Bub sat in the clear mountain stream, nursing his feet. The blisters around the ankles were still lively from last week's misadventure. He'd been traversing a featureless unremarkable stretch of the Continuum, when he found himself caught in a mighty outburst of waste heat. Cybothermal energy, catalyzed by a news item of ill portent. Soon there were geysers of hot scandal eroding the landscape. Great pots of boiling mud appeared under a crumbling landscape, making ghastly wet sucking sounds. ...slick...boink...
Bub escaped with his life, but his legs were burned. He used up the last of the bear grease he'd gained in the frozen reaches of Incorrect to salve his burns.
Bub was pondering the disturbing apparition he chanced upon while making his narrow escape. A random URL quickened to his touch, and what did he spy there? The object of his earlier quest, the elusive Warrior Babe herself!
But...then he took a closer look. While the feminine icon depicted used the right words, she lacked a certain...substance and sense of intransigent purpose which was the hallmark of his erstwhile opponent. The picture shown revealed more flaws to his trained gaze. The weapon slung across this impostor's finely turned scapulae - thatwas no Uzi. By the Demon, it was an AR-pattern rifle from a neighboring land whose imperial economy was belied by the quirky design of ita infantry ordnance.
Bub chuckled at the near-effective cleverness of this fakery. He wondered for a moment what dark motives underlay its presence. Someone had gone to a great deal of effort to lay this trap. For whom was it intended? A curious Bub? A furious Rambi? A spurious Someone Else? Mystery.
Bub decided that this dishonor would have to wait until he understood it better. One more question for his old Teacher, an itinerant sage and lord from a faraway land of dizzying heights and forbidding granite massifs. Bub had received a scrap of news suggesting that the Teacher had laid down his ancient oath of celibacy when a prophetess informed him that his bloodline would bring forth a great Queen. The prophetess being rather tasty herself, the Teacher shacked up with her. Now Bub was on a trek to pay his respects to the infant Queen, and see if his old master could riddle the sinister secrtet of this false likeness.
Bub grunted with displeasure as a bramble caught a raspberry-pink hamstring. |
