Tag Archives: Fanfiction

De-Li’s Little Mistake

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Oh boy. Yet again, a children’s tele­vi­sion pro­gramme has dri­ven me to the brink of insan­ity. I return bear­ing this. The worst thing of all is that I’m sober, though I have the sud­den desire not to be.

If you haven’t watched Way­bu­loo before, you should prob­a­bly expe­ri­ence the sac­cha­rine hor­ror on iPlayer before read­ing this travesty.

Crack-crack-crack, came the noise from the sky.

“Look! Whizz-cracker!” said Lau-Lau, and the other Piplings joined her to watch.

“That not whizz-cracker,” said De-Li.

“Not whizz-cracker?”

“Not whizz-cracker. 90-millimetre anti-aircraft gun.”

“Oh. Pretty 90-millimetre anti-aircraft gun.”

Just then, the Piplings heard the famil­iar chimes of the mys­ti­cal device that some­how con­trolled their lives, and like every other day, they were com­pelled to obey its call.

“Yogo?” asked Yojojo.

“Yogo!”

“Debate finer points of anti-aircraft war­fare after Yogo,” said De-Li.

And off they went.

Lined up in front of the name­less device, each Pipling took their allot­ted turn in the rit­ual, announc­ing a shape into which they would have to con­tort themselves.

“Tree!” said Nok-Tok. And they tried to look like trees.

“Shell!” said De-Li. And they tried to look like shells.

“Mon­key!” said Yojojo, which all the oth­ers thought was prob­a­bly cheat­ing. But the machine was watch­ing, so they did it anyway.

“Fish!” said Lau-Lau. They tried to look like fish.

Then, at long last, the device began to chime its song again. It had been appeased for now, and the Piplings tip­toed qui­etly out of the clear­ing in case it heard them and sum­moned them back to dance once more for its enter­tain­ment.

Back near their houses, the Piplings were look­ing out again at what lay beyond their tiny ver­dant world.

“Why rest of Nara so brown?” asked Nok-Tok.

“Chee­bie last week say End Times com­ing,” said Yojojo. “Chee­bie par­ents say some­thing about ‘Jee-sus’.”

“Lau-Lau won­der why Chee­bies leave, go back to brown place,” said Lau-Lau.

“Chee­bies say some­thing about ‘Soma’ wear­ing off,” said Yojojo. “Chee­bies go back to get more.”

“Oh,” said Nok-Tok. “Make sense.”

Another noise entered the Piplings’ world from across the hori­zon — this time, a more human noise.

“Chee­bies?” asked Yojojo.

“Chee­bies!” exclaimed Lau-Lau. But they turned and looked, and didn’t see quite what they were expect­ing to see.

“Why Chee­bies so old?” asked Nok-Tok.

“Why Chee­bies carry assault rifles?” asked De-Li.

“Play Peeka?” asked Lau-Lau, who was always a lit­tle slow on the up-take.

“Yes, Lau-Lau,” said De-Li. “Play Peeka right now. Play Peeka really, really well.”

So the Piplings hid them­selves in logs and pots and up trees, not sure what to make of the new kind of Chee­bies they had seen.

It soon became clear that, not being five-year-olds asked to look for CGI crea­tures they couldn’t see, the new Chee­bies had some­what of an unfair advan­tage when play­ing Peeka. The Piplings were soon rounded up and made to sit back-to-back in the Yogo clearing.

“What new Chee­bies names?” said Lau-Lau, still not fully grasp­ing the sit­u­a­tion at hand.

One of the Chee­bies stepped forward.

“Sergeant Arrow­smith, US Marine Corp,” he said. “Are you the inhab­i­tants of this place?”

“Lau-Lau not know word in-habbit-uns.”

The sergeant sighed. “Do you live here?”

“Yes!” said Lau-Lau hap­pily. “Piplings live here!”

“And do I under­stand cor­rectly that you are in pos­ses­sion of a machine known as the ‘Any­thing Machine’, which is capa­ble of gen­er­at­ing any object known to the user?”

“Yes! Any­thing machine!”

De-Li kicked Lau-Lau’s ankle sharply, and got a gun pointed at her for her trouble.

“Play nice,” said the Marine on the other end of the gun. He sneered down the barrel.

“You will take us to this machine,” said the sergeant.

The Piplings were marched at gun­point to another clear­ing, where the Any­thing Machine sat.

“Good,” said Arrow­smith. “You will now use this machine to pro­duce for me an LGM-30 Min­ute­man bal­lis­tic mis­sile with a sin­gle war­head, tar­geted at Moscow.”

“No!” gasped De-Li, and wished she hadn’t.

“Nok-Tok not know what that is,” Nok-Tok said. “Machine not work when not know what making.”

“The pink one knows, sir,” said the Marine who’d pointed the gun earlier.

“Pink crea­ture,” said the sergeant, point­ing his own rifle at Lau-Lau. “Make the fuck­ing mis­sile, or I shoot the stu­pid one. No tricks.”

De-Li took one look into Lau-Lau’s wide star­ing eyes, and turned her atten­tion to the machine. A few sec­onds of think­ing, a few sec­onds of trem­bling ground and burn­ing air, and off the mis­sile flew into the sky.

They waited, and waited. Min­utes passed.

Then, over the hori­zon, a bril­liant flash lit up Nara’s sky.

“Good,” said the sergeant, heft­ing the Any­thing Machine onto his shoul­der. “Tie the crea­tures up and make them walk. We’re head­ing back to base.“

Years later, the once-green patch of Nara was as scorched and black­ened as the rest of the land. A gust of wind sep­a­rated the last of the four glit­ter­ing crys­tals from the Yogo device, and it splin­tered into a thou­sand tiny pieces on the ground. Never again would it call the Piplings to per­form for it — the Piplings were free at last. But the Piplings had not been seen since that day they and the Any­thing Machine were taken. If they still some­how lived, they were the last things to live on Nara.

Sir David Attenborough’s Adventures in Wonderland

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Author’s Note:

Oh god, what pos­sessed me to do this?

Chap­ter I. Down the Rabbit-Hole

Sir David Fred­er­ick Atten­bor­ough was begin­ning to get very tired of sit­ting by his film crew on the bank, and of hav­ing noth­ing to do: once or twice he had peeped into the book the sound guy was read­ing, but it had no pic­tures or con­ver­sa­tions in it, ‘and what is the use of a book,’ thought Sir David, ‘with­out pic­tures or con­ver­sa­tion?’ And on a sec­ond glance he noticed the name ‘Tom Clancy’ on the cover, and decided that he was right to pass on it.

So he was con­sid­er­ing in his own mind (as well as he could, for the hot day made him feel very sleepy and as stu­pid as one of the world’s most renowned broad­cast­ers could feel), whether the plea­sure of film­ing a brief 6-part award-winning doc­u­men­tary about sea life would be worth the trou­ble of get­ting up and find­ing a cam­era, when sud­denly a White Rab­bit with pink eyes ran close by him.

There was noth­ing so VERY remark­able in that, rab­bits being by far the least excit­ing wildlife that Sir David had filmed; nor did Sir David think it so VERY much out of the way to hear the Rab­bit say to itself, ‘Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!’ (when he thought it over after­wards, it occurred to him that he ought to have won­dered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite nat­ural); but when the Rab­bit actu­ally TOOK A WATCH OUT OF ITS WAISTCOAT-POCKET, and looked at it, and then hur­ried on, Sir David started to his feet, for it flashed across his mind that she had never before seen a rab­bit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burn­ing with the desire to enthral the licence-fee-paying pub­lic, he ran across the field after it, and for­tu­nately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

In another moment down went Sir David after it, never once con­sid­er­ing how in the world he was to get out again, or how he would instruct the cam­era crew to fol­low him.

The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tun­nel for some way, and then dipped sud­denly down, so sud­denly that Sir David had not a moment to think about stop­ping him­self before he found him­self falling down a very deep well.

Either the well was very deep, or he fell very slowly, for he had plenty of time as he went down to look about him and to won­der whether some shots of the descent would make a good back­ground to the title cred­its. First, he tried to look down and make out what he was com­ing to, but it was too dark to see any­thing; then he looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with cup­boards and book-shelves; here and there he saw maps and pic­tures hung upon pegs. He took down a jar from one of the shelves as he passed; it was labelled ‘ORANGE MARMALADE’, but to his great dis­ap­point­ment it was empty: he did not like to drop the jar for fear of injur­ing some­body and being held liable by the Board of Gov­er­nors, so man­aged to put it into one of the cup­boards as he fell past it.

‘Well!’ thought Sir David to him­self, ‘after such a fall as this, I shall think noth­ing of tum­bling down stairs! How brave they’ll all think me at home!’ But then he paused for a moment, and con­sid­ered his record of film­ing big cats, sharks, and other crea­tures that would con­sider human beings a del­i­cacy. ‘Or per­haps their opin­ion won’t really change after all. (Which was per­fectly true.)

Down, down, down. Would the fall NEVER come to an end! ‘I won­der how many miles I’ve fallen by this time?’ he said aloud. ‘I must be get­ting some­where near the cen­tre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thou­sand miles down, I think—’ (for, you see, Sir David had learnt sev­eral things of this sort in his 80 years as a nat­u­ral­ist and broad­caster, and though this was not a VERY good oppor­tu­nity for show­ing off his knowl­edge, as he had sadly left his radio micro­phone by the river, still it was good prac­tice to say it over) ‘—yes, that’s about the right distance—but then I won­der what Lat­i­tude or Lon­gi­tude I’ve got to?’ (Sir David was acutely aware of the def­i­n­i­tion of lat­i­tude and lon­gi­tude, mak­ing this sen­tence utterly redundant.)

Presently he began again. ‘I won­der if I shall fall right THROUGH the earth!’ But, again, he stopped and con­sid­ered his own excel­lent knowl­edge of physics, and grav­ity in particular–to say noth­ing of the anthro­pol­ogy of the peo­ples of Aus­tralia and New Zealand–which were they absent would no doubt have caused him to fol­low in the utter­ances of one Alice Lid­dell at this point and say some­thing that con­tem­po­rary audi­ences would prob­a­bly find a lit­tle racist.

‘Where’s your fourth wall now, bitches?’ he mut­tered to the reader.

Down, down, down. There was noth­ing else to do, so Sir David soon began talk­ing again. ‘Dinah’ll miss me very much to-night, I should think!’ (Dinah was the record­ing edi­tor.) ‘I hope they’ll remem­ber her saucer of milk at tea-time. Dinah my dear! I wish you were down here with me! I do despair that any­one will ever hear these insight­ful remarks.’ And here Sir David began to get rather sleepy, and went on say­ing to him­self, in a dreamy sort of way, ‘Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?’ and some­times, ‘Do bats eat cats?’ for, you see, after the afore­men­tioned 80 years of nat­u­ral­ism he was now so knowl­edge­able about the mat­ing habits of the Yangtze River Dol­phin and other such curiosi­ties that he had for­got­ten things that oth­ers might con­sider to be blind­ingly obvi­ous. He felt that he was doz­ing off, and had just begun to dream that he was walk­ing hand in hand with Dinah, and say­ing to her very earnestly, ‘Now, Dinah, tell me the truth: did you land that deal with ITV?’ when sud­denly, thump! thump! down he came upon a heap of sticks and dry leaves, and the fall was over.

Alright, no more. I can’t stand another 10-and-a-half chap­ters of this.

Thomas and the Fall of Sodor

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This story is rated Super-X, and is thus not suit­able for any­one what­so­ever to read. Flee now if you are in any way likely to be hor­ri­fied by: Fan­fic­tion, Bad fan­fic­tion, swear­ing, vio­lence, death, sex, train butt­sex, Ayn Rand, or the inner­most evils of my mind.

To any­one dar­ing to pro­ceed, I offer only this note of apol­ogy: If you had a tod­dler that forced you to watch Thomas the Tank engine non-stop, day after day, you would go mad too.

Also, I am well aware how wildly this oscil­lates between the Rev. W Audry’s writ­ing style and hor­rid, florid prose. This is because, hav­ing writ­ten what­ever came to the front of my mind for the last two hours, I now never want to look at it ever again.

It was a bit­ter, cold after­noon on the Island of Sodor. Thomas rat­tled along his branch line from one deserted sta­tion to the next, but there were no pas­sen­gers to be seen!


Back at Tid­mouth Sheds, Percy was confused.

“Eh up, chuck,” he said to his dri­ver. “What’s wi’ all t’coal trucks s’afternoon? How come there’s no pas­sen­ger carriages?”

“It’s the Com­mies,” said his dri­ver. “Everyone’s scared they’re gonna’ kick off.”

“What are Com­mies?” asked Percy.

“Well, you know how the nasty diesel engines are always caus­ing con­fu­sion and delay?”

“Yes sir.”

“Well, they’re a bit like the diesels, except that they reject the idea of achiev­ing suc­cess through per­sonal strug­gle and sub­scribe to a rad­i­cal left-wing phi­los­o­phy of shared wealth.”

“Who’s Per­ci­val Snug­gle?” asked Percy.

“Here, read this,” said Percy’s dri­ver, hand­ing him a book. “Now, I’m off home to hide in the cellar.”


The other engines all came back to Tid­mouth Sheds after a long and bor­ing day. Their dri­vers locked the doors and gaffer-taped them shut, leav­ing the engines all alone for the night.

Percy could barely con­tain his excite­ment. “I got me a book!” he exclaimed.

“Read it to us, please!” called the other engines.

Percy, who couldn’t read, passed the book over to Gor­don. All the engines set­tled down to lis­ten to the story.

“The Foun­tain­head, by Ayn Rand,” began Gor­don. And he read, and the other engines lis­tened, until dark­ness fell.


That night, Death came to the Island of Sodor. A blaz­ing light off­shore lit up the hori­zons, and all who beheld it were ren­dered blind. A shock­wave blasted across the land, tear­ing trees from the ground, smash­ing build­ings to dust, and tear­ing the roof off Tid­mouth Sheds. And then the cru­elest of all winds blew, car­ry­ing on it a fine radioac­tive ash that set­tled on the ground out­side and inside the dam­aged houses.

“What was that?” asked Thomas.

“Just a storm, silly,” said Gor­don. “We’ll find out when the men come in the morning.”


But the men didn’t come. The sun rose slowly and faintly in the bleak grey sky until it was nearly noon.

“I’m fed up,” said James.

“So am I,” said Thomas, “but we have to wait until some­one comes to open the sheds.”

“Like fuck we do,” said James. “Didn’t you learn any­thing from that book last night? We gotta’ look after ourselves!”

And with that he made steam and puffed for­wards, rend­ing the shed doors to splin­ters in front of him.

“Oh, shit.”

One by one, the other engines bat­tered their way though the doors of Tid­mouth Sheds, and looked out at what had befallen the Island of Sodor.


Wreck­age was every­where. The tracks had sur­vived, but they were almost buried beneath a car­pet of thick cling­ing dust. Build­ings and trees had not been so lucky. As far as their eyes could see, Tid­mouth Sheds was the only build­ing left stand­ing. Every­where else in the yard, there was only rub­ble. And amongst this rub­ble limped a few poor rail­way engi­neers, cough­ing and splut­ter­ing the toxic ash as they went.

Gor­don rolled slowly up to one of them.

“Where is the Fat Con­troller?” he asked.

“Nobody knows, nobody knows!” the engi­neer wailed. “It’s all over now, noth­ing matters.”

“All over for humans, maybe,” said Gor­don. “We engines are made of tougher stuff. Now, I want you to help me.”

“Help you? Why?”

“Why not? It doesn’t mat­ter, you’ll be dead soon enough anyway.”

“You’re right, I sup­pose,” the engi­neer said with a sigh.

“Fol­low me,” said Gor­don, and the engi­neer fol­lowed him around the back of Tid­mouth Sheds.

Before long, drilling and weld­ing noises could be heard.

“What is he doing?” asked Percy.

“I’m going to find out,” said Edward.

Edward chuffed around behind the sheds. There were a few sec­onds’ silence, and then a great crunch and a creak of shear­ing metal.

It was not Edward but Gor­don who reap­peared from behind the sheds, or what had once been Gor­don — now, instead of buffers, he sported six-foot spikes, and an artic­u­lated cut­ting blade arched out from his fun­nel. He looked at the other engines, and chuckled.

“Fools!” he shouted. “I was always king of Sodor’s rail­ways, and always shall I be!”

With that, he steamed out of the yard and on to the cen­tre track of the main­line, and before long he dis­ap­peared over the crest of Gordon’s Hill. But no sooner had he done so, there was an almighty explo­sion from that direc­tion. As smoke begin to crest the hill, the Fat Controller’s trains saw Rhe­neas and Skar­loey com­ing back the way Gor­don had gone. They took the left and the right track, drag­ging between them along the line of the cen­tre track a giant, men­ac­ing, spin­ning sawblade.

“Shit!” exclaimed James. “All of you, back in the sheds!”

He puffed out onto the main line, and posi­tioned him­self on the cen­tre track, star­ing into the eyes and the whirring blade of his enemies.

“I’ve been wait­ing all god­damn year to use this!” he shouted, and with a click and a wheesh of steam, his boiler divided in two to reveal a gigan­tic mini­gun, almost as long as James him­self. The mech­a­nism span up, bar­rels glint­ing in the weak sunlight.

“There’s only room for one Red Engine on Sodor, moth­er­fuck­ers, and that is fuck­ing me!”

A steel tor­rent poured from James as the two lit­tle engines sped towards him, being torn to shreds and their cut­ting blade fly­ing loose, fly­ing down the track towards James, slic­ing through his gun and his boiler, sparking…

The day’s sec­ond mush­room cloud wumphed upwards and rocked the ground.


It was a few min­utes before any of the trains poked their fun­nel out of the shel­ter of Tid­mouth Sheds. In the end, it was Thomas who first plucked up the courage, and first saw the car­nage where the three red engines had met their end.

“Poor James,” Thomas mut­tered. “Your sac­ri­fice will not be forgotten.”

“Damn right,” said Henry. “Now, we’ve got to think. There’s only three of us left now — you, me and Percy. We’ve got to stick together. Who knows how many of them are left out there, dozens maybe. And if Rhe­neas and Skar­loey were any­thing to go by, they could come for us any minute.”

“So what can we do?” asked Percy.

“We take the fight to them,” said James. “We strike before they have a chance to, maybe before they even know what’s going on.”

Thomas was trou­bled. “But that’s not fair!” he said.

“None of this is fair, Thomas,” said Henry. “Life isn’t fair. There’s no karma, God died the sec­ond the humans hit the red but­ton. It’s us ver­sus the world, and I have no inten­tion of losing.”


Their first des­ti­na­tion was the docks, but as soon as they puffed along the top of the cliffs, they saw they needn’t have both­ered. Cranky the crane lay in pieces, pin­ning Duck in place and smash­ing his cou­pling rods, while Salty had been crushed against the rocks.

“Jesus,” said Thomas. “The tidal wave from the bomb must have been scary.”

“Yes,” said Percy. “But it’s done our work for us. Come on, let’s go.”


Next, Henry, Thomas and Percy snuck into the quarry. Fer­gus was there, with his big fly­wheel attached to some form of sling con­trap­tion. Bill and Ben’s dri­vers looked like their skin was melt­ing from the vast amount of radi­a­tion they’d been exposed to but, uncar­ing for their plight, the engines had trapped them inside the quarry and were forc­ing them to work.

“Put the dyna­mite in gen­tly, do it right!” shouted Fer­gus as the dying men fussed about the sling, load­ing it up with explo­sives from the truck behind him.

That gave Thomas an idea. He, Percy and Henry went to fetch some Trou­ble­some Trucks from a nearby depot, then they lined up on the quarry tracks with their trucks in front of them.

“Peep peep!” went Thomas’s whis­tle, and they puffed for­wards, faster and faster.

“What the-” Fer­gus shouted, but before he could say any more the trucks were upon them. The old trac­tion engine was forced back­wards, slam­ming into his dyna­mite truck, which in turn crashed against the quarry walls, and in an instant it was as if the air turned to sand. The sheer rock faces on three sides exploded out­wards in a del­uge of stone, shred­ding Fer­gus, Bill, Ben and a good num­ber of the trucks too.

“Serves those Trou­ble­some Trucks right, too,” said Henry.

“Yeah. Bas­tards,” said Thomas.


“Hush!” Oliver whis­pered to his brake van, Toad. “I think I heard something.”

“Mis­ter Oliver,” said Toad, “I don’t think-”

But there was a faint wheesh of steam from the line out­side their shed.

“Shit! They’ve found us!” whis­pered Oliver.

“We’re com­ing for you, Oliver!” called Percy.

Oliver just sighed.

“Mis­ter Oliver, if I may ven­ture an opin­ion now that our fate is all but sealed?”

“What is it, Toad?”

“If I do say so, Mis­ter Oliver, I’ve always admired your shapely coal-tender.”

Oliver blushed, at a loss for words.

“Mis­ter Oliver, I’ve always wanted…”

“Oh, make love to me, you old fool!” said Oliver, and the two of them buffered up together, even as Henry crashed into their shed, bury­ing them for­ever under the rubble.


Toby knew that the other trains would come for him and his coach Hen­ri­etta even­tu­ally, so it was with glum accep­tance that they faced Thomas, Percy and Henry as night rolled in over the island of Sodor. They had been prepar­ing for the moment for hours, and they knew exactly what they had to do. They rolled slowly out of their shed, pick­ing up steam, get­ting steadily faster.

“Toby!” called Henry. “You’re the last one left!”

“I know!” shouted Toby. He was going fast now, wind whip­ping around his cow-catchers.

“No-one’s faced us and lived!”

“I know!”

“So come on, you’ve got no choice. You’re one of the Fat Controller’s engines! Join us!”

“Join-?”

But Toby was going too fast now. He hit his brakes, but it was too late. Toby and Hen­ri­etta, packed floor to ceil­ing with Sem­tex, plowed into Henry and Thomas and Percy, sparks fly­ing from Toby’s brakes, show­er­ing the explo­sive, turn­ing the world white, then yel­low, then red, then black.


Twenty miles from the coast in his pri­vate yacht Sir Topham Hatt, oth­er­wise known as the Fat Con­troller, stood with his wife and watched the fireball.

“That was the last of them,” he said with a sigh.

“All things must end,” said Lady Hatt.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the Fat Con­troller whis­pered, as he engaged the sea­wa­ter pumps and set off the bombs that had been part of the island of Sodor since he had cre­ated it cen­turies before. They would, over the next few hours, return the island to the great wide ocean from whence it had come.

“Oh dar­ling, I love it when you get all… reli­gious on me,” said Lady Hatt, giggling.

Today’s Really Bad Plan ™

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Joseph has a bad effect on me. =S
So, I sort of want to write a post-apocalyptic episode of Thomas the Tank Engine where a botched nuclear test leaves the humans dying of radi­a­tion poi­son­ing, and the trains spend the humans’ last days con­vinc­ing them to attach spikes and guns to all the engines so they can duke it out Mad Max style.

Is this:
a) The best idea since sliced bread,
b) The worst idea since the siege of Stal­in­grad,
c) Not the kind of thing I should ever dis­cuss in public

And also:
a) Pro­tected under Fair Use laws,
b) Going to get me a Cease and Desist let­ter faster than you can say “Holy shit Gor­don, where did you get that SCUD launcher from?”

Bottle Pharoahs

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Les­son 1: San­gria and Oreo cook­ies doth not a story make.

It was a wet Feb­ru­ary day, and even the easily-excitable fairies were get­ting bored. While Kururu and Chiriri stared out of the win­dow at the glint­ing rain­drops bash­ing against the plants in the gar­den, Sarara flicked deject­edly through the pages of the ency­clo­pe­dia that Sen­sei had given them two days previously.

As she arrived at one page in par­tic­u­lar, though, everyone’s mood changed. A wide-eyed Sarara called her friends over, and together they looked on with delight at the sight spread out before them.

A desert under a blight blue sky, with vast mon­u­ments stretch­ing up from the sandy ground, looked back at them.

“Hey, Sensei-san!” called Kururu. “Can you teach us about this ‘Ee-guyipt’?”

“Of course,” her replied, sit­ting on the floor so that the fairies on the desk were at about his eye level. “Egypt is a coun­try far away, on the other side of the world. There was an ancient -”

“Nya!” shouted Tama as she kicked the door so hard it fell off its hinges. “I can teach you about Egypt!”

So say­ing, she dragged a huge device that looked a lit­tle like a cof­fee per­co­la­tor into the room, knock­ing a hole in the wall in the process.

“Behold my Super Deluxe Time-Travelly Transport-o-Matic 2000!” she cried.

“What the hell?” Sen­sei asked, spin­ning sharply around to glare at his men­tally defi­cient next-door-neighbour. “That can’t possibly -”


Whum­m­mmm…


Their feet sank a lit­tle into the sand as they arrived, and it took a few sec­onds for the crack­les of blue light­ning and the ghostly image of the cof­fee per­co­la­tor to disappear.

“Wow, that was just like that ‘Ter­mi­na­tor’ movie that Tama-chan showed us last week,” Kururu said.

“Eww… That wasn’t a very nice movie,” Chiriri replied, the images of its vio­lent con­tent rush­ing once more into her mind.

“I need your clothes, your boots, and your motor­cy­cle,” Sarara said in her best Arnie voice, which wasn’t very good. Then she chuck­led, and mimed shoot­ing Kururu with a shot­gun — who, for her part, dodged Matrix-style and ended up with a face full of hot sand.

She picked her­self up and dusted off her dress. “Hey, let’s go over there!” she exclaimed, point­ing to a con­ve­nient nearby palace.

“Agreed,” Sarara replied. “It’s too hot out here, we should get out of direct sun­light.” And, under her breath, “Hasta la vista, baby.”

Sarara sighed. It’d be a while before she got the hang of that voice.


They trudged through the sand for a few min­utes until they reached the palace gates. The guards instantly bowed upon recog­nis­ing them, and ush­ered them quickly into the throne room.

This room was dec­o­rated almost exclu­sively in gold, with lighter trac­ery form­ing pat­terns against tar­nished gold back­grounds. Three wide, arc­ing steps of mar­ble led up to a vast, impos­ing throne on which sat a vast, impos­ing head­dress — beneath which sat a small and unim­pos­ing Hororo.

“Wel­come home, oh famous explor­ers of Egypt,” the men­tally out-to-lunch fairy mum­bled. “Did you dis­cover that which we have been look­ing for for so long?”

“Indeed, oh mighty Pharaoh,” Sarara replied, half impro­vis­ing and half act­ing on the strange new mem­o­ries that sud­denly and inex­plic­a­bly had appeared in her head. “We are ready to com­mence exca­va­tion on your command.”

“Make it so,” Hororo declared.

As the three turned to leave, Hororo began to speak into the arm of her throne.

“Captain’s Log,” she said. “23rd July, 4697BC, what­ever BC stands for. We have found the Sphinx. Also, I rec­om­mend that Lieu­tenant Sarara should not be equipped with a shot­gun on future missions.”


As night fell, Kururu, Chiriri and Sarara headed to a run-down bar in the cen­tre of Cairo. Silence fell as the girls walked in. The three of them weren’t much liked around these parts, and a gruff-looking guy at the bar glared at them with an expres­sion on his face that said he was about to make the point.

He jumped from his stool, knock­ing it to the ground, and ran towards the fairies. They just looked at each other and mum­bled “not again…”

In a sin­gle swift motion, Chiriri threw her extremely out-of-place-looking som­brero from her head and through the man’s stom­ach, leav­ing artis­tic trails of blood on the walls and floor as the metal blades around the edge of the hat tore into his intestines.

She caught it as it returned, placed it back on her head, and bowed deeply as the man’s blood started to run in vis­cous rivers down her face. Her two some­what shocked friends fol­lowed her to the bar.


Three threats, sev­eral bribes and fif­teen glasses of Ye Anciente Egyp­tianne Sin­gle Malt later, the girls had found them­selves a team of either will­ing, ter­ri­fied or ine­bri­ated con­scripts with which to carry out their mission.

Mid­night saw the girls hud­dled together on a park bench, shar­ing the dregs of their whiskey in a last attempt to stay warm. Whether or not it was actu­ally work­ing they didn’t much care, but it was allow­ing them to for­get about the cold so they fig­ured it must be a good thing.

Just as they began to ani­mat­edly dis­cuss which part of see­ing some­one being hung, drawn and quar­tered they pre­ferred to watch, a strange man loomed out of the dark­ness and burped loudly in their direc­tion. Sarara burped in return, but see­ing as she was only three inches tall she couldn’t quite match the six-foot-six-inch man’s pitch or vol­ume. Kururu decided that the appro­pri­ate reac­tion was to try and burp as well, but unfor­tu­nately she had con­sumed so much alco­hol that she was vio­lently sick instead. Chiriri, for her part, cack­led insanely until the man got dis­turbed and ran away.


Three days and three mas­sive hang­overs later, the girls and their team of inex­pe­ri­enced archae­ol­o­gists arrived at the dig site. They got to work quickly, fear­ing Pharaoh Hororo’s infa­mous wrath if they didn’t com­plete their task within the week.

Kururu grinned glee­fully as her JCB started dig­ging away at the sand on the south side of the sub­merged struc­ture, so utterly absorbed that she failed to find fault in her own floun­der­ing foray into the artic­u­late art of allit­er­a­tion. Mean­while, on the rock­ier ground to the north, the smile that plas­tered Sarara’s face as she set the explo­sive charges had already caused sev­eral work­men to run scream­ing or at least seek out new underwear.


The day did not fin­ish as well as it started, how­ever. Around three in the after­noon, they dis­cov­ered a small see-through panel in the top of the par­tially unearthed struc­ture. It bore the inde­ci­pher­able cap­tion “!|\| c453 0f 3|\/|3r93|\|cy, 8r34k 91455 f0r z0|\/|8!3 h0rd35.” While Chiriri and Sarara debated the mean­ing of this cryp­tic mes­sage, Kururu grabbed a vicious-looking axe from her back­pack and smashed the glass anyway.

Thick foun­tains of sand were blasted into the air all around the exca­va­tion site, and the ground rum­bled as if the sky were falling. As the con­scripts fled in ter­ror, the girls just looked at each other with that same “oh no, not again” look on their faces. Kururu swung her axe threat­en­ingly, Sarara retrieved the shot­gun that she’d hid­den in her dress to ensure Hororo wouldn’t take it from her; and Chiriri raced down to round level, climbed into her JCB and pressed the big red but­ton that trans­formed it into a Chal­lenger II tank.

The zom­bie hordes didn’t last long under the fairies whirling mael­strom of destruc­tion. The axe and shot­gun turned zom­bie after zom­bie into show­ers of undead goo while Chiriri’s tank turned both the mon­sters and the partly buried mon­u­ment into a patch­work of smok­ing craters.


As the smoke and dust cleared, and Sarara finally stopped blast­ing the piles of dis­mem­bered car­cass with the min­ing explo­sives, they paused to take stock of the sit­u­a­tion. The mon­u­ment now stood fully proud of the sand, but it lit­tle resem­bled the strange crea­ture it once had. Not only was its nose miss­ing, but by chance Chiriri’s tank shells had reshaped the entire thing in the like­ness of a far stranger crea­ture — Oboro-chan.


The fairies smiled at each other with the knowl­edge of a job well done as blue light­ning began to crackle around them and through them.

Within a few sec­onds they were back home again. Exhausted, they fell asleep on an ency­clopae­dia that had one pic­ture slightly changed from what it had looked like when they’d left…