It goes without saying that somewhere between chapters five and six, Billy found his way out of the mountain. But the backside of a mountain is no place to know where you are. He was terribly lost and had already had quite enough of this YOLO.
His apparel had fared little better. He had lost his hood, cloak, belt, trousers, and shoes, and he was now almost completely naked save his fashion-forward anklet.
He waddled down a stony path and sat down firmly on a rock stump to think about where to go and what to do. He looked forward, then backward, then forward again until he was out of breath and deliriously fantasizing about his wobbit-hole, which he was beginning to think of as his own little anti-mountain.
He knew he had a decision to make. Now that he had in his possession an anklet that complimented his figure, his self-confidence was at an all-time high. But with good looks came great responsibility, and, based on the episodic nature of this quest, Billy knew that his friends were probably in grave danger right about now. A hero in the same circumstances might consider it his duty to go back and save his friends, murdering any bit characters and extras that got in his way. But was our poor wobbit a hero? He rose valiantly in the shining light of the afternoon, his anklet glistening with courage sweat. Only he could single-handedly defeat the six million Moblins, revive the half of his friends that were certainly already dead, and carry everyone to safety out of a complex labyrinthine mountain that he had no idea how to navigate.
“Whom am I kidding,” he said intelligently. He sat back down and tried eating a slug he’d found on the ground. It was a wise decision, for not a moment after he’d given up on his ragtag crew of Little People did he hear voices in the fields below. He crept around a convenient rock that was just about wobbit-tall and just a little less than wobbit-wide.
“I miss the bagboy,” he heard Whorey whine. “He made me feel so not-fat. Pretending that he’s that rock over there that’s shaped exactly like him is totally not making me feel better about myself.” She sighed. Slorey and Kourtney looked at her in confusion. “Because it’s a rock, and a rock’s not a living thing,” she clarified, and Slorey and Kourtney nodded with their normal amount of confusion.
Hearing this delighted our clogged wobbit’s heart. He wheeled around and looked on the other side of the rock.
There before him was Ballin, standing guard (and not, it is worth mentioning, because everybody else presumed he would look the most intimidating to enemies. They just believed he was the most capable to carry out the task due to his years of experience at standing guard, which he had gotten because people always presumed him to be the most intimidating).
“I will give him a surprise,” Billy thought, and threw a handful of confetti in his face. Yet Ballin did not react other than to wipe some dirt off his shoulder. Unfazed, Billy waited patiently to be appreciated.
He began to notice something curious. Though Ballin was standing right in front of Billy, he was looking everywhere except right at the wobbit. When Billy moved to one side and wobbled his hands about, Ballin reflexively looked the other direction. When Billy headed for that direction, Ballin would again promptly look away. This continued for some time until Billy’s arms wobbled themselves to exhaustion and Ballin was stricken with an inexplicable headache.
Billy proceeded past Ballin nervously, beginning to doubt how attractive his anklet truly was.
He stationed himself in the center of the camp. The Little People and Dumbledalf carried on as if he wasn’t there.
“We can’t leave him behind. After all, he is my friend,” said the wizard. “I have a friend. At least one friend.” He thoughtfully yanked out whole tufts of his beard. His voice lowered solemnly. “Although I think he might be half a blood.”I
“All this talking without walking is giving me a terrible migraine,” said Sorkinshield. The others nodded, feeling flashes of pain in their prefrontal cortexes as well. It was as though they had paid four or five extra dollars to experience something that was definitely worse than the original experience.
“It’s like all I can see is a distorted reality playing out before my eyes,” continued Sorkinshield, who was really, really high.
Billy did not appreciate being spoken of as though he was not present. He was about to get angry, but instead took three deep breaths, counted to ten, and realized the real issue. The Little People and the wizard were far too sensible to associate themselves with anyone wearing an anklet so brazenly.
“Fine, fine,” Billy acquiesced. “I understand. I’ll remove the anklet.” He shoved a few fat rings out of the way and wrenched the thing off.
“Welcome back!” his friends shouted with delight as soon as his anklet’s clasp was released. “Hooray!” they cheered, the proper manner of speaking in unison for such a YOLO occasion.
When spirits returned to their usual depressingly low level, Ballin approached the wobbit.
“How ever did you get by me?” he asked, quite impressed. “Normally I’m a highly skilled guard. Due to my experience.”
“What we have here is perhaps a case of reverse racism,” Billy speculated. “Can I not be an equally skilled burglar due to my lack of experience?”
None of them followed his lack of logic, but they figured if they relieved him of his nakedness, maybe he’d stop saying uncomfortable things about race. So Ballin lent Billy the hood of his cloak to cover himself, and Loin assisted in fashioning it into a cloth. Then they wanted to know all about his adventures after they had lost him, and he told them everything at once, stopping only four times for wheezing and three times for some cake.
“What did I tell you?” laughed Dumbledalf. “Hairy has more about him than you guess.” He gave Billy a queer look, his eyes half-twinkling, half-drugged.
Then Billy had questions of his own to ask, for he wished to know how his friends had escaped the grasp of the Moblins.
“A rather ticklish business,” Loin said. “Touch and go! But Dumbledalf knew about the back door, and once you know about it, it’s just a matter of getting through it. It was a wooden door, so we used axes.” Everyone groaned in disappointment, especially since Loin could’ve made something out of wood.
“I know my way around the dark,” explained Dumbledalf. “I’m not a wizard for nothing. I am a wizard.” He paused. Everyone waited eagerly for the rest of what he had to say, but he only stared at the grass and hummed a John Williams theme to himself.II
Just then a battle cry echoed down from the mountains.
“It seems as though the Moblins are on to us,” said somebody. Honestly, I can’t remember who. Probably Drawlin or something. Whatever.
Sorkinshield took the opportunity to make a short speech about courage in the face of six million equally courageous mountain creatures. Then they all gathered in a huddle and high-fived one another before setting off as fast as they could. The Moblins were in non-trivial pursuit, riding atop an army of wargis. Though Billy had never seen one before, the breed had a reputation for being fiercely adorable.III
All of a sudden a clearing opened up before the party. They stopped at once, awestruck. Beneath the full moon, scrunched on tiny hind legs, sat the cutest little wargi pup they’d ever seen, adorably licking its genitals. The wargi rolled over and pawed the ground, but its futile attempts at ferocity only made it cuter. Kourtney could not help herself, and I suspect you would not have done much better. She ran forward, sweeping the wargi off the ground and tossing the furry fiend into her purse.
“A poochie in a Gucci,” she whispered, tearing up.
It was a trap, of course. No sooner did the wargi begin to vomit in Kourtney’s purse than six million Moblins surrounded them from all sides.
A Moblin henchman strutted forth and wiped the remnants of a cannoli from his stubble. “Looks like you’re outnumbered, fourteen to six million. To win this fight you’d either need an army of over five million or exactly three hundred.”
Billy and the others looked around, surveying their options. They had somehow crossed into a vacant landscape with nowhere to run.IV Surrounding them was nothing but a nuclear bunker, an armory, a time machine, and a tree.
With no other choice, they scurried up the tree.
You would have laughed (from an omniscient perspective) if you had seen the Little People there, sitting high up in the branches of the tree like they were giants with little heads and trees for bodies. Their beards swung beneath them, dangling perilously close to the ground. Billy had always been afraid of heights; it is no secret he only felt safe below ground level. Even when standing at ground level, the view down was terrifying. He could free-fall four and a half feet to his death at any moment.
So staring down from the soaring heights of the larch tree was enough to make Billy lose his appetite, and not just because larch was difficult to chew and was mildly choking Billy at present.
He continued eating the larch leaves anyway, confident that somebody else was coming up with a grand escape plan. Kiwi puffed out his plumage and widened his eyes, the natural response of the Southern Brown Kiwi to a predator or other threat, while Fili looked at things, which is the natural response to any situation of a character whose only real trait is that he can see well. Meanwhile, Dumbledalf was too busy hanging upside down and saying “Whee!” to help much with an escape, and Sorkinshield was already furiously writing a note to his agent about getting a new quest on basic cable.
There was, however, one very convenient piece of good news, and it was this: neither Moblins nor wargis could climb a tree. Run an integrated mob syndicate? Sure. Sing their hearts out to a catchy, spontaneously composed tune? Who can’t? But climb a tree? Not a chance.
With this in mind, Sorkinshield proposed the only sensible plan: “We’ll just wait it out.” He’d seen this work a thousand times in the movies he’d written.
As though on cue, the Moblins broke out into song. Sorkinshield had read the situation perfectly.V
Bunch of Little People sitting in a tree
K-i-s-s-i-n-g
First comes love
Then comes baby in a baby carriage!
Then comes school,
Then comes mortgage,
Then comes disappointment, divorce, alimony, emotional scarring, a second mortgage, remarriage, another baby in a nicer baby carriage, which makes the first baby kind of jealous but it’s time for him to grow up, get his act together, and meet a nice girl so he can start this whole thing over again.
Sorkinshield hated song and frivolity in general. He blamed the whole mess on Kourtney and her wargi obsession.
“You just did a big thing badly. Get out of my office!” he shouted at the three sisters, gesturing toward a branch on which he’d written “Aaron Sorkinshield: Currently for Hire!”
“We just wanted to have fun!” set up Whorey.
“We’re just girls!” continued Slorey.
“Girls just want to have fun!” Kourtney concluded, properly executing for the first time in her life the transitive property of equality.
But the fact remained that the Little People needed to do something to calm the hubbub transpiring below them. It was not a good sign that the Moblins were patient enough to write another verse and rehearse the lyrics to perform together in a six-million-part chorus.
Daaaaa dada daaaa da Da Da
Thaaaat is the theme to The Godfather
Just so it’s clear what we’re referencing
It’s The Godfather.
Sorkinshield couldn’t stand that somebody was singing when he hadn’t written it into the screenplay. He was coming to his wits’ end. There was nothing he could do. Everything was black. Then he opened his eyes, and everything was normal-colored again but still bad.
“You know, the word ‘patriot’ means a lot of things,” he said. “It’s about seeing things through, about loving what matters, about acing every test you’ve ever been given using the only tool out there: the truth. Here’s the truth: ‘repatriate’ is a word that sounds a lot like ‘patriot.’ It means to take back. I think it’s high time we take all we have left, boys: our lives.”
Of course they’d all heard him say that a hundred times before. Nobody believed he would actually take his life and jump from the tree. A man of his eloquence could not simply fall. He had to be felled.
But they were wrong. It was a plot twist they should have seen coming from a man like Sorkinshield. He let go of the wind-slapped boughs to an audience full of gasps, tumbling down through both the pines and the cones toward a 100 percent certain death, plus or minus a 10 percent margin of error.
And yet—someone must have rounded up the statistics! Just as Sorkinshield’s biopic’s trailer was flashing before his eyes, he was snatched out of the air by the red-hot hands of six-time Pro Bowler and star receiver for the 2004 Philadelphia Eagles, Terrell Owens.
“Touchdown!” Owens declared, dancing in the chaos and spiking Sorkinshield into the ground. Before anyone could comprehend what was going on, Eagles running back Brian Westbrook swept Fili, Kiwi, Slorey, Whorey, and Kourtney into his bosom and charged down the field. Beefer and Buffer found refuge in 2004 NFC Offensive Player of the Year Donovan McNabb’s embrace, and were one by one tossed in perfect spirals to wide receiver Greg Lewis. Linebacker Jeremiah Trotter scooped up the rest, and Billy and Dumbledalf rode his shoulder pads. This was a bit lopsided due to Billy’s great weight and Dumbledalf’s lack of bone density, but nothing could stop the Eagles when victory was on the line.
Billy could not believe their luck. The 2004 NFC Champion Philadelphia Eagles were the most majestic creatures in the land. While lesser species flew, the Eagles soared straight to a 27–10 victory over the Atlanta Falcons in the NFC Championship.
The all-star roster deposited Billy and his friends in the safety of the Eagles’ locker room, where they sprayed one another with champagne from bottle after bottle, slapped buttock after buttock, and generally provided Loin and Groin with a host of material that the two chose to respectfully pass on.
After the obligatory revelry had been had, a hush fell over the locker room, and Eagles head coach Andy Reid entered stoically. He was as gallant as the legends claimed, and more adorable than a wargi. One day he might rise up to be the king of all the birds, which is an actual monarchy that for complicated sociopolitical reasons all birds are okay with.
“I heard you were stuck up a tree, as they say,” said the brave leader of the Eagles. “I owed Dumbledalf a favor from a few years back—he drew up quite the trick play for us in the 2004 NFC Championship game against those good-for-nothing Falcons. Not even I knew where the ball was, and it hasn’t been spotted since.”
Dumbledalf blushed and removed the football from beneath his cloak.
Coach Reid cawed pleasantly and took the ball in his conference-winning hands. “Perhaps it’s time for some lighthearted fun then. Anyone up for a scrimmage?”
Needless to say, everyone was up for a scrimmage. The Little People lined up against their saviors.
The Philadelphia Eagles won.
I Like most wobbits, Billy was actually more of a muddy-blood, meaning his blood was half blood and half milk chocolate.
II If you purchased one of the Lampoon’s Speak-O-Books, scratch here until you hear the theme:
III Ah, wargis. They look much like you’d expect. Comically huge and heavy head atop a fur-ball body barely held up by puffs of legs. Imagine a puppy from our generation that was run through a cute machine and then given the love and attention of a brutal, broken Moblin whose life has otherwise been reduced to a constant fear of death and stereotype fulfillment. Now imagine feeding that wargi peanut butter.
IV Trust me, dear reader; the topography of Widdle Wearth is complex and multifaceted. Didn’t you see that impressive map?
V To you budding writers who would like to craft a completely true story as grand as mine one day, I offer this advice: learn to read.