessly. There was a pleasantly pungent odor, and then a metal tube appeared inside the coil, enclosing both men. Bungston scrambled to screw on the clear plastic lid as the tube fell behind the submarine coil, then jerked as the tow rope pulled taut. The wizard looked around in the near darkness, pursed his lips in appraisal, then tilted his head smugly at Robigus, who was properly amazed. "Waste of a good stoagie, though", commented Bungston suavely through his now stationary Helmet. He also mentally congratulated himself for the tricky tow rope, which he had gotten on the first try.
Back at the prehistoric cabana, Napoleon could wait no longer. He had slept for as long as he possibly could until his canine instincts roused him and told him to hunt for food. Yet in Napoleon's mutant brain laziness still had the upper hand over instinct, and he had managed to wait for Bungston a little longer by making a mangled ruin out of his rawhide chew toy. After a few hours it was pretty chewed out (though as soon as it dried it would be as good as new.) Napoleon licked the brownie pan clean for the umpteenth time, then walked out to the green brick circle and drew a long deep breath. "um... HAYSTACK CATSPRAY...HAT TRICK GREENBAY!" A gentle breeze ruffled his fur, but this happened often when the shaggy mutant went outside. "WONTON POMPOM TERIYAKI FIREBOMB MEATBALL FREEFALL RIBS BURGERS DOUBLE FRIES! WITH BARBECUE SAUCE!" Again his spell had no effect but to make him drool copiously, and this was probably due to thoughts concerning barbecue sauce. He just didn't have the talent for the right talk at the right time that Bungston did. Stomach growling, Napoleon went in to get a flashlight, then used it to search under the edges of the cabana for crabs. He could cook a crab stew. When his search turned up no edibles, he went down to comb the shoreline, keeping the flashlight handy to bludgeon anything ornery into submission. Napoleon had just seized a hapless horseshoe crab and was considering eating it raw when something big flew up out of the water only yards away from where the mutant was standing.
Napoleon turned and scrambled for the cabana as the humming golden coil shot through the air after him. When it was obvious he would never reach the cabana in time, he hurled the horseshoe crab at the approaching alien device only to have the critter pass unimpeded through the rings and land in the water. He swung the flashlight valiantly, but to no avail. "BUNGSTON! HELP ME!" he howled desperately as the coil encircled him and bore him away. Little did he know Bungston and Robigus had just fallen prey to a pernicious coil themselves.
Unlike those two, however, Napoleon found the ride quite enjoyable once he had resigned himself to it; his ample fur made him slippery enough that he always stayed at the bottom of the compartment, and using the flashlight he could make a headlight and see into the dark water surrounding his glowing cage. He could not hear the rush of the water which he knew must be passing by the coil at great speed. Perhaps the hum of the mysterious machinery drowned out any other noise, but more likely it was some sort of force field, reasoned the mutant; something pushed back when he tried to push a leg beyond the confines of the coil. This also meant that despite his best efforts, he was unable to grab any pupils from the schools of sushi through which he passed from time to time. Napoleon later became fond of the force field when a dimly seen sinuous creature came out of the darkness to glide next to the coil, watching the shaggy seven-foot morsel cowering inside. Napoleon switched off the flashlight and enjoyed the ride.
After a while Napoleon's carriage angled upwards and the water outside grew lighter. Mutant and machine burst out of the water into a parabola over the shore. The coil gently tilted and decelerated into a beautiful landing, then screwed itself completely into the sand, leaving its passenger standing upright on an overcast beach. Napoleon stretched and took a look at his surroundings. The rather stony beach gave way to a dense forest of scruffy pines and bushes. The sky was heavily overcast and the ocean was choppy. All in all not the vacation paradise he was accustomed to, thought Napoleon, but a change was interesting. The less voluntary, the more interesting. Then the other coil burst from the ocean, and Napoleon turned to watch its landing.
The tube attached to the glowing coil read "Vega y Mendez" in waterworn letters, and it trailed clumsily behind the coil as both emerged from the water. As the machine tilted and slowed out of its arc, the tube overshot it, upsetting the delicate equilibrium of the system. What resulted was a sort of "crack the whip" game, with the two men hunched in the far end of the tube the part that gets cracked. The coil, now facing back toward the ocean, swung its trailer around in a huge semi-circle. The end of the tube bashed into the beach with a resounding popping noise, digging a pretty crater and splitting the metal up the side in the process. The coil then slowly dragged the tube around in circles on the beach.
Napoleon jogged alongside the damaged coil chewing the line tethering it to the tube with his powerful teeth. It was salty but not too bad. The rope severed, he grabbed the heavy coil as best he could and set it on its end, whereupon it gratefully sank out of sight into the beach. Then the industrious mutant turned his attention to the cigar tube. Transparent material seemed to be oozing from the fissure in the end. Always wary of jellyfish and amoebas and such, Napoleon approached with caution, but after closer scrutiny it turned out to be bubble-sheet packing material. Napoleon hated the stuff, because his digits were too thick and awkward to pop the little pods. There was a feeble movement under the plastic, so Napoleon tugged out all of it within reach, then cautiously peered into the stinky tubular compartment with his flashlight.
"Nap, is that you? Get this thing open!" It was his master's voice. Napoleon set a paw on either edge of the rent metal and heaved mightily. After two or three tries the tube split almost down to the middle, and the two men inside clambered out. There were reams of bubble-sheets inside. Robigus stood, gave a perfunctory glance to the nearby maroon mutant, and then wobbled a short distance away before collapsing on the beach. Bungston was still sitting by the tube trying to remove his Human Cannonball Helmet. Napoleon aided him with vigor. Once free, the woozy wizard opened his mouth and removed a soggy nutmeg with deep toothmarks, then flopped on his back and watched the thick gray clouds. "Whoah! Lucky thing I got those bubble deals in there in time or you could roll us and smoke us right about now!"
Napoleon prodded the tube with his foot. "You know, Bung," he rasped in his chainsaw voice, "I just got the coil. No trailer at all. It wasn't that bad a ride; it picked me right up from the cabana. I wonder why you got this pipe thing and I didn't."
"Playing favorites, no doubt," replied the wizard. Napoleon caught a tasty smell mingled in with the strange aroma emerging from the broken tube. Digging revealed a dripping bag in among the plastic sheets. Bungston looked over from his sand heap. "Oh, yeah, help yourself." The fruit had become an amalgam of skin and pulp, but at least it was mostly seed free; the starved mutant set aside his usual antipathy for fruit and dug in with relish.
When Bungston caught his breath he joined his mutant in a meal of mush. Robigus the warrior soon joined the two, apparently having recovered completely. "You are Napoleon the Mutant, I take it," he said, haughtily indicating Napoleon with his chin.
Napoleon grunted and continued to put away the mush, but Bungston sat back against a rock and regarded the armored warrior solemnly. Not only was the leather on his armor in bad shape, noticed the wizard, but his sandals were falling apart too. In fact, all of Robigus' clothes except for the metal parts looked like someone had carted them down into a Florida basement and left them for a year or three. "Ok, Robigus, you seem to know all about us, but all I know is your name." Napoleon raised his dripping muzzle and cleared his throat pointedly. Bungston instantly became an epitome of social grace. "Oh, excuse me! Robigus, this is Napoleon, my comrade and pet. Napoleon, this is Robigus..." Bungston looked questioningly at the warrior, who shifted his weight back and forth.
"uh, Robigus alone will suffice." Napoleon extended a matted paw soaked with juice and pulp, and man and mutant let Robigus understand by their attitudes that he was compelled by common courtesy to shake it. He shook it. Napoleon and Bungston leaned back against the rock. "Maybe you'd like to tell us something about yourself", rasped Napoleon, playing along with Bungston.
Robigus hemmed and hawed a little, then suddenly collected himself. "Come with me," he commanded with renewed bluster. "I shall speak as we march." Napoleon opened his eyes to their rheumy widest to show how impressed he was, but the armored warrior was already striding towards the woods, and all the mutant received for his trouble was some windblown grit. Rubbing his eye with the juice-free back of a paw, he ambled gamely after Robigus. Bungston grabbed an armload of the plastic bubble-sheets and ran to catch up.
The threesome trudged along a looping path through the dank forest. It took a while before Bungston realized that the path actually was looping, but all of his persuasive power could not make Robigus skip the loops and just go straight. Napoleon shamefacedly mumbled his support for the course Robigus chose, and so Bungston turned his abilities elsewhere. It did not take long to start Robigus talking. "In truth, I am the emissary of Her August Majesty, Queen Z, Sovereign Ruler of Avalon."
"Avalon, eh?", murmured Bungston. "Where exactly is Avalon?"
"You are on the island itself," proclaimed Robigus grandly if evasively. "Queen Z has always been impressed with the idea of Valhalla, a place where great warriors are collected to feast and fight and womanize for eternity. Many years ago she accidentally arrived here and found the island uninhabited except for a few fairies. She decided to use her great magic skills to set up a place similar to Valhalla but with warriors gathered from the four corners of the globe."
This caught Napoleon's attention. "There are really seven, you know," he informed their escort in his painful-sounding rasp. "I've been to five myself and I've talked to a guy who's been to all seven." Bungston pondered briefly where a globe would have any corners, much less seven. He decided to ask his apparently expert mutant later and turned his thoughts to this Avalon situation. If Valhalla was where all the great warriors went, he wondered, what sort of warriors did Queen Z find to populate Avalon? His question was interrupted by a muscular young man and a lady who were passing in the opposite direction. The man looked Mayan or at least South American, but was dressed in a thick trenchcoat with a quiver of arrows laced into the belt and his bow and spears over his shoulder. The woman wrapped in one of his arms could have been a cheerleader at any Midwestern high school, with big hair and a wide rosy face. "Hullo Bob." The Indian nodded to Robigus as he passed, and the armored warrior's gray face was split by a huge grin, as if pleased to be recognized.
"Hello Zit!", he said.
Bungston waited until the two were so far down the path that the cheerleader girl could no longer twist her neck to stare at Napoleon, then asked Robigus who that had been. "A famous warrior named Zit who wears a trenchcoat?"
Robigus immediately resumed his grim demeanor. "Yes, indeed. He won the trenchcoat in fair combat with a man named Marlowe. His true name begins with the letter X, and is difficult to pronounce, so most call him Zit, just as some here call me Bob. Among friends, these are not ignoble names." Robigus said this last rather forcefully, and Napoleon and Bungston were quick to agree that Bob was not ignoble in the least. More and more at his ease, the warrior continued. "But yes, he and his comrade were great heroes in the land they hail from. Somewhere in the newly discovered part of the world, I believe."
The path opened into a what would be a pleasant enough glade, were it not for the gloomy skies and the rather brisk wind. Several tall black menhirs rested in a circle delineating the boundary between forest and meadow. Napoleon walked closer to one of the stones, pulled by his curiosity and natural canine attraction to such objects. He was close enough to notice there were worn inscriptions on the face of the menhir when he spotted a tiny figure sitting on top of the stone. It was about a foot tall and gnarled like an apple left on a radiator. The little creature looked down at the great shaggy beast impassively. "Bung! Bung! Look at the little man!", yelled the mutant.
"I'm not a little man, stupid, I'm a fairy." The object of Napoleon's scrutiny leapt a prodigious leap down from his perch and confronted the mutant, then stalked around the menhir in a huff. Napoleon carefully followed him, but the fairy was nowhere to be found. The stone seemed solid enough. Napoleon snorted in mystification, then shambled away to catch up with the other two.
Robigus had continued with his explanation as he walked. "None are certain just where Avalon is geographically. Queen Z arrived here ages ago, and there has been no contact with the outside world except at her will, by means of the wrapped carriages like the one that brought us here."
"Yeah, I meant to ask about that. I've never seen anything like your flying spring machines. What's the deal?"
Robigus made a visible switch into storytelling mode. "Long ago, there was a civilization who lived deep in the oceans and seas. This nation was spread throughout the world, and through their science they made the wondrous machines you speak of. Queen Z discovered that in addition to these machines, this lost people built great portals on the ocean floor that cause anything moved through them to be transported in an instant to another place or time. Indeed, you and I traveled through one of these portals, although it was too dark to see. All I may say is that by dint of her powers, Queen Z made these machines serve her instead of their creators."
Napoleon caught up in time to hear the last few words. "Dint? What's a dint? I'll put a dint in both of you guys!"
The three were approaching a wooden lodge, and Napoleon's queries were interrupted by two people who were leaving the building. One was a clown with a bulb nose and an improbable crest of red hair cradling back of his bald white head. The other wore armor similar in make to Robigus', but decked all over with small rubber-bulbed horns like one might find on a kid's bicycle. The warrior's hair was very curly and almost white. He grinned a goofy grin and gave several honks on one of the smaller horns as he passed, and the clown chuckled evilly. Robigus' acted a little embarrassed but nodded in response, then increased the speed of his walk. "That was Semidall", he explained. "He really should be in Valhalla since he is a Norseman, but..."
Napoleon leapt to fill the pause. "Who was the clown?", he asked eagerly.
Robigus seemed genuinely ashamed. "That was Bozo. Ah, here we are."
As they walked up the stairs to the lodge both of Robigus' sandals gave at once, falling from his feet. Their leather straps had apparently rotted through, and Robigus picked them up and flipped them off the stairs. Napoleon shook his great head. "This place isn't going to be nice for long if you chuck your trash on the ground like that."
Robigus dismissed the complaint with a motion of his hand. "They will be gone in a few days. Now we will have an opportunity to change our clothing and wash before the feast with the Queen."
NEXT CHAPTER (4)
Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4. Chapter 5. Chapter 6. Chapter 7. Chapter 8. Chapter 9. Chapter 10. Chapter 11. Chapter 12. Chapter 13. Chapter 14. Chapter 15. Chapter 16. Chapter 17. Chapter 18. Chapter 19. Chapter 20. Epilogue.