Fic: Twelfth Level Bard
Fic: Twelfth Level Bard
Fandom: Lizzie McGuire
Summary: In which Larry consistently falls down far too narrow chutes.
A\N: Throwbacks are grand.
Disclaimer: You caught me. I own Disney. I'm not proud of it, but there it is.
Twelfth Level Bard
Or
Wherein Larry Tudgeman Saves the Free World
Or at Least Comes Close Enough to Warrant Serious Injury and a Shared Spot with the Caped Crusader in the Hall of Justice
"I fell into a winter slide,
And ended up the kind of kid who goes down chutes too narrow."
-The Shins
♣
He was unlike any mortal boy he knew because of his lightening stealth. A gift from the Gods along with his superior intellect, cat-like reflexes and supremely awesome Halo 2 skills. Everywhere he went he was mistaken for a God or a saint or that curly-haired kid from the Canadian teen soap Higher Ground and he stalked the daylight like a Honshu warrior, battling the glossy horrors of suburbia, helping the down-trodden in between Farscape reruns and giving sage-like advice Gandalf the Grey style over Mushu Pork and Final Fantasy IV.
The sun rubbed across his delicate Norse features like a samurai sword as he surveyed the dawn from his roof each morning, breaking open a package of Justice League fruit snacks and inhaling the sweet scent of possibility. He had a delicate relationship with the Gods above especially Zeus who lived in the throes of an insane jealousy on account of his intellect and devilishly handsome countenance, thus it was necessary that he suffered trivial mortal peril at the hands of angry, envious elder gods.
He met all tribulations with a lofty sense of entitlement, whether it was matching wits with Coach Kelly;
"I'm sorry madam; I don't see how is this going to help with any of my future accomplishments."
"Just climb the rope Tudgeman."
"Wouldn't it be a better testament to my strength if I engaged someone in hand to hand combat?"
"Fighting's not allowed, just climb the friggin rope!"
"Can't I just scale a wall?"
"No!"
Patiently acting as an impromptu therapist for the strangely turbulent psyche of Ethan Craft;
"And…I don't know dog, she just totally dissed the whole thing, it was messed up."
"And how does that make you feel?"
"Whack, she didn't even have hear me out, I was like "moms I wanna be a gangster no lie straight thug" and she was like "you're gonna be a lawyer or a doctor or an astronaut!"
"And how did you feel after that?"
"Like a chump yo, like I'd just gotten Punk'd in front of like, a million people, but then we put on Cop Killer and I made her some chicken and it was all good again…but man dog…I don't wanna go all the way to space, I wanna go somewhere overseas…like Canada."
Mitigating the sometimes violent debates of the Hillridge Comic Book and Graphic Novels Enthusiasts Club, (to which he was the only member)
"Go ahead Larry…thank you; I think this entire Batman vs. Superman debate is archaic and unnecessary. Its so obvious Batman would demolish Superman if they were to ever have any kind of battle free of the earthly limits of space and time. Yes the Man of Steel is a worthy adversary, he has super strength and better dexterity but gentleman Batman has unending stealth and the memories of his parents, murdered on the streets of Gotham guides his every action. The Dark Knight need only to carry a handful of Kryptonite on his utility belt and he is eventually the victor."
Or actively participating in the student council forums wherein the Hillridge student body was encouraged to make suggestions as to how to improve their beloved middle school:
"Yes Larry?"
"I think we should bring back the guillotine…for major offenses of course. I mean, it did wonders for the French…oh and also, we should get some teleportation safety zones for the hallways, because really people it's only a matter of time."
All in all, he handled any conflict or trial in a most assured manner knowing it was only the righteous will of the Gods that he should suffer at the hands of idiotic mortals who didn't know Star Trek from Star Wars. It was rather a keen thing to have been blessed with a sharp arcane knowledge and a purely otherworldly outlook without necessarily knowing how to apply these qualities to his life on Earth. He tried to distract himself with archery lessons and RPG's and the formation of a Star Fleet chatroom message board. Yearly trips to Comicon and weekly raids of June's Comics which had new Scot Pilgrim and Ferro City and the forgotten Spawn issue fourteen which was like, comic gold. He studied Plato and hosted Zelda all-nighters and read Nietzsche and made prank phone calls and played DDR until his vision was neon. He watched Return of the Jedi and wrote love letters to Carrie Ann Moss and bought night vision goggles and planned Dwarf Lord campaigns and spent hours in the back yard in the middle of the night perfecting his stealth.
He had founded or at least belonged to nearly every club in Hillridge (robotics team, calligraphy, A.V., Dwarf Lord League of Champions, badminton, fencing, Go, Latin Club, Academic Decathlon, Chinese Checkers, Go Cart Club, Team Dungeons and Dragons, physics club, future farmers of America, cross stitching, mythology and a special three person club lamenting the death of Adam West, which as of last week, included Veruca, Gustav the foreign exchange student and himself. Upon learning that this was not a club lamenting the death of Avril West, the famed, cross dressing, German indie rocker Gustav quickly left the club). In some of these he was the only member, (Chinese Checkers, Go, Mythology) and some he was a member of twenty (Dwarf Lord, Fencing, A.V) of most he was president which included a ridiculously long title (Arch Duke Lawrence Tudgeman Supreme and Most Excellent Ruler of All Things Even Vaguely Related to and Or Stemming From The Hillridge Audio Visual Club) the donning of some official-looking hat and copious chocolate milk privileges. It was of no Earthly consequence, but he'd appeared in the yearbook fifty-six times.
Not a bad deal all in all, at most he was flushed with pride and victory knowing how celebrated he was among mortals as his Lordship Gandalf the Grey had been among hobbits in the merry times of Middle Earth, but even he couldn't help feeling as though somewhere, a tide was turning. In some area of his existence he had been ignoring a chasm was building. This feeling of foreboding was instantly recognized as his Spidey senses beginning to tingle like mad, a mixture of Murphy's Law (to which he thought only mortals were affected) and Zeus's unending desire to smite him. Looking back, it would have been wise to investigate said Spidey tingling a little deeper, before things got completely out of hand, but alas the boy was smitten with the feeling of goodwill and entitlement he'd felt his entire life and that's when Zeus decided to whip out his hammer.
♣
He was sipping at a juice box when disaster struck.
It wasn't as though he hadn't seen it coming. He was the One after all, the Hero, the Honshu, the stealthiest of ninjas, the most gifted of padawans, the suave, dazzling, Jedi man child genius envied by all the Gods on Olympus. Of course he was mildly clairvoyant.
The day had begun as any other, after a bowl of Captain Crunch and a choice episode of Teen Titans the champion of the downtrodden, slayer of incompetence, stood in the mirror admiring the very beginnings of a mustache and sighing audibly, knowing full well Adonis wished he looked this good. He'd arrived at Hillridge Middle at ten minutes and thirty-nine seconds parking his moped in the teacher's lot and jumping the back fence like the Indiana Jones of first period.
"Nice bike." A lad with multiple piercings had nodded at him reverently.
Larry had paused on the steps, pulling off his sunglasses. "I'm saving up for a hovercraft."
He'd thrown open the doors and walked slowly down the buzzing corridor. Students whizzed by at hyper speed until they resembled charged atoms meshing together in a multi-colored electron cloud, he'd passed Kate and her gleaming posse of Orc-Hai stopping just short of them, ready and willing to smite the unknowing horror that was her face if the morning called for it. She'd snarled something about his 'unending dirkhood' and he pitied the poor savage, still on the waiting list for a soul.
The day had been filled with much tribulation; a second breakfast Magic the Gathering game gone awry, a Marvel vs. DC debate that had sparked a small riot in the Comic Book and Graphic Novels Enthusiasts Club, sitting through Ethan Craft's free style rap about why Llamas were "gangster" ("I like the llama, 'cause it looks like a sheep and a camel got it on yo.") and his mid-morning rendezvous with Coach Kelly that, after a quite strenuous demonstration of his personal stealth involving taking a running leap off the bleachers and landing cat-like on his feet, had ended in the women relaying him with a story about her brief stint in the Gulf War, where she'd seen a young man with his skinny frame and lax attitude about fitness get clobbered by a grenade in a river valley while "practicing his stealth."
After determining that the rotund women's temperament probably stemmed from the fact that she was a Ring wraith, part time nights and weekends, he'd sat on the blue mat amid the savage cries of the dodge ball tournament, sipping a freshly opened Hawaiian Punch and flipping through the latest issue of Justice League Unlimited.
That's when it happened.
♣
She'd decided along time ago that gym sucked. Sucked a lot. Sucked like that one time Lizzie went veggie and thought burlap was cool and yelled at her for wearing leather. What Miranda didn't know however was that whatever level of suckage gym class could attain, there was always a lower level it could sink to, thus she spent her Tuesday morning standing in the melee of dodge ball on a court that smelled like icky gross testosterone watching McGuire hopping around like a friggin' idiot.
She needed a huge container for her joy.
"Sanchez! Coach Kelly screamed. For the love of Billy Jean King keep your head in the game!"
Miranda rolled her eyes, remembering an incident last week when Danny Kessler made a joke about female wrestlers, and the Coach went all menopausal and made everyone stay afterschool and scrub the locker rooms. She really hoped Coach Kelly got her estrogen imbalance figured out (she had a feeling the Old Spice wasn't helping) both for her mental safety and so Miranda would never again have to lay eyes on her creepy mustache. The kid was stuffed into her gray sweats, looking all fierce and crazy and it occurred to Miranda that there was a pretty good chance that in the words of Ethan Craft, pertaining to the women's super sketchy war record,Coach Kelly had "killed some bitches."
She was so amused/disturbed at the thought of the Coach going kamikaze on innocent citizens of the Gulf that she didn't notice the ball sailing into her personal space until it was too late.
♣
Coach Kelly was as a rule, completely disenchanted with the weak physical prowess of her students. Laziness and lack of physical exercise born of non-stop television and the consumption of questionable snack food had rendered the younger generation puny and weak-willed. The rare class exceptions were Ethan Craft, a boy wonderously adept at any physical activity and Jennie the She-Male, whose limber build and freakish upper body strength made her a premium wrestler. The rest of the class was physiologically doomed. McKenzie sat on the bleachers with her headphones blaring, Saunders was talking on her cell phone, McGuire and Gordon were trying their best not to be pummeled by Kessler and Craft…and Sanchez. Coach Kelly rolled her eyes. That kid was suffering from some major ADD. After jumping around trying not to get hit she'd apparently forgotten all about the fact that she was in the middle of a match, given a long speech about the "lameness" of dodgeball, complained about the girl's showers, and was now in the middle of the dodge ball court inspecting her fingernails.
Most of these kids wouldn't last a day in boot camp, actual combat would kill them.
She shook her head at the lax standards of adolescent fitness and raised her whistle but never blew, far too distracted by a sudden fluttering image in her peripheral vision.
♣
Ethan Craft thought it was a really big bird that had fallen through the window. He'd been attacked by seagulls the week before (as well as massively wigged out by his dad's Flock of Seagulls hair cut) and thinking the birds had come back for more he promptly threw himself to the floor and rolled into a fetal position screaming.
♣
Danny Kessler was on fire.
He was all over the court like Scotty Pipen blessed by God and high on crack. He and Craft were slaughtering their prey with such awesome skill it would've hurt to watch if it hadn't been so freakin' beautiful. Half the other team was dying of boredom in prison and there were only a few athletically challenged losers cringing and cowering and dodging the balls he hurled at them, like there was any real chance of escape.
Whatever.
He circled back up the court and knocked out Gustav who immediately burst into tears and began cursing in German. He heard the Coach's primal screaming a long way off, probably dismissing the game but he wasn't finished yet, and there was no way he was gonna let his perfect record slide just because someone had forgotten their morning Prozac. He weaved out of the way of a wayward dodge ball Neck Brace Noreen had half-heartedly thrown at him before getting her in the side and skipping to a point of entry, hugging two balls to his chest to see Sanchez sitting on the floor Indian style tying her freakin shoes. Danny shook his head at how ridiculously easy this was getting.
He'd thrown the ball before he'd even heard the whistle.
♣
In retrospect, David Gordon was the only one who actually saw what happened. The others were far too busy trying not to get injured or emotionally scarred or both, and when it came to sorting the whole thing out Clue style he was the one with the most helpful information. Spared of the "crackpot" reputation given to other non conformists of his age, and relatively unscathed by Hillridge's dense group-oriented atmosphere upon which most students aligned their identity, he was a most reliable witness. He could easily relay what he saw and point out the various culprits, rounding up everyone who was in the gym that morning and executing a plan of interrogation that was most Sherlock Holmes. (Plus there was a pretty good chance that he'd get to wear a fedora and a coat with many pockets, which was always fun)
Sadly, the information he gleaned that morning would be of use to a very few, and wouldn't even be relied in detail until the publication of Larry Tudgeman's autobiography, chapter seventeen to be specific, a relatively short diatribe entitled Upon Whence the Hero Enters the Bizzaro.
♣
"Is he dead?"
"Of course not he's just resting."
"He's not moving."
"I think you definitely got him out."
"Nah, really?"
"Dag y'all, homie looks pretty stiff."
"Maybe we should put his hand in warm water."
"Look he's waking up!"
Larry opened one eye to find himself on the gym floor being stared at by the entire class.
"Damn, T-izzle, way to ruin the game." Ethan shook his head.
"Yeah Tudgeman buzz kill much?"
"Clear!" A husky voice shouted, and for a moment the boy thought dazedly that he'd been summoned to Jabba's Palace. "I said clear out people!" Coach Kelly's meaty face hovered above him like a sweat-covered cloud. "What in tarnation do you think you're doing?"
His left eye didn't seem to be opening; he felt he should be a bit concerned about that.
"I mean Jesus, Tudgeman you were out, you can't just decide you wanna play again and jump right in."
It made him feel like a Cyclopes, which while highly desirable in an abstract sense, was ultimately cause for mild alarm.
"Do you see Craft just jumping in and doing whatever the spirit moves him, No! If I call him out he sits out, that's called sportsmanship Tudgeman, look it up."
"Aw snap." Ethan said with much vigor.
"I appreciate the enthusiasm, and if we did something about those skinny arms and that girlish figure of yours you could definitely by a dodge ball contender but you can't just go hurling yourself in front of the ball like some kind of psychopath. This is isn't a Ben Stiller movie." She shook her head and peered down at the boy.
"Madame, He said with a quiet dignity, trying not to look up into her nostrils. I don't think I can open my eye."
"What do you mean? You're staring at me with it."
"The other one," He removed his hand from his left eye, which remained closed.
"Oh Christ Tudgeman, Kelly grunted, next time block the shot with your hands like a normal person, somebody take 'em to the nurse." She sighed.
The gym was silent.
"Let's not all volunteer at once." The Coach growled. Gordon get over here!"
The curly-haired boy threw her a thoroughly bewildered look.
"This century!" She snapped.
Gordo jumped, then quickly came to her side.
"Up you gest, " Kelly grunted, giving Larry a meaty hand to grab then pulling him upright. Walk it off son." She put a massive hand on his shoulder and leaned down to whisper into his ear. And if this is your way of gettin' out of laps I will find out."
"Yes you're disciplinship." Larry muttered and when she moved away, he cringed slightly, for the mixture of Old Spice, bodily oils and a Grande Burrito from Taco Via emenating from her jogging suit proved to be a most nefarious fragrance.
"Okay laps everybody let's go!" A sharp whistle sounded and Larry and Gordo both jumped. They stared at each other, Gordo rubbing his elbow and Larry touching his closed eye softly, the echo of running shoes beating around them and it occurred to Larry that the boy in front of him looked quite like a perplexed hobbit.
"You ladies get moving!"
"Yes ma'am." They said in unison, before walking quickly to the double doors, hearing the pounding of shoes and the Man-Banshee screeching of their athletic dictator.
"Speed it up people this isn't a walk-a-thon. Jenny spit that gum out, Gustav stop crying. Ten more let's go, speed it up, Sanchez eyes front!"
"I think she's bi-polar." Gordo said errantly, once they'd moved to the safety of the corridor.
♣
The school nurse, although very young, was understandably hysterical. She paced and murmured and cursed in Japanese and poked his eyelid with a tongue depressor before ruling that he wasn't half blind. Knowing bits and pieces of the language he tried to placate her in her mother tongue, explaining that this sort of thing happened all the time (a blatant lie) and whatever sort of hideous eye ornament he was going to have to sport until the swelling went down, he would be most honored to wear it because she picked it out. (Which was mostly true)
She'd stopped shrieking and gave him a most shrewd look, then presented him with a licorice whip.
He stepped into the hallway, wondering if he could conjure up the stealth to sneak back into the gym to retrieve his Hawaiian Punch and his comic book. He decided against it, figuring the Ring wraith wouldn't be so quick to care for the Green Lantern's struggle to save the free universe, and contented himself with the thought that such stealth, injury and morning peril deserved a chocolate milk in the student lounge. Looking at his digital watch he saw that there was only a half hour of gym left anyway and it would be a waste of a perfectly good morning to just go back, seriously did the Dark Knight tolerate strenuous activity at the hands of such a domineering, foul-smelling virago, risking dignity, integrity and partial eye sight? No. He took out his utility belt, shot a hole in the ceiling and vanished, which Larry totally would have done… had he worn a belt that day.
While walking toward the dimly lit utopia of the student lounge he puzzled over the entire predicament. He was very thirsty, a wee bit peckish and very confused. Truthfully, he didn't know what had possessed him to jump in front of that dodge ball and attempt to block it with his face. As a rule, he strayed from contact with anything that might injure him (life was better that way) or cause him a great deal of humiliation in front of twenty-five other people, so he was quite puzzled as to why he'd dove in front of a speeding, potentially harmful, rotund pack of leather. He'd been sitting on the blue mats, drinking his juice, reading his comic and everything was copacetic. He remembered being in a dark mood that morning, contemplating how ridicously horrible the Fantastic Four had been (and how it seemed to leave a large stain on one's psyche four months after viewing) and considering a strongly worded letter to Stan Lee telling him to stop with the bad comic book movies already. But by second breakfast everything had come full circle again, he'd been slightly traumatized by Coach Kelly's war stories, generally indifferent to Ethan Craft's mad love for farm animals and put in amiable spirits by the family plight of the Green Lantern.
And then for some unearthly reason, he'd found himself, soaring into the air like he'd been ejected from a rebel fighter and being pummeled in the face. That's where things got a bit fuzzy. The connundrum was that he didn't know why he'd found himself in the air. It was most unusual, unless he'd learned to teleport without telling himself which was a greatly heinous offence since he had long ago vowed to tell himself everything. And thus his superior brain went in circles trying to dissect the happenings of the morning, and it was, feeling earnestly like that fellow from Memento, he opened his chocolate milk and collapsed in a chair in the student lounge.
It was in this contemplative state that he found Gordo under a table pawing through a copy of Nietzsche and poking his Jew fro with his index finger.
"What are you doing here?"
"Hiding from Satan." Gordo sniffed. "You?"
"I also seek refuge from the Dark Force, Larry nodded. "In this quest it seems we are united."
Gordo stared at him. "…M'kay."
Larry peered at the boy,clutching his chocolate milk. He stood for a moment, before-seeming to have lost some sort of inward battle-crawling under the table and sitting next to Gordo.
"I suppose this fortress is as good as any."
"Yeah, Gordo nodded absently. Are you wearing a patch?"
"Very astute, ten wisdom points for you."
"I mean I know you're driven mad by your subconscious desire to be of sea-faring parentage but that's taking it a little far."
Larry rolled his eye. "Janet says I'll be burdened with it for a few weeks."
"Good luck with that."
"It'll make fencing club more interesting."
His bushy-haired companion laughed out loud at the mention of the nearly non-existent Hillridge fencing club. "How many people do you guys have now?"
"Four," Larry said loftily, lifting his chin, and we have an alternate." He was referring to Eduardo, his wheelchair bound pen pal in Costa Rica who after being shown the wonders of swordsmanship, organized a wheelchair-fencing league in his hometown.
"Sounds crowded."
"Yes, Larry said sardonically, because everyone's joining student senate!"
"It's a cool club, and I'm sorry who represents Russia?"
"I only did it as a favor."
"Five times."
"Jeremy Holland was sick, I never told him it was a good idea to drive his go cart into that field of cacti, and at least I wasn't drawn in by the propaganda of the Drama league!"
"They were putting on Serpico, that's like the greatest cop drama ever."
Larry rolled his eyes. "And what's this season's production?"
"Cats," Gordo muttered.
"That's right."
"I'm not letting a man in the knitting club make me feel bad about my extracurricular choices."
Larry simply glanced at him bemusedly. "It's cross stitching." True the club (populated by all girls and Gustav) wasn't one at the top of the registry, but making a huge Super Friends quilt and presenting it to Lee Majors at Comicon? Highlight of his year.
"It's knitting socks, something oddly enough, my own grandmother doesn't do."
"Well huzzah for you're Grandmother David, I suspect she also practices Jiu-Jitsu, and battles the forces of Evil on the weekends."
"Pretty much."
Larry sighed, utterly confused about the superiority complexes that gripped most mortals.
"So I take it you aren't going back?"
"Not so much, Gordo shook his head. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for tyranny and abject humiliation abject physical humiliation but I draw the line at running laps…and you know, being called a girl and told to run a mile in the same day, not so great for your dignity."
"Hmm."
"I don't know why they didn't just let her stay in the Gulf, I think she would've been a lot happier, and we could hire a new gym teacher…one that doesn't make us wash her car and make her power smoothies or call us demeaning names. Maybe I'm in the minority on this, but sometimes I think we'd be much better off with someone who didn't think verbal abuse was a good tool. I liked it when Mr. Dig substituted, that was cool…minus the dancing."
They shuddered in unison, and Larry took a long sip of his chocolate milk.
"You think she'll notice we're gone?"
"I suspect she can smell fear, and as with most Nazgul she probably knows where we are already."
Figuring the other boy didn't need to be enabled any further, Gordo decided to ignore the Lord of the Rings reference.
"Do you ever wonder what it is that makes people become gym teachers?"
"Lack of love as a child?"
"I was thinking temperament issues, and social ineptitude."
"I suppose I know a lot of future gym teachers then."
"God, I don't wanna even think about a world where Ethan Craft can drive and vote."
"It's already come friend, Larry lay his head against a leg of the table. You know there exists a parallel universe where he's winning the Nobel Prize for Physics and you're working in sanitation."
"There's also a parallel universe where you buy new shirts."
"I have shirts!" Larry said, affronted. You have a favorite shirt and just because you wear it all the time everyone thinks it's the only shirt you own."
"Is it?" Gordo asked.
"No you fool, I probably have more shirts than you do."
"Whatever you say."
"And you're snide abuse of the fencing club has gone on long enough, I think it simply stems from jealousy."
"Yeah you caught me; I'm majorly envious of the fencing club."
"There now, doesn't it feel good to concede defeat?"
"I was being sarcastic."
"Oh, don't think that sarcasm doesn't mask a fiery inferno of jealously."
"In you're mind I'm betting it would."
"We've won three state championships in a row."
"To you I am interested? To you this impresses me? I don't care about fencing."
"That's just because Gustav called you a lazy swordsman, he was just being honest it's no reason not to join the club."
"Fencing's not my thing, and if you haven't noticed Gustav is a psychopath."
"What on Earth-"
"He spits on Polish kids and I'm pretty sure he's sending me human hair through the mail."
"Well that's just silly, where would he get human hair?"
"Oh I don't know, from people."
"Gustav?"
"Uh yeah."
"Fragile, chamomile-tea loving, pacifist Gustav?"
"That's just what he wants you to think; in reality he's probably a serial killer."
"Envelopes of human hair?"
"That's correct."
"With no return address?"
"I know they're from Gustav. He's trying to prove a point but I don't know what it is other than the fact that he's a psycho."
"Well stated, have you had your yearly medical examination?"
"Funny."
"Morning Aderol? Mid-afternoon Zoloft?"
"You're not going to be laughing when you find a shrunken head in your locker."
Larry rolled his eyes. "Its subconscious envy, Gustav is a superior swordsman, thus in your mind he's the enemy."
"Tudgeman psycho babble doesn't work on me I'm immune. Gustav on the other hand? Stone cold killer."
"That remains to be seen." Larry said loftily. In the meantime you should come to the club; you'll be exempted from dues this week since you're new."
"My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die." Gordo said throatily.
"That's the spirit, and I assure you if Gustav kills anyone his membership will go under serious consideration."
"That's reassuring."
Having both been the willing participants of a friendly/deadly serious arc rivalry that had (beginning somewhere around the second grade when the rest of the class was having a tough time with addition and subtraction, the pair were just finishing up long division) spanned the length of academic decathlon, Dwarf Lord, and the Science Olympics (wherein Larry had first sipped the bitter nectar of defeat) he found it most disturbing to find himself conversing freely with the enemy of his academic well being and actually enjoying the proceedings.
"You've seen the Princess Bride?"
Gordo stared at him as if he were break-dancing Ewok. "Um yeah…it's only the best movie of all time."
Larry thought this was debatable, but did agree that any movie with fencing, rodents of unusual size and Billy Crystal was top shelf indeed.
"And the lair, Larry laughed. It just so happens that you're friend here is only mostly dead."
"Classic." Gordo nodded.
"If I'm ever put under heavy sedation after being brought back from the dead I want Billy Crystal to oversee the surgery."
"Obviously."
The talk then moved to other movies that featured sedation and sword fights, then the Saturday night episode of Farscape, then DwarfLord, the cafeteria's growing selection of curly fries and other potato products, what coach Kelly would look like had she been born a wookie and the many ways in which to go about overthrowing her stranglehold on their gym class. By the time they were found drawing diagrams of various scenarios in which to bring about a mutiny in gym, it was already time for lunch and the Dean of Science wished to use the lounge for an experiment involving field mice, yogurt and electro magnetic shock.
"Question, Gordo said hesitatingly as they approached to their lockers. Remember how you went all schizo in gym?"
Larry turned to him, in the midst of retrieving his Gandalf the Gray lunch box. "Come again?"
"You know, jumping in front of that dodge ball and stuff?"
He touched his patch. "Vaguely, you're point?"
Gordo grimaced a little, "Next time, I'd just go with hi."
"What?"
"I know it's a plebeian greeting but I'd seriously consider it."
"What in the name of Zeus and Hera are you talking about?" Obviously, the boy had been drinking far too much Shire mead.
"It's not like she'll thank you for it or anything but…"
"Thank me? Who-"
The boy just shook his head slowly.
"Did I miss something or are you being intentionally vague?" Larry asked, abashed.
"The temperament leaves something to be desired, but I guess you know what you're doing."
"Are you inebriated? What are you-?"
"This is all you, Gordo said walking backwards down the corridor, his arms outstretched in the universal sign of surrender. I don't want any part in it."
"Any part in what?" Tudgeman shouted.
But he was gone, leaving the hero half blind and quite confused in the corridor.
fin