On sale at K--mart...

The twitching eye was due to the sudden realization that Shan, a wise and sensible Jedi Knight, was partially responsible for the destruction of an advanced and peaceful society and now was trapped on a desolate land with two lads of negative wit and a lab rat that had yet to be accounted for. You can well imagine the stress that overcame with jedi nerves so as to cause an eye twitch. He was struck with pangs of guilt and hopelessness, not knowing what to do. Then he had a quick nap and those feelings went away.
When he woke up he noticed that the whisper in the north-east was a little louder yet. He organized his little party to investigate. He stared for a little while at the 9th, and tried to imagine where he came from, but dismissed the thought because he knew what minds were writing the story and found it wise not to question, lest he be given his negative wit back. Off the little group went, Shan bravely walking in the front-center with his light-katana at ready (a very expensive version of a lightsaber, with a +3 for style damage), Barbjohn ruining the dramatic picture by hobbling behind him on the right while trying not to slip on his own drool, and the ever faithful 9th, who was also trying to figure out how he fit into the story. The lovely lab rat from Texas, however, still remains unaccounted for...

How best to breathe

Sighing to himself the way his great-great-great grandmother taught him, and wincing at the pain of such an endeavour, Shan disloged his left arm from the tree, and set about finding a suitable oxygen snail. barbJohn and barbJohn jr. the 9th, who will now be referred to as the 9th, (except in the case of a constitutional document, wherby he will be called Johanne) were both sniffing at a strange rock, though the 9th was more sound then barbJohn in his form and technique. Shan ripped an especially juicy slug from the tree and placed it behind his left ear. It definitely was not as good as a snail in the eye, but for the moment it was enough to keep him going. Jumping down to the ground he wheezed his way over to where his companions knelt, like hunting dogs over their prey. A hush came over the gathering, and Shan had the overwhelming urge to burst out in "Kumbi-ya". Suddenly everything started to grow dim, and cold. A faint whisper in the north-east began to grow louder. His eye twitched involuntarily....

Today is a good day to die. . .

The first thing that Barbjohn noticed was the incredible lack of. .breathing. .that was taking place, figuring this was due to a lack of ozone in the atmosphere, he took out his trusty garden snail and squished it into his eye. Now in pain, but readily breathing, barbjohn gazed around at the lucious greenery that dotted the arid, dry landscape. He did a kind of a skip-jump, and then a little hop, and then did a jig. .and then another skip-jump. Thus engaged, barbjohn's sidekick johnbarb Jr. the 9th pushed his comrade over and procedeed to do a skip-jump, and then realizing his situation decided it was high time for a swift walk around the ol' farmyard (this was what he affectionately referred to the new planet as.)His goal(s)were to conquer new lands, conquer old lands, breed new hamsters, and put all his stock shares in the square wheel and of course find someone who could dance the dance of cheese. Whilst pondering the situation he noticed a faint sound coming from the near-east direction. .

A twist

Matt

...the approximate number of mosquitos in the Pakistani town of Kunri in early fall. Like a good sidekick, he walked down the limb he was on to his dear Shan and told him his revelation. Shan's attention, however, was elsewhere. You see, a collision at speed of 1 billion miles per hour (which is only possible because Todd is writing this story) has some dramatic effects on the environment. 1 billion miles per hour is actually slightly faster than the speed of light. So for less than a millisecond dear dummy barbjohn was travelling faster than light itself (this is, of course, impossible). Within this split-millisecond a largish force field was erected around barbjohn (this is, of course, impossible). Within this forcefield, as per Einstien's theories and such, time slowed down to a crawl. From Shan's, barbjohn's, and the funny bird/mammel critter's point of view, the trip and collision took practically no time at all. But from the rest of the world's perspective, the trip took thousands of years because they we outside of this outlandish and rather improbable forcefield. So by the time the massive explosion struck the tree, mankind had achive self-actualization and had created for themselves a perfect, peaceful, prosperous and pleasurable society in which all were healthly, wealthy and wise. This massive explosion, however, managed to destroy everything outside the cute little forcefield within a million mile radius. So the entire planet was destroyed and the tree and it's occupants were sent flying out into the dark empty reccesses of space. Shan tried to explain all this to barbjohn and rebuke him soundly for his meddling with quantum physics. By the time barbjohn had enough sense to pretend he had figured it out they noticed that there was a large round planet-like thing in their flight path. Shan began barking orders to the crew, not that there was any crew or flight controls for the crew to use, but mainly because it felt like the right thing to do. They began to brace themselves for a crash landing on this strange, and probably out-landish land.

Barbjohn to the Rescue!

Todd

Noseless, Tear-ductless, and friendless, Barbjohn resolved himself to squint up the tree with a vitality which only comes at this exact point in the story. In the distance, and engaged in intense hand-to-hand combat with what appeared to be a cross between a duck and a meerkat, Shan was slowly being backed off the edge of a limb on the tree. Gathering up his courage, and his jet-pack, which he purchased at a thrift shop from What's Her Face for $5.21, tax included, Barbjohn hit the shiny red button, which he had installed for an extra 6 cents, and propelled himself into the first branch on the tree at close to the speed of sound. Needless to say once Barbjohn could hear again, he resolved to push the shiny yellow button, which is programmed to propel the user automatically to the nearest Shan. Paused in the middle of their deadly duo, and eyeing eachother ostentatiously, Shan and the duck/meerkat cocked their heads at exactly the same time, and at exactly the same angle (47 degeres) to hear the soft classical music which the engine of the jet-pack created slowly growing louder. And since duck's/meerkats despise classical music (as any good woodlander knows), this particular composition by Bach assaulted his ears in such a way so he disengaged his fight and fled up the tree. Unfortunately for somebody, the duck/meerkat was also named Shan, and when the flying Barb-John careened up the tree the engine decided to target the duck/meerkat (whom we will now refer to as his proper name Duckmeerkatus). Barbjohn impacted with Duckmeerkatus at approximately 1 billion miles per hour, which is possible because I'm writing the story, creating a deafening explosion and a tremendous fallout of feathers, teeth and Bach. When Barbjohn came to, Shan was shaking him violently. Before passing out again, Barbjohn's eyes locked on the tree trunk, which displayed in Times New Roman font 43.5: Level 1 Billion 4 Thousand and Three. All Barbjohn could recall about that number was it had something to do with...

Barbjohn's new friend

After waiting a few moments wracked with intense pain, barbjohn did the first thing that came to his poor scrambeled mind; he picked up the rusty pitchfork and began to brush his hair using short, brisk, strokes. Thus engaged, he began to relay the situation over in his head "I'm really in no place to be doing anything, not only am I an invalid, but I just fell from a 900 storey tree, and not only that but I'm an invalid (barbjohn's reasoning tended to be rather circular at times.) So sighing to himself he began to cry (tearless crying of course since barbjohn lacked tear ducts as well.) Hearing his cries afar off a sad, little, puppy came to investigate the matter, upon seeing the poor creature moaning in the hay, the sad, little puppy went over and placed his paw on Barbjohn's knee. He looked up and saw the little animal and queried "will you be my friend?" Well, with a knowing smile and a flick of the tail, the little puppy bit of Barbjohn's nose and trotted off into the sunset.

What became of the mighty tree

Matt

...they heard an ominous sound coming from below. It sounded strangely like a rusty brass-chainsaw starting up and digging into some wood. Shan had a momentary lapse of insight and commanded Barb-John to look down the trunk to find out what the noise was. But of course, dear Barb-John was deaf as a wet stump, so Shan had to wave for him to look.
Unfotunately, this also received no attention.
Fortunately, Shan possessed his trusty "Get Barb-John's Attention" stick (which was basically a cattle prod that had a +1 electrical damage added on to its 1d6 base damage).
Unfortunately this caused Barb-John to tumble out of the tree.
Fortunately, Barb-John was wearing a parachute at the time.
Unfortunately, he lacked the intellectual fortitude to pull the rip-chord.
Fortunately, there was a large wagon full of freshly harvested cotton-balls below him.
Unfortunately, there was a nasty, rusty pitchfork sticking in said wagon.
Fortunately, he missed the pitchfork.
Unfortunately, he also missed the wagon.
And so Barb-John landed with a mighty mixture of a thud and a splat. What became of the rat, you may ask? The dear rat, it seems, had not only his own parachute but also the very intellectual fortitude that Barb-John lacked to pull the rip-chord, so he landed softly and was quickly reunited with his rather incapacitated and possibly dead fellow-sidekick.

Trios, Elipses, and Brackets.

Todd

So the three companions met early the next day at the foot of the great tree. Of course it took most of the day for barbjohn to remember who he was, where he was, which baseball team won the penant in 1963, and why his sandal was glued to his forehead. He happened upon the tree mainly because it was the biggest thing on the horizon that morning. A furious Shan let Gordan chew barbjohn's ear while he himself attempted to help remove the sandal without a lobotomy (which I guarantee you was an option at this point { due to the brass chainsaw wedged into the ground nearby [which though rusty actually still functions properly ]}) In any case, after relaying to the writer how annyoying and grammatically incorrect his recent sequence of brackets is, Shan succeeds in ripping the sandal (and some scalp) from his sidekick's head. The group wastes no time talking, since it would most likely end in a fight, or at least a barbeque. Instead they saunter (well barbjohn mostly tripped) toward the tree and climb up approximately fifty of its laboriously big branches before...

Meet the new side-kick barb-john.

Ben

Shan had no friends, his unhealthy, un-normal, and downright uh, unhealthy lifestyle had scared off any potential well-wishers. One day however whilst performing his usual hamstring lacerations he happened upon a one legged, mute, deaf and blind child entitled barbjohn. Barb-john was not strong or especially talented (except of course the skill of having abosultely no clue what's going on, at any time) but as far as side-kick material goes, barb-john was #1. So having no sidekick of his own except a nasty underfed lab rat on his shoulder, Shan took barb-john under his wing. Having promised him glory and supassing wealth and money and riches beyond measure and...a nice wife, he slapped his new sidekick on the back (which cause him to fall flat into gravel and mud) and declared "What do you think of that my fair weathered son." Barb-john mumbled something about butterflies and tire-irons and struggled to his feet.

Todd

Shan, now thoroughly convinced that the way to true happiness lies through meditation, and devotion to the light side, has become a boring character in this story. It is therefore my duty to kill him, and replace him with a character much more suited to the task of climing the tree and speaking with the three 'cheese dancing' goats. O, wait a second, Shan is motioning to me... "What's that? You went over to the dark side? No, that can't be possible..." Sorry folks, I misinterpreted. Shan was just saying that he wants to be part of the annual bark climb of the old Jedi order. Now its making sense. Each year the Jedi send a special troop to try and climb the tallest tree, the winner gets a turquoise light saber, and a 5 dollar bill. The tallest tree if you recall is John Paul's tree, except that it was apparently cut down by a clumsy Jedi Padawan named Danny Fleecepants, when he was practicing his lightsaber throw in the middle of the forest... All of that is to say that the annual tree to be climbed this year is none other than the tree in the land of Inis. So Shan doesn't have to be removed from the story, and now he has a little more strength and wit, O and he acquired a tiny little shoulder pal named Gordan, who used to be a lab rat from Texas.

The story to end the century...or something

Todd
In a day not too many tomorrow’s away from next Monday lived a quiet old hermit lady named Gumilda. She smelled like oats, and cardboard and her favorite pastime was smashing glass with her stick. The stick was a magical kind, which is impossible to break except for if you have the feather of Homil, which she didn’t, and didn’t care to because you see it was her stick. Anyway the story doesn’t begin with her because who wants to start a story with an old lady. The story actually begins next to a tree in the land of Inis.

Ben
The tree was inhabited by the name of three goats who lived on a diet of elderberry and Bruno’s arm hair. They were the most ferocious beasts in the land and it was said that the only way of to slay them was to make them do numerous dances of cheese ladles. As it so happens sometimes there was a small child who lived in a ditch and was fathered by a small tree squirrel of the wolverine variety, this child decided it was high time to these goats to dance the dance of cheese.

Matt
The small child was originally to be named ‘Shane’, which, in the small tree squirrel of the wolverine variety’s tongue, means ‘He who is great, mighty and full of great might’. Unfortunately, when the name was being recorded the recorder died before he could add the final vowel. Therefore he was Shan, which, though pronounced the same, means ‘apple’. This afforded his squirrelish schoolmates much opportunity to mock and scoff, and thus they did until he set out to force the dance of cheese upon the goats of the trees.

Todd
Now this is a particularly involving and erroneous task to undertake, given the fact that the three cheese-dancing goats lived only in the highest part of the tree and rarely came down unless a bruno came by, which happens about as often as the sun is cold. So Shan had the incredible job of climbing the tree which was taller than every other tree except the one tree north of John Paul’s house called “the tree which is north of John Paul’s house”. Why the heck they called it that not even John knows but then it doesn’t really matter anyway. So the tree had exactly eleventy billion branches and the 1st goat lived on branch number 450 billion, for eleventy is = 1000 billion in the squirrel language. So the boy set out with a piece of bread and some cheese, which was cheddar cause he likes that the best, and started up the tree.

Ben
Unfortunately the boy liked to eat food occasionally so he squished the bread and cheese together to make a nasty omelet type of meal. So, armed with absolutely nothing except his negative wit and non-sharp object and he mounted the first branch on which sat a young lemur named scuzz-name the bonafer, it turns out that this lemur knew ho-w to dance the dance of cheese unfortunately he had not the legs to perform the ancient ritual, so this lemur was no help and the chewed off his left ear in exchange for rubarb leaf.

Matt
You may think that this was a rather odd trade. This trade is not so odd once you consider the fact that this particular lemur was crazed out of his skull and was convinced that his left ear was planning on starting a revolt with his right thumb against the rest of his body. The ear had to be purged. Shan also found the trade beneficial because rubarb was a very rare commodity. It should not be confused with the earth-plant rhubarb, the tasty large-leafed plant that is oh-so yummy in pies. This rubarb is actually a red leaf that contains many chemicals that are useful for manipulating the minds of mammals (of which goats are a prominent member), granting some semblance of a gliding ability to one who eats of it (which is useful when one reaches the top of an eleventy-billion branch tree) and loosening the bowels of someone suffering constipation (which is rather useless in a country like Pakistan).

Todd
Shan immediately climbed seven more branches and after resting a short time noticed a bronze button the size and shape of a pole axe engraved into the tree. Being a child of negative wit, he pressed it, hoping he might obtain some sour candy. Instead a door in the side of the trunk popped open, and as his curiosity is a kin to his wit, he clamored inside and pressed another button, this time in the shape of a have burned speckled-trout with the number 18 lacquered into where his gill would have been.

Ben
Some people are born with brains, some people are born with strength, Shan was born with neither and had brain disorders which caused him to do things that normal people would consider “unsafe” or “unwise” or “unwilling.” Because of this rare disease Shan was prompted to push this button numerous times in not many seconds which caused his little cubicle to shoot upwards in the general direction of the sky. Upon stopping, Shan found himself in a new place, or rather, a new branch and instinctively started humming the tune to “The ol’ shovel’s hittin’ the kitten.”

Matt
At this precise moment nothing happened. But a few seconds later a small kitten appeared. When you picture a kitten, you likely picture a soft, sweet, friendly, cheerful kitten that loves to play with yarn and children. If that is the sort of kitten you pictured, you’re wrong. This kitten is of the rabid, ferocious, children-hating, family-devouring, fire-breathing, evil killer type (except for the fire-breathing...I made that up). The song that our dear hero Shan was humming had enraged the kitten, whose mother had been killed by a shovel. He dropped into an attack stance and gained a +5 to his dexterity and melee attack. Shan closed his eyes in terror. At this moment the kitten lost sight of him. You see, Shan and the kitten could have been related because this kitten was so mind-bogglingly stupid that it assumed that if you couldn’t see it, it couldn’t see you. It was about to walk away when Shan, idiot that he was, opened his eyes and again drew the attention of this small but ill-tempered beast.

Todd
The ferocious feline fell upon the frightened Shan with a purpose mentioned only in the goriest or silliest books written, which is why I will describe it to you. As it jumped across the expanse between them the kitten produced a chainsaw of brass and proceeded to shave the young lad like no barber had ever before. Of course for all of you who are not well versed in the arts of Kimokimokimokimokimoki, an initial advance with a brass chainsaw to a shaving position is easily countered by a glare from the left eye, which Shan did, and once done produced a stunned state for 4 seconds. The kitten reeled at the glare and lost its grip on the chainsaw which fell and felled most of the branches, (including the ugly branch) before coming to rest at the bottom of the tree.

Ben
Quickly regaining his composure the kitten then produced a weapon mostly consisting of twist ties and those bears that you see ride around on unicycles at the circus. Well, as you can imagine Shan did what any self-respecting negative wit would do, which was to sit down and wait for the blow to fall, for this was Shan’s special move. With a fire in his eyes and a joy in his heart, the kitten ran towards Shan twirling his mass of twist ties and circus clowns, Shan braced himself and exposed the most vulnerable part of his body. .

Matt
His most vulnerable part was certainly not his head, because he had never gotten much use out of that part of his body. The kitten struck Shan again and again while dear Shan grimaced and finally fell off the tree completely and landing on the brass chainsaw previously welded by the mighty kitten. At this point the kitten felt a dreadful pang of guilt that he never quite recovered from. The kitten went on to because a polish Presbyterian preacher, which is neither here nor there in the story. Shan’s fall had actually knocked quite a bit of sense and strength into his and changed his life completely. He joined the ranks of the jedi order and devoted his life to the preservation and rehabilitation of angry kittens.