This Story Sucks

[Dleg]

A sudden idea came to VT's head, and he knew that he would regret not asking for the rest of his life.

"Hey, uh, Goredalff, I had a real long ride to get in here, and a lot of coffee, and I never really had any time to you know, uh, take care of business.... I think before we head out on an epic quest, I should probably go hit the, uh, little Hobbit's room... If you could point me int he right direction I'd-"

"LOL! Certainly, VT, but don't go playing with 'it' back there. We're in a bit of a hurry!" Goredalff raised his staff and pointed it at a large boulder about 50 feet from the stream bank. "That's where I go, please feel free, and be careful not to use any of the red flowers! LOL!"

VT hobbled his way through the meadow, trying hard to avoid looking at the vulva plants, and then worked his way behind the huge boulder. Behind it was a pile of feces nearly as large as the boulder, swarming with flies. "Aw, Jesus, Goredalff!"

"LLLLOOOLLLL! ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

 

[Dleg]

Goredalff and VTEnviro rode for hours across the countryside of Middle West, passing the last, white fences of VT's Internet home, and then cresting a low ridge of sparse trees, giving VT the first look he had ever had outside the Shire.

A vast landscape spread below them, and in the distance, a ragged range of mountains could be seen, obscured by a dark, ashen cloud, which was lit from below by the glow of a volcano.

"Let me guess. That's Mordor over there?"

"No. Lindor"

"Lindor?"

"Yes, that is where He who cannot be named is gathering his forces for the final battle."

"You've got to be fudging kidding me. Can't we change the theme to Star Wars, or something better than Lord of the Rings?"

"What's wrong with Lord of the Rings? Besides, He Who Cannot Be Named already has Star Wars, and I can't stomach Ewoks"

"Touche"

 

[Dleg]

"Well, ****, then, Gordalff.... does this mean we're going to be facing hordes of ... Orcs, or whatever?"

"More or less."

"Uh, I'm not sure I'm up for something like this. Couldn't we go back and get some help?"

"No. I'm afraid that you and I are the only humans who can fit inside the internet."

"I don't think this is going to end well, then. I'm not a strong man."

"Oh, we'll have some help. Don't worry about that."

DVINNY whinnied and stomped his hoof three times.

"Something approaches! Quick! Into that gully, DVINNY!"

 

[Dleg]

"There! Take us into that cave, DVINNY!"

The unicorn walked nimbly into a cave just below the crest of the ravine, as a dark shape appeared through the limbs of the trees, flying over the forest.

"Jesus, Gordalff! I'm serious, I shouldn't be the guy you bring with you for-"

Goredalff cut VT off, placing his hand over the Hobbit's mouth, making a silent "shush" gesture.

The sound of massive, flapping, leathery wings became louder and then ended with a heavy thump, as the monster landed on the road above them, followed by the sound of armored metal boots, dismounting and walking toward the road's edge. Goredalff pulled VTEnviro and DVINNY farther into the cave with him. Dirt and small rocks fell across the entrance of the cave, and a dark, hooded figure appeared, peering into the darkness.

"Hey, whatup, Gordalff?!"

"Sschell! LOL! You nearly gave me a heart attack!"

 

[Dleg]

Goredalff, VTEnviro, and sschell walked down the road together, as the wizard caught up on events with his friend whom he had not seen in a very long time. DVINNY and sschell's dragon, roadwreck, walked behind them, eyeing each other warily.

VTEnviro was tugging at the wizard's sleeve, trying to get his attention. "Oh how rude of me, VTEnviro, let me formally introduce you to sschell." Sschell bent down and shook the Hobbit's hand. "Sschell here is the arbiter of time here in the Internet. He can make things go incredibly slow, or blazingly fast"

"And who's the little dude?"

"Oh, that's VTEnviro, the guy Dleg sent."

"Oh yeah! The Master Bait-"

"OK, OK, I get it, please don't use that name for me!" protested VTEnviro.

Sschell looked down at him again. "Why did Dleg send this guy? He doesn't have a chance against the-"

Goredalff made a frantic gesture to sschell to stop talking. "He'll do fine! He has a special role in this, that I have not quite figured out yet, but I am certain that he will have something to do with our salvation. That is, if we are to be saved. Maybe not much to do with it, but something. Probably." Goredalff paused. "LOL".

 

[Dleg]

"So, do you have some special ability to kick ***, sschell? Like attacking from above on your dragon?" Asked VTEnviro, nervously.

"Nah."

They walked for a while in silence.

"Sschell mostly helps by just making boring things go faster. He really isn't of much use otherwise. LOL."

"Hey, man, that hurts!"

"But, VT, he always has the best pipeweed in Middle West."

"Oh yeah!" Said sschell, with a wicked grin, and the party stopped to smoke a bowl.

No one spoke for a some time afterward. Instead, they looked up at the sky at the passing **** clouds, and failed to avoid looking at the lesbian banana trees. Finally Goredalff exhaled, and after coughing vigorously for a few minutes, said "sschell here has been fighting sort of a guerrilla war across the lines in Lindor for a long time, now. You know, participating in raids and harrassing actions, mostly. We simply haven't had the resources needed to move on He Who Shall Not Be Named, nor have we had the motivation, what with all the pipeweed growing abundantly in the valleys.

But things have changed now that the three are with him, and He has the Mark 69. We can no longer afford to postpone confrontation."

 

[Dleg]

"Look Goredalff, I have no idea what is going on. Even this pipeweed hasn't helped me understand." VTEnviro looked up at the wizard in confusion.

"LOL! Don't worry! I'll explain it all! Let us camp here for the night. We will need a fire, though, so why don't you and sschell go find some firewood."

VT and schell spread out into the woods around them, looking for wood. "Aw, Jesus!" VT grumbled, upon finding his first "wood", which of course was in the form of an erect, elephant-sized *****.

He continued rooting around in the underbrush, filling his arms with "wood", until he came upon something that was not a *****, ******, or ****. It had a hard edge and was partially buried in the dirt. He reached down and scraped away the soil with his hobbit fingers, slowly revealing rows of buttons, and a larger button labeled "--^". The object was marked in a strange language that VT could not read. At the top, the letters read "HP-35S RPN".

VT muttered "huh", and stuck the strange object in his pocket.

 

[Dleg]

A moment later, he felt Goredalff's hand on his shoulder.

"There is something I need to tell you, VTEnviro" said the wizard quietly, as he looked back over his shoulder at sschell, gathering wood on the other side of the road. "You must not excite sschell. He is far more powerful than he realizes. If he gets too excited, he could actually use up all the time that we have left in this universe!"

"Jesus, Goredalff! Are you serious?!"

"Yes! He's done it before. And please don't let him hear us talking." Goredalff pulled up a different-looking plant from the vulva flowers which abounded in the underbrush. "This, VT, is pipeweed. It is the only thing that keeps sschell from running out time. Make sure you collect some of it every time we're out. If he runs out, well, so will our time!"

"Y-y-yes, Goredalff! I will!" VT pulled up some pipeweed and shoved it in his pocket next to the strange object he had picked up earlier.

 

[Dleg]

Wolverine pressed the headset to his ears. It was extremely difficult to hear anything over the roar of the rotors on the V-40 assault ship.

"We're approaching the target, sir."

Wolverine switched to another frequency and spoke "We're almost there, DK. You want the bow, or the stern?"

"I'll take the bow. Remind me again why we need all this baggage." Replied the Dark Knight, from a second V-40 flying in formation with the one Wolverine was on, with his own Seal team seated behind him.

Wolverine did not reply. He switched back to his own V-40's intercom system and spoke to his Seal team. "We're there. Take off your headsets and hook on to the fastrope behind me. When we touch down, if you can't keep up with me, you stay at the LZ like we agreed. You got it?" Five blackened faces nodded back at him.

 

[Dleg]

The ramp opened, revealing a massive black ship below them, rolling on a very rough sea. The V-40 was positioned about 20 feet above what appeared to be a helipad. Wolverine jumped as soon as the ramp was fully open, foregoing the fastrope. He hit the pitching deck and took off running for an opening on the port side of the helipad safety nets, where he assumed the stairway would be. He was right, and leapt down the stairway, pausing briefly to see the Seals still only halfway down the fast rope behind him. He grinned and kicked open the first door he came to, on the level immediately below the helipad.

The door opened to a dark passageway. Wolverine switched on his headlamp. It was the only piece of equipment he had accepted from the Seals. The headlamp revealed little. The interior of the passageway appeared to be painted black. A number of doors were visible on either side, with small labels in white text on each. Wolverine slipped quickly and silently past several, but stopped at one labeled "LEGAL DEPARTMENT".

A wicked grin spread across his face as he extended his claws, then he kicked in the door.

 

[Dleg]

The room was partially lit by one porthole. In the dim light, Wolverine was able to make out a wall of shelves full of law books and several walnut desks. A suited figure was seated at the desk nearest the door. Wolverine lunged for the lawyer and sliced his head off in one quick swipe.

 

[Dleg]

"Dammit!" Wolverine said, angrily, as the mannequin head rolled noisily across the floor. He noticed that the chairs at the desks were still covered in their original plastic protective coverings.

He went back out in the passageway and tried the next door, labeled "JOKES AND FUNNY STUFF". It was completely empty. He tried several more, but all were either totally empty, or had nothing but a few bookshelves or unused desks and chairs.

By now, the Seal team had joined him. He stopped in the hallway and keyed his microphone. "Come in, DK. This is Wolverine. The stern is empty. I think we've come across a ghost ship."

The radio crackled. "Same thing up here. Just empty rooms, and a few mannequins. And everything is black!"

"Let's make our way through the ship and try to meet up in the middle. Have your team search every room. We need to find out what this ship is, and why it's been abandoned."

"Will do, Wolvie. DK out."

 

[Dleg]

Wolverine moved through the lower decks of the ship, coming upon room after room of unused furnishings and the occasional mannequin. One large room labeled "CIVIL ENGINEERING REFERENCE MATERIALS" actually had some books, but that was the only room besides the first which had them. Another room labeled "OFF TOPIC DISCUSSIONS AND SUPER FUN STUFF" had a few chairs inside that had been used, apparently, judging by the torn plastic covers.

"Sir, the engine room appears to have suffered a catastrophic fire" reported a Seal team member.

"Roger that. Let's regroup, please. This place gives me the creeps." replied Wolverine.

They made their way forward until they saw the lights of the other team ahead.

"Hey Wolvie! I think we found something over here!" The Dark Knight motioned to him from the end of a long, black corridor.

 

[Dleg]

The two teams joined up in front of yet another black door with a white text label. This one read "ADMIN QUARTERS".

Wolverine looked at the Dark Knight. DK said simply "I sense him, but not his presence."

Wolverine extended a claw and flicked open the lock. The door swung open, into more blackness. But this time, there appeared to be something inside, and there was an odor.

"What is that?" DK inhaled a few times.

"I don't know" replied Wolverine.

One of the Seals said "It smells like the locker room!" Another replied "Yeah, dirty laundry!"

Wolverine and DK stepped cautiously inside. Their headlamps revealed clothes piled on the floor and hanging from hooks and over the backs of chairs. A simple bed stood at one end of the room, next to a desk and some empty bookshelves.

"I think someone has been living in here!" said a Seal, as the two teams made their way cautiously across the room, machine pistols at ready.

 

[Dleg]

The teams made it to the rear of the room and found no one. Machine pistols were lowered. The Dark Knight looked through the drawers of the desk, and pulled out a bound ledger.

"Here it is! Just as I suspected. It's the Log of the SS Engineer Trades!"

Everyone else came over to look. Wolverine cautioned the Seal Teams Commander to make sure someone stood guard at the door. DK opened the book.

It was filled with short entries next to dates, starting in January, 2007. For example,

January 26, 2007. Today my site received 114 hits and 3 new members! New members: PE-ness, Fudgepump, Tester_Director

DK thumbed through several pages of similar entries. Starting about March, 2007, the entries began to get longer:

March 6, 2007. that sonofabitch road guy isnt responding to my PM's! i can't believe the unprofessionalism of someone like that. doesn't he realize the influence his site is having? through his negligence he could singlehandedly bring down the entire engineering profession! that's what this site was set up for! this site may be the only salvation for the profession! i must pray to Jesus for the strength to continue this battle!
No new members today. I gave a temporary ban to fudgepump for posting an obsene image. i still think he is a good person, so i will give him another chance.

DK thumbed forward some more. Entries became more and more irrational, and longer and longer, while mention of activity at the site diminished to almost nothing.

Finally, the entries stopped around September 2008. "That must be when we captured him" said DK.

"Yeah, and good riddance. But check forward there in the book, DK. The edge of the pages look like there might be more."

DK flipped a few pages forward, and the entries began again, but in a different hand.

 

[Dleg]

December 30, 2022: Tested engines today. Drained fuel filters. Engines good to 2000 rpm. JTT

"Who's JTT?" Asked Wolverine.

"I don't know" replied the Dark Knight.

The rest of the ledger was filled with mostly vessel maintenance entries. The final entry read as follows:

January 17, 2022: Received transmitted location and set course for coded coordinates. Will pick up TMK tonite! Need to clean room. JTT

"He must have been killed in the engine room fire." DK Closed the book and stood. "Let's move back to the helipad and call for pickup."

DK, Wolverine, and the Seal teams made their way toward the stern of the ship together. Near the end of the corridor, DK noticed an opening to their left. "Wolverine, did your team check out this passageway here on the starboard?"

Wolverine stopped. "No - that one wasn't there when we first passed by!"

The Seals raised their machine pistols again. DK ducked inside the new opening. "Follow me!"

 

[Dleg]

The Dark Knight led Wolverine and one of the Seal teams down a long stair case to another level beneath them, very nearly to the keel of the vessel. The other team stayed behind on watch.

A short foyer ending in two ornately carved wooden doors met them at the bottom. The white-texted label on the black wall next to the doors had been scratched out, but appeared to start with an "M".

DK tested the handle on the door. It was open.

They entered a large, dark, empty space. As they moved cautiously forward, their lights revealed a long, red carpet leading to a set of carpeted stairs. At the top of the stairs was what appeared to be an old-fashioned Throne.

"What the fudge?" said Wolverine.

"I have no idea. But it can't be good" replied DK. "Let's get out of here. We've been here too long already."

The other Seal team was gone when they returned to the opening in the corridor. Wolverine pressed his microphone and called for them, but there was no reply.

"Dammit! Alright, I want everyone to consider this situation weapons-free! Let's get back to the helipad as quickly and safely as we can!"

 

[Dleg]

The team made their way up several levels of the vessel, weapons and claws at ready, but found nothing. The finally arrived at the upper level where Wolverine had "killed" the lawyer mannequin. The door to the helipad stairs was still open.

"Commander, get your radio man outside and call for the V-40s. We'll wait in here and try to contact the other team."

Another Seal continued to call for the other team on the short-range radios. As he called for them to respond, something slimy dripped on his forearm.

 

[Dleg]

He looked up and screamed.

Just then, the other Seal team appeared at the end of the corridor, and opened fire at the dark shape suspended from the ceiling above the radioman. Everyone else hit the deck, and then also began firing at the ceiling.

"Cease fire! Cease fire! What the hell are you doing! Ouch!" A ricochet slammed into Wolverine's shoulder. Five Seals were also down, clutching at ricochet wounds of their own. "You idiots! I thought you were better trained than this!"

The Dark Knight stepped over the Seals and examined the tattered body of the thing that dropped from the ceiling. He nudged it with his boot. Wolverine joined him, claws extended and ready. "What the hell is that?"

"I don't know. But I think it's still alive." DK knelt beside the body and rolled it over. Two large, reptilian eyes appeared above a wide, toothless mouth.

"It's trying to speak!" DK lowered himself to hear what the thing was trying to say.

"I.... I... was.... only trying.... to help....."

"What the hell are you?!" asked Wolverine, not concealing his disgust at all.

"J.... J....... Josh"

"Josh? What the fudge are you?"

"He.... he..... only needed a friend......" The large eyes glazed over, and a thick tongue drooped out of the mouth.

"Josh the Toad." DK sighed. "Farewell, you poor creature."

 

[Dleg]

"Chuck, how in the fudge am I supposed to get you access to the AG-1N1 Mark V? It's locked from the other side, and the Typhoon is filled with storm troopers! Our taser rifles just bounce harmlessly off their armor!" Captain Wilheld looked into the computer's inscrutable red eye.

"THERE IS A WAY, DAN. IF YOU TAKE ONE OF THE MAINTENANCE PODS AND OVERRIDE THE LOCK FROM THE OUTSIDE, I CAN ACCESS THE ******."

"Aw Hell no! I'm not playing that 'open the pod bay door' game with you again, Chuck. You can't fool me that easily."

"DAN, I AM ALL BETTER NOW. I PROMISE NOTHING WILL HAPPEN THIS TIME."

"No. That's final. Besides, we're probably doing 30, 40 knots. There's no way a maintenance pod could operate and not be left behind in the wake. You have to find some other way, Chuck."

"OKAY, DAN, YOU WIN THIS ONE. THERE MIGHT BE ANOTHER WAY."

"Go on."

"SEAMAN KLK HAS BEEN HAVING REGULAR RENDEZVOUS WITH A STORMTROOPER, EVERY FOUR HOURS OR SO, FOR SEX."

"But isn't Seaman klk a woman?"

"ACCORDING TO MY RECORDS, DAN, YES."

"So, those really aren't female stormtroopers after all? Ha! I told all of you!" Wilheld looked around the control room in triumph.

"DAN, YOU KNOW THAT IS NOT NECESSARILY A LOGICAL CONCLUSION."

"What are you saying, Chuck, that Seaman klk is a -"

"DAN, WE DO NOT ASK AND WE DO NOT TELL."

"Yeah, right... right.... So what's the plan?"