Episode 11: What the Fuck?!?

“What the fuck?!?” asked Hardy, cradling the frozen infant in his hands. “How the fuck?!? Did you … how did you … I mean, what the fuck?!?”

“Elementary, my dear Mr. Hardy,” Mark Hazzard said over the loudspeaker. “As you will recall, some years ago, you and Jacky Minx had a torrid love affair. I loved Jacky Minx and I was incredibly jealous of the love you had for one another. I hated you so much. Every night when I was having sex with Jacky Minx all I could think about was how I would someday kill you.”

“You had sex with Jacky Minx every night?” Hardy asked.

“Yes,” Jacky Minx said over the loudspeaker. “But it was always you I loved, Sargeant Hardy!”

“Silence!” shouted Mark Hazzard. “This is not a discussion about who loved who more. Those were dark times and I think we can agree that we all loved each other and hated each other too.”

“Agreed,” said Jacky Minx.

“Agreed,” said Hardy.

“Did Mark Hazzard just imply that he and Sargeant Hardy were in love?” Beans whispered to Lady Midnight.

“My darling Beans,” Lady Midnight laughed. “So naive.”

“Someone’s getting in trouuubllllle,” whispered John Nightnight, conjuring chuckles from everyone except Beans, who suddenly felt totally out of the loop.

“Now I will continue what I was talking about,” said Hazzard. “One night, when my hatred was at its strongest, I surprised Jacky Minx with a surprise visit. She seemed quite nervous. I went into her bedroom to have sex with her while she went into the bathroom to freshen up. And as I laid down in the bed, I realized why she needed to get fresh: the mattress was soaking in Sargent Hardy’s man goo.”

“Gross,” said Beans, not even bothering to whisper.

“Yes!” Hazzard screamed. “It was gross! It was gross and it was demoralizing! But it was also a golden opportunity for me to inflict the kind of psychological pain on Hardy that he had been inflicting on me for all those months. So I scooped up all that man goo and put it on ice, with the knowledge that someday I would use it to humiliate Sargent Pat Hardy forever!”

“Gasp!” gasped Sargent Hardy.

“I’m still pretty confused,” said Beans.

“Don’t you see?” Professor Blowjob said. “The electronic legs I made for Mark Hazzard were the perfect incubator! He must have gotten some lady eggs and mixed the man goo up with them and made a leg baby! And then he kept the baby in cryogenic freeze for thirty years, until the day he could capture Hardy and show it to him, thus humiliating him in front of the entire world!”

“Precisely,” said Mark Hazzard.

“But the question of the day is,” said Blowjob, “if Hardy is the father … then who is the mother?”

“Who else?” Hazzard asked. “It is Jacky Minx!”

“I knew this had your fingerprints all over it, Minx!” Hardy screamed. “Your dna, too!” He looked down at the frozen life in his hands. “So young,” he said tenderly. “So cold.”

“As the only other woman here, I must say: shame on you Jacky Minx,” said Lady Midnight, walking into the middle of the cave so that everyone would look at her. “You have used your reproductive powers for evil. In all my years as a woman, I have never heard of such an egregious violation of the womanly code.”

“First of all, I had no idea what Hazzard was planning on doing with my eggs when I gave them to him,” Jacky Minx said. “If you’ll recall, he did not come out as evil until he had his face scarred in that vat of acid. I assumed he needed them for good and the American way. Second of all, you are fat and I hate you.”

“I’d rather be fat than the mother of a frozen baby!” Lady Midnight screamed.

Beans was still confused. “I’m still so confused,” he said. “How is creating a frozen leg baby supposed to humiliate Sargent Hardy? It just sounds cruel to the baby.”

“Stop being naive, Beans!” shouted Hardy. “There’s a war on! And this motherfucker is the enemy! He froze my baby and now he must die!”

“Stop!” yelled Jacky Minx over the loudspeaker. “This is no longer about you, Hardy! It’s about our baby, and how we can unfreeze it. I’m not here because I hate Lady Midnight, although I do and I hope she dies. I am here because the minute I found out about the baby, I rushed to Mark Hazzard and begged him to unfreeze her so that I could raise her to be a proper woman of affluence, like me. But he said the only way he would do that is if I helped him cause your ruination.”

“Well you better get to ruining,” Hardy said, “because I’m about at the end of my rope. And there is no way I’m going to let my daughter grow up in a deep freeze.”

“Ask and ye shall receive!” shouted Mark Hazzard.

A robot claw came down from the ceiling and plucked the baby out of Hardy’s hands. And then the floor began to sink into a moat full of alligators!

Next Episode: Gatorscape!

Episode 12: Gatorscape!

Once Sargent Hardy saw all them gators, it was game-on time for real. If there was one thing Hardy knew how to do, it was how to get out of trouble through use of serious action.

“Storm Fighters!” he shouted. “Plebius Formation, stat!”

The Storm Fighters of Courage took their positions in the Plebius Formation, a special kind of fighting formation that had saved their butts on more than one occasion. Snog-Dog and Nightnight moved into place on the opposite poles of the circle, while Lady Midnight and Beans stood atop one another’s shoulders, forming an L shape. Hardy formed the base of the triangle, standing at a 45 degree angle while using his leg as a branch to hold up Blowjob. Behind them, the rest of the group swung from ropes like marionettes, pirouetting around their pivoting captain in an S shape.

Down below, the gators snapped their jaws in a hungry-like manner. As the platform descended into the moat, the Storm Fighters of Courage built up their thermodynamic energy, until sparks of electricity began shooting from their bodies. The Plebius Formation had begun, and it was proper.

“Blowjob!” Hardy commanded. “Mark three!”

On Hardy’s command, Blowjob used his strong forearms to rip a hole in the ground. The group swung their ropes into a P shape, then sent electricity traveling from their bodies to the ropes and into the hole. Beans clawed at the sky like an anxious badger, while Snog-Dog shot his sky powers all around them, forming a protective barrier. While all this was going on, Nightnight jumped down onto the stunned gators and began punching them in the face.

That was where Lady Midnight came in. Leaping from shoulder to shoulder, she created a vortex of propulsion that sucked the water into the air, reversing night and day. The power of the vortex was so strong that the platform leapt over the gators like a skipping stone, dragging Nightnight along with it. Finally, Hardy pulled out his gun and shot all those gators to death, as the group was flung into the farthest reaches of the cave, hundreds of feet from harm.

The Storm Fighters of Courage lay against the ground, battered and bruised from their action-packed adventure. It looked like everyone was dead. But slowly, they lifted one finger, and then the next. And finally they all brushed themselves up and wobbled to their feet, just glad to be alive. As the minutes wore on they started giggling, then laughing, and then they were all jumping up and down and high-fiving.

“Yeah!” shouted Hardy. “Talk about teamwork! That was great teamwork.”

“Did you see that?” they all asked each other. “We sure did!” they all said.

Once they’d talked about all the action they’d had, they settled down around a toasty fire. They were safe for now, but for how long, they didn’t know. One thing was for certain: they needed a good night’s sleep. But first, there was a fire. And where there is a fire, there is always one other thing: tales.

Next Episode: The Tale of Snog-Dog

Episode 13: The Tale of Snog-Dog

The Storm Fighters of Courage sat around the fire in their pajamas, eating good food and drinking savory wine. Their near-fatal brush with death had left them in great spirits and ready to blow off some steam. Gradually the talk turned to how they were and what they’d done to become that.

“I don’t know about you guys,” said Hardy, “but I sure could use a tale.”

“Yes!” the rest all said. “Tale! Tale!” They continued chanting “tale” until Blowjob began to speak.

“Okay,” he said, “I will tell a tale. This is a tale that explains why we are called Professor Blowjob and the Storm Fighters of Courage and not Sargent Hardy and the Storm Fighters of Courage.”

“No!” Hardy complained. “We all know that tale. Let’s hear another one. Who wants to start?”

Snog-Dog raised his hand.

“Good!” Hardy said. “I would love to hear about Snog-Dog. So tell us, oh teller-of-tales, how it is you came to be how you are.”

The rest of the Storm Fighters of Courage settled in to hear a good tale. And Snog-Dog did not disappoint.

“When I was younger,” Snog-Dog began, “I loved to eat. It was my favorite thing to do. I ate all day, every day, all the time. I couldn’t get enough of it. Hand me some food, and you would find it gone … if not your fingers, too!”

“What did you eat?” asked Beans.

“Anything and everything,” Snog-Dog said. “I’d eat pork, waffles, burritos, watermelon, all of it. Everything there was, I would eat. But what I liked to eat most of all was pie.”

When he was twenty-one, Snog-Dog explained, he entered a pie-eating contest sponsored by a local circus impressario. It was the biggest event of the year in his town. Everyone was there to join in and watch the fun, especially the mayor.

Snog-Dog loved to eat, but he knew that loving to eat and eating to win were two different things. His main competition for the event was a local tough named Cunty Pickles. Snog-Dog hated Pickles because Pickles was the only person in town who could out-eat him. He knew he had to train well so that he could make Cunty Pickles look like a fool, so he hired the best coach money could buy: Harry Trader.

Trader was well-known in the world of competitive eating for his strict attention to discipline and his giant mucous sack that he would swing at people who sassed him. Snog-Dog was terrified of Trader, but he also knew there was no way he could win the contest and beat Cunty Pickles without Trader’s help. For some, it was like making a deal with the devil. But Snog-Dog didn’t care. All he wanted was to win that contest so he could finally beat Cunty Pickles at his own game and marry the mayor’s daughter, because that was the prize in the contest.

As the weeks wore on, it became steadily clearer to Snog-Dog that Harry Trader was a maniac. He would wake Snog-Dog up at the crack of dawn with a swing from his giant mucous sack. Still covered in mucous, he would have to eat twelve pies and then run for a million hours on a treadmill. All day, every day, until Snog-Dog was nothing but pie and bones.

But finally the day of the big contest arrived. The contestants took their seats at the pie-eating table. All around them, the people of the town sat in tiny Shriner’s cars, watching the action on the big screen that the mayor had erected in the middle of the town square to show footage of his penis in action. The silence was so quiet you could hear an invisible pin drop. Snog-Dog steeled his nerves, but inside he was quaking.

The mayor walked up to the podium and held his mayoral sash aloft.

“You see this, fuckers?” the mayor screamed. “You know what this shit means? It means I’m your fucking leader. Now I’ve heard all your complaints about how shitty our schools are and how we don’t have sewage and how I’m always breaking into your homes and fondling your pets. And believe me, I care. I really do. And I plan to change all that shit the minute I get back to my office. But today is not the time for politics. Today is the time to watch a bunch of fags eat some good-ass pie!”

The townspeople cheered and honked the horns on their Shriner’s cars in exultation. Looking out at the crowd, the mayor shed a tear of joy at how much of a difference he’d made in the community. Before he was elected, no one had a Shriner’s car. And now everyone did. He was the best thing that ever happened to these people, and almost nothing good ever happened to them.

“Settle down, settle down,” the Mayor said. “I know you love me, but we have business to take care of. The business of pie! The rules of the pie-eating contest are simple: eat a bunch of fucking pie. The one who eats the most in the time limit wins! And this year, there is a very special prize: my daughter’s hand in marriage, Llona! Llona, get the fuck up here, baby!”

Llona walked up to the podium and waved. The town gasped at how terrific she was. She was class queen and valedictorian and machine-gun killer all rolled into one beautiful, pert package. Everyone wanted to marry her, men and women included. But only one person could marry her, and that was the person who won the pie-eating contest.

Cunty Pickles looked at Snog-Dog.

“Good luck, Snog-Dog,” Pickles said sarcastically. “I bet you’ll eat a whole lot of pie.”

“And I bet you’ll eat a whole lot of shit,” said Snog-Dog.

“Silence!” the mayor shouted. “Now eat pie!”

The buzzer sounded and they were off. To no one’s surprise, Snog-Dog and Cunty were quickly in the lead. Snog-Dog began by chowing down an entire pecan pie in one gulp. Cunty countered by eating a blueberry pie through his nose. Then Snog-Dog mashed up two pies into a drinking cup and drank them! The other contestants could barely choke down a single slice. They weren’t prepared for this; no one could be. Only two people were, and it was between them.

The excitement of the moment whipped the crowd into a frenzy. All around the podium, townspeople clawed at each other in a Bacchanalian fervor, raining blood and viscera down upon the contestants. Most of the contestants were puking all over each other, but still Snog-Dog and Cunty Pickles kept at it. One pie became four became thirty, as the two eating champions stuffed pie after pie into their massive, gaping maws. On stage, the mayor masturbated furiously, shooting spunkload after spunkload into the faces of the adoring crowd.

When it was all over, and the final buzzer had sounded, only one man remained standing.

Next Episode: The Winner Is Revealed

Episode 14: The Winner Is Revealed

Only one man remained standing at the end of the contest, and that man was: the mayor. Unbeknownst to the townspeople, the pie-eating contest had all been a ruse for the mayor to rid the town of fatties. The mayor hated fatties more than anything. And one thing he really wanted in life was to make sure his daughter never married a fatty and polluted his family bloodstream with fatty blood.

The mayor went to the local circus impresario, Bartholomew Buttery, and told him about his plan to have a pie-eating contest and put sleeping pills in the pies and then bundle all the fatties up while they were asleep and fly them to a whole new town. Buttery loved the plan because if all the fatties were gone from town then he could add a fatty tent to his circus and make a lot of money from people who wanted to see what a fatty looked like. He also liked that it promoted good physical fitness so maybe he could trick people into being in his circus for free. So he gave the mayor a bunch of money and said, “make it so.”

The mayor took all of Butterby’s money and made a bunch of ads about how good the pie-eating contest would be and built robot townspeople to get excited about the contest so that all the fatties would want to enter. As an extra bonus and trick he said the winner could marry his daughter, because if there was one thing he knew fatties didn’t like to do it was attract mates.

“But then along came you two jive motherfuckers,” the mayor said to Snog-Dog and Cunty Pickles. The two old rivals were sitting in the mayor’s underground bunker with him, recovering from all the sleeping pills they just ate. “You guys are so good at eating, that I knew immediately someone had discovered my trick and had sent you here as agents to make sure the fatties stayed in town.”

“What?” Snog-Dog asked. “I’m not an agent! I just wanted to win the contest and marry your daughter!”

“I’m not an agent, either,” said Cunty Pickles. “And I don’t even really care about your daughter. I just enjoy pie.”

“Silence!” screamed the mayor. He pulled up his pant leg and showed them a giant scar. “You see that?” he asked sneeringly. “That’s not a game. That’s real. And you just met your worst nightmare.”

The mayor leapt out of the room and pushed a button. The walls of the room began tightening up, about to crush Snog-Dog and his old rival.

“Well old buddy,” Snog-Dog said, “it looks like it’s curtains from here on out. It was a good run though, wasn’t it?”

“It was pretty good,” Cunty said. “I never wanted to kill you, you know.”

“Thanks, buddy,” said Snog-Dog. “You and me both.”

Just as they thought they were going to die, a spray of mucous came from over the wall and hit them. “Is that what I think it is?” Snog-Dog asked. He looked over, and yes! It was! There was Harry Trader, and he’d just slapped the mayor so hard with his mucous sack that the mayor tripped on the button and stopped the walls from crushing them! The mayor was out cold and lying in the middle of all the mucous.

After Snog-Dog and Cunty extricated themselves from the tiny room, they talked to Harry Trader about what happened.

“I had a sneaking suspicion that the mayor was up to something,” said Harry Trader, “the minute I saw him crushing up sleeping pills and putting them in all the pies. But you two were so furious in your battle, you couldn’t even hear me. And then everyone passed out. But luckily I brought my tracking shoes. I tracked the mayor into this bunker and slapped him with my sack just when he started to crush you.”

“Wow, Harry!” shouted Snog-Dog. “I never would have thought you’d do something so nice for me. I thought you were just a cruel trainer.”

“I work people hard,” said Harry Trader, “but it’s for your own good. All I ask in return is that you don’t sass me. And you never did sass me, even though I gave you a lot of chances. So in exchange for that, I will teach you the secret of controlling the sky.”

And that very day was when Snog-Dog learned his sky powers. Soon after that, he came to the attention of the Commandante, who drafted him to fight alongside Hardy and John Nightnight in Nicaragua, back when they were known as the Unbeatable Fight Masters.

“Wowee,” whistled Hardy. “What a story! And what ever happened to good old Cunty Pickles?”

“He was never seen again,” said Snog-Dog.

“Wowee,” said Hardy. “Three cheers for Snog-Dog and his wonderful tale!”

The Storm Fighters of Courage all cheered wildly for their friend. Snog-Dog blushed and laughed so hard he could barely eat his marshmallow sandwich.

“Stop cheering!” barked Hardy. “Who’s next?”

Next episode: The Tale of Lady Midnight

Episode 15: The Tale of Lady Midnight

“I believe I have a tale that may be of interest,” said Lady Midnight.

All the attention turned to Lady Midnight.

“Of all the Stom Fighters of Courage, perhaps your origins are the most secretive,” said Sargent Hardy. “So we are very intrigued to hear that you may have a good tale for us. So let us all sit back and listen to the tale of Lady Midnight!”

“Here, here!” said all the men, hoisting their flasks and toasting to their female companion. It was cold in the cave but the fire and the wine kept them warm.

Lady Midnight shivered a little in her skimpy bathing suit and pulled a bearskin rug tight around her supple flesh. The boys all noticed how sexy she looked but they knew to keep their distance. Even though they had desires like most men they respected Lady Midnight and would never do anything to make her uncomfortable. They never even mentioned the fact that she wore a skimpy bathing suit for her costume, because they didn’t want her to think they were ogling her. Mostly they just tried to avoid looking at her, which, ironically, encouraged Lady Midnight to wear more and more revealing outfits in an attempt to be noticed, which in turn led the boys to avoid looking at her even more.

But now was not the time to get into the group’s sexual dynamics. Now was the time for Lady Midnight to tell her tale. And tell she did, by talking it out loud to the people around her.

“The tale of me begins on a snowy Christmas Day in some backwater redneck town just off the coast of Arkansas. I had just settled down for my annual Christmas nap when a knock came on the door. I didn’t know it then, but that knock would change my life.”

Lady Midnight answered the door. Behind the door was a shadowy figure in a mysterious-looking cloak.

“Susan Pratt?” asked the shadowy figure in a growling voice.

“Yes,” Lady Midnight said. “That is my real name. What gives? It’s Christmas and I was just about to take a nap.”

“Maybe you should think twice about falling asleep,” the shadowy figure said. “Because you just won a million dollars!”

The figure emerged from the shadows and revealed himself to be Kit Jaguar, the famous host of the beloved game show Here Is Some Money!

“Kit Jaguar!” said Beans with admiration. “I had his posters all over my wall!”

“Me too!” said John Nightnight. “What’s he like in real life?”

“Oh, he’s dreamy,” said Lady Midnight. “After he gave me the check for a million dollars he sent his team away to take care of other kinds of business and we had a long conversation. I told him all about my dreams, and he taught me about how important Christmas was. Then we fell in love and made love all night. He told me he would hold me forever as we drifted off to sleep. The next morning, he was gone.”

When Lady Midnight awoke alone and $1 million richer, she knew that it was time to fulfill all her dreams. The first dream she had was to get silk sheets. So she bought them, and she slept so well she decided to pursue her other dreams. Her next dream was to become a demolitions expert. So she bought every book on demolitions and taught herself all there was to know about it. Finally, her dream was to go on a tropical vacation to a place where she could see monkeys. She bought a ticket and flew to a small jungle country called Paumapaupau.

It was in Paumapaupau that Lady Midnight first encountered Sargent Hardy. He was doing some reconnaissance at a local bar when she walked in in her bathing suit.

“Hoo-wee,” Hardy whistled. “You are a real peach.”

“Don’t get too close, smarty,” she said. “I know more about blowing things up than you could ever know.”

“Oh yeah?” Hardy asked. “Do you want a job?”

“Accepted,” Lady Midnight said.

And the rest was history. She changed her name to Lady Midnight and decided to wear bathing suits all the time to remind herself of the day she finally fulfilled her fondest dream of becoming a person who uses explosives for a living. She joined the Unbeatable Fight Masters and traveled the world, blowing up people and things and using her seductive powers to turn men into quivering jelly balls. As for monkeys? Yeah, she saw a few.

“Yeah!” all the guys shouted at once. “What a great tale! Boy, was that a great tale. And now we need yet another! Blowjob! It is your time! Tell us a tale, old Blowjob, about how you came to be!”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” Blowjob said, “but then I’ll have to kill you!”

“No!” they all screamed in horror. “Don’t kill us!”

“That’s a joke!” laughed Blowjob. “I’ll tell you in just a minute, after I finish my beer.”

They all smiled and had nice things to say to each other, especially about the fire and all the fun they were having.

Next episode: The Tale of Professor Blowjob

Episode 16: The Tale of Professor Blowjob

Professor Blowjob stood up and moved to the center of the circle.

“You’re standing in the fire!” shouted Hardy.

Blowjob looked down at his pant legs. Fire was creeping up them. And that was when he felt the sting, like 10,000 hornets slapping him at once. He screamed and leapt out of the fire. Luckily, there was a spring right near the campsite. He jumped into the spring and his pants went out with a satisfying pfffssss.

“Phew!” Blowjob laughed, walking back up into the camp. “That was a close one!”

“And how,” said Beans. “If you had died, we never would have been able to hear your tale.”

“Too true, Beans,” said Blowjob. “For that is how death works. And now I would like to relate to you the tale of how I died, and saw the universe.”

“Ooooo,” they all said, because that had the makings of a very good tale indeed.

Professor Blowjob grabbed his tablet computer and set it close to the middle of the circle, but not so close that it would catch on fire. He pushed a button and the cosmos were displayed on the ceiling of the cave.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Blowjob said, “but while Midnight and Snog-Dog were telling their tales, I took the opportunity to design some multimedia content for my presentation.”

“No fair!” said Midnight. “You’re going to make my story look like an asshole!”

Everyone laughed, but they secretly knew Midnight was right. Blowjob had an irritating habit of making everyone around him look like they weren’t very smart or clever. He didn’t do it to be mean. He was just that fucking cool.

“The cosmos,” Blowjob began, “so infinite. So full of mystery. What is it, and how did it get that way? Nobody knows for sure. Except me. Because I have been there, all the way inside it and back again.”

The rest of the Storm Fighters of Courage settled in for what seemed like it would be a very long and heady presentation.

Professor Blowjob’s history with the Storm Fighters of Courage was not as neat as his CV suggested. He first encountered Hardy and the other members of the team in the ’80s when they were known as the Unbeatable Fight Masters. Back then, he was just a lowly clerk at a nuclear power plant in India. One day, while he was administering his clerking duties, he came across a fax that suggested the owners of the power plant were planning a nuclear assault on America. He didn’t have any love for America, but he knew if he disrupted the plans he might be able to rise above his lowly caste and become the kind of international thinker he always knew he could be.

His prayers were answered when he learned that the famous Sargent Hardy of the Unbeatable Fight Masters was coming to town to have sex with some prostitutes. He spent weeks learning about prostitutes and replicating their ways, and then he disguised himself as a prostitute and got a job at the Khalan Du Pussy Ranch where he knew Hardy would be staying.

The night that Hardy arrived Blowjob made himself extra-feminine by putting powders all over and shaving down anything nasty. Nervously, he waited in line as Hardy picked out the prostitutes he wanted. When Hardy looked over at Blowjob, Blowjob winked in a way that suggested he was ready for some very good action indeed. Maybe it was fate. Maybe it was something else. But whatever it was, Hardy whisked Blowjob away to the Muskrat Suite where he was determined to do some very beautiful lovemaking.

After they made love in a very dirty manner, Blowjob revealed that he was, in fact, a man. Hardy was upset at first but settled down after a nice cognac. That was when Blowjob learned that a good cognac can put any situation at ease, even when the situation is a man having sex with another man who he thought was a woman.

As soon as Hardy heard about the nuclear fiasco, he understood the necessity of Blowjob’s sexual subterfuge. Hardy decided to bring the rest of the Fight Masters into town and take the owners of the power plant apart bit by bloody bit. Then they made love again and Blowjob returned to the power plant to get everything ready for the big day when the Unbeatable Fight Masters would liberate him and the rest of the workers from the tyranny of unmitigated evil.

“Wait a minute!” shouted Hardy, back in the cave. “I know I had sex with you when you were a woman, but we didn’t do it a second time!”

“My mistake,” Blowjob said. He didn’t want to make Hardy look bad in front of the rest of the Storm Fighters, but in his heart he knew what had happened. He flipped past the picture in his presentation of he and Hardy making love, knowing that the emotions were too raw to be projected on the ceiling of a cave.

Back at the nuclear power plant, Blowjob got to work deciphering the codes the Americans would need to foil the evil plan. As he figured out the final code, however, a wave of nuclear power shot out of the centrifuge and killed him.

“And that was when I died,” Blowjob said gravely. The rest of the Storm Fighters hanged on his every work. Somebody burped, and everyone shushed that person.

Next episode: Blowjob Was Dead!

Episode 17: Blowjob Was Dead!

The Storm Fighters of Courage stared at the ceiling in awe. At this point in his presentation, Blowjob had projected a picture of the cosmos that no one had ever seen before. No one had ever seen it because it was a picture Blowjob took when he was dead. People die all the time, but no one usually thinks to take a camera.

“Dying is unlike anything I’d ever experienced before,” Blowjob said. He spoke slowly and quietly, because his story demanded extra gravitas. The other Storm Fighters understood and tried to breathe only when it was absolutely necessary.

“They say all that stuff about the light,” Blowjob said. “But I don’t think that’s accurate. When I died, I didn’t see a light. I saw darkness. And in the darkness was monsters.”

The Storm Fighters gasped, because the thought of death monsters is the scariest thought of them all.

“No, no,” Blowjob said. “Don’t be alarmed. The monsters were not scary. They were good monsters, fuzzy monsters. But still, I was scared.

“The first thing that happened was a monster reached out to me. At first, I rejected him. ‘No way, monster!’ I shouted, and punched him with my fist. But then he started crying and I felt bad. ‘I just want to be your friend,’ he cried, and I realized he was good and true. I told him that I had never encountered monsters before and all this was very strange to me. He said he understood and that he would probably punch a monster too if he saw one when he wasn’t expecting.

“I soon came to trust him and to look around at where I was. It was a very different place than I’d expected. Once my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I realized that I was in a palace filled with dark fruits. I walked around a bit, just to make sure that I could. And once I figured out that much, I started to test the limits of what it means to be human.

“The first thing I did was try to walk up a wall. That was easy. So then I tried to flip myself horizontally. That was easy, too. So then I did everything that you ever wanted to do with your body. I laughed and laughed and my monster companion laughed too, because he had been watching dead people for eternity and was very happy every time one of them took full advantage of the situation.

“Eventually I realized that there was only so much one could do in a body in a place. So I asked the monster if I could be allowed a glimpse of whatever was outside of the place where we were. He was hesitant to show me because he thought it might blow my mind too much and I would have to spend the rest of eternity in a stupid state of mind. But then I showed him how awesome my brain was and he decided I could do anything I put my heart to.

“So he took me out into the universe outside of the place. At first, it was scary. But then I freed myself and I saw the entire cosmos, as it was. The cosmos are amazing; it’s like everything you thought could be but didn’t think could really be. All of that, was. And I sucked in a deep breath and let the universe surround me. And once everything had settled down and I saw what the universe had to offer, I finally understood what life is about and what we’re meant to do.”

The Storm Fighters of Courage stared at Professor Blowjob. They saw him in a new light, now that they knew how much he’d been through. Some of them were afraid to talk. The gravity of the moment seemed to demand silence. But finally one of them knew he had to ask. And that one of them was Beans.

“So what are we meant to do?” asked Beans.

Blowjob smiled wearily. “We’re meant to be true to ourselves,” he said. “And to always fight for the American way. That is what the universe told me, and that is what I have done ever since.”

All the Storm Fighters jumped to their feet and screamed about what a great story Blowjob had told them. Then they asked how he came back to life.

“It wasn’t a big deal,” Blowjob said. “The nuclear power that shocked me dead hit me again and shocked me back to life. The next day, Hardy and the rest of the Unbeatable Fight Masters came in to town and destroyed all of my bosses. They asked me if I would join them, and I did.

“But I always knew I was different. And so for the rest of my life, I ran from my destiny. I helped out with adventures, and then I would disappear. I would buy a new base where Hardy and the rest of the team couldn’t find me, and then I would wait for them to find me. It was a never-ending series of tricks, but now the tricks have come to an end. I am a Storm Fighter of Courage, through and through. And if you don’t believe me, you can go take an egg and suck it.”

The Storm Fighters of Courage clapped slowly, then faster and faster, until they were all clapping and cheering. Everyone cried a little bit because of how beautiful Blowjob’s story was. But they weren’t done. They needed more stories. And there were only two people left to tell them: John Nightnight and Beans.

“Let us have one final story before the night overtakes us,” proclaimed Hardy. “And let that story be about the least known member of the group: MC Beans!”

“What about John Nightnight?” Beans protested. “We haven’t heard about him yet.”

“I’m just some guy,” said Nightnight. “I want to hear your story!”

Everyone cheered until Beans couldn’t resist any longer. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll tell my story. But I warn you: it’s not very interesting.”

“One man’s interesting is another man’s go-fuck-yourself!” shouted Hardy. “Let’s get some Beans up in this piece!”

Everyone screamed and shouted until Beans was ready to deliver the goods.

Next episode: The Tale of Beans

Episode 18: The Tale of Beans

“Well, okay, um,” began Beans. He cleared his throat. “Well, I guess there’s not much to tell, really.”

“BOR-ING,” said Professor Blowjob.

“Will you shut up?” Lady Midnight asked. “I want to hear this. Go on, Beansie. We love you.”

“Well, okay,” Beans said. “Let’s see … I’m from Michigan. Flint originally … or, not really Flint, but a town near Flint, sort of a suburb of Flint … dad worked at the factory, mom was a teacher. I liked school okay, I guess, didn’t really love it. Did a lot of hunting and fishing, that was fun. Let’s see … oh! We moved when I was like twelve to Atlanta … that was all right. Left a lot of friends behind, but, you know, so it goes. Um … what else … made All-State Baseball my senior year … kidnapped by aliens … went to school at Penn State, I was in ROTC … then into the Army and, well, here I am, I guess. Boring old Beans.”

“What was that middle part?” John Nightnight asked.

“Moved to Atlanta?” Beans asked.

“No, the part after that. After baseball.”

“Kidnapped by aliens? Yeah, I guess it runs in the family. One of those things, you know.”

“Shut up, all of you!” shouted Blowjob, losing his patience. He turned to Beans. “You ignorant little prick,” he said firmly. “Here you are, wasting our time with your stupid personal bullshit, when the real story is staring you in the face all along! No one gives a shit that you played baseball! The part about the aliens, that’s the fucking tale! Where’d you learn to tell stories, at retard camp?”

“Geez,” Beans said. “You don’t have to get all bent out of shape about it.”

“I’m sorry, Beans,” Blowjob said. “It’s just that … fuck! How could anyone not recognize the aliens were the most interesting part?”

“Maybe I don’t have a giant brain like you,” Beans shouted. “Maybe I don’t need to whittle the events of my life down into neat little stories I can tell people to make myself feel interesting, you ever think about that? Jeez-o-peets, professor, from the moment I met you, you’ve been on my case! I try to be a good guy, I really do, it’s just … ” Beans started crying.

“Now look what you did!” Lady Midnight scolded Blowjob. “Why do you always have to go and screw everything up with your stupid head games?”

The rest of the Storm Fighters of Courage booed Blowjob so badly that he thought his head was going to explode.

“Boo yourselves!” Blowjob screamed. “Boo your goddamned selves!”

Then all was quiet, and Beans resumed his tale.

“Yeah, well, it’s sort of been happening ever since I was a little boy. Every couple of weeks, they just pick me up, you know, take a look at me, make sure I’m doing all right. They track me using this.”

He lifted his foot out of his slipper to reveal a giant, blue, electronic-looking thing embedded in his heel.

“I wouldn’t mind analyzing that back at my lab,” noted Professor Blowjob.

“Why don’t you analyze my dick in your face?” asked Beans.

“Ha ha,” everyone else said. “Good one, Beans! High five.” They high-fived him, and Beans knew he’d finally beaten Blowjob at his own game.

“So what are aliens like?” asked Lady Midnight.

“Oh, they’re good old boys,” said Beans. “They’ve got crab claws and faces that look like someone punched them in the diarrhea, but they’ve always been real nice to me. They’re always making sure I’ve got lots of snacks to eat and magazines to read while they’re examining me.”

“And what happens in these … exams?” asked Blowjob, suspiciously.

“Oh, the usual. They touch my privates, make me play secret games. That sort of stuff.”

“Are you sure you’re not just being molested?” asked Blowjob.

Beans thought long and hard.

“Nope,” he finally said. “Pretty sure that’s not it.”

A deathly silence fell over the camp. And then all the adventurers exploded into cheers and whistles. “Hooray for Beans!” they shouted. “His story is the best of them all!” Even Blowjob shed a tear at how wonderful a story it was.

Drunk and exhausted from their storytelling fun, the Storm Fighters of Courage settled down before the fire for a good night’s sleep. It would be the best night’s sleep many of them had ever had. Because even though they all knew they would probably die in that cave, they had finally found the family they had been searching for their entire lives. And also, they were very, very drunk.

Next Episode: Escape from the Cave Monster

Episode 19: Escape from the Cave Monster

When the adventurers awoke the next morning, it wasn’t even the morning. It was the late afternoon, and they were feeling punchy because of their hangovers and because of being in a scary cave. After dragging themselves out of their sleep sacks and waking up with some good, strong coffee, Hardy led a roll call to make sure everyone was still there.

“Do we really need a roll call?” asked Blowjob. “There are only six of us. I am looking around the circle right now and I can see that everyone is here.”

“Maybe that’s how they do things in China,” said Hardy, “but here in my America we do a roll call.”

“Fine,” said Blowjob, “it’s your funeral.”

“One man’s funeral is another man’s pie,” remarked Snog-Dog sagely.

Hardy smiled. “Spoken like a true team player,” he said, patting Snog-Dog on the back. “Now let’s do the roll. Lady Midnight!”

“Here!”

“John Nightnight!”

“Present!”

“Beans!”

“You’re welcome!”

“Ha ha ha, good one, Beans. Professor Blowjob!”

“Fine.”

“Snog-Dog!”

“. . .”

“I said, ‘Snog-Dog!’”

“. . .”

And then Hardy looked up from his clipboard to see that Snog-Dog had disappeared!

“You see, Blowjob?” Hardy asked. “If we hadn’t done a roll call, we would have had no idea that Snog-Dog was missing!”

“But he was here just before you started the roll call,” said Blowjob. “Remember? He said the thing about how funerals were like pie. In fact, it is logical to assume that the roll call is the very reason we stopped paying attention long enough for one of us to disappear.”

“No one cares about your stupid logic!” shouted Hardy. “Snog-Dog is missing! And if one of us is missing, then all of us are missing! Now let’s get up off our asses and find that Storm Fighter!”

“Yeah!” they all shouted, except for Blowjob, who was still feeling a little sore about the roll call argument. Nonetheless, he was a Storm Fighter of Courage to the death, and so he made his way deeper into the cave like all the rest of them.

They walked on into the cave for what seemed like forever and then they took a pee break and then they kept walking. Darker and darker and deeper and deeper it got, until the only thing they could see was darkness and deep. When it got too dark to see anything anymore, they tied ropes around their waists and crawled. They all held hands as they inched along the craggy ground, Hardy in front, Beans bringing up the rear. Their hands got scraped and their knees bled, but still they inched along, anxious to fight for their missing friend.

Suddenly, they heard a growling that sounded like a beast no one had ever heard before!

“Do you hear that?” whispered Lady Midnight. “I think there’s something freaky in this cave … and it sounds hungry!”

“That must be what got Snog-Dog!” shouted John Nightnight. “And now it’s getting us!”

Hardy set out his hand to keep crawling and realized that there was nothing beneath his hand but pure air. Then he looked down and the ground dropped away forever.

“Look out, you guys!” Hardy shouted. “There’s no more floor!”

They all stopped crawling and took a deep breath. No one told them this mission was going to test the limits of their fear. But that was what you got when you signed up to be a Storm Fighter of Courage: a lot of chances to be courageous. This was no different. In fact, it was almost exactly the same.

The growling got louder. They all looked down as a giant light began emanating from the murky depths of the bottomless cave.

“Uh oh, you guys,” said Nightnight. “I don’t like the way this looks one bit. Crawl back for your lives!”

The gang turned around and started crawling like they’d never crawled before. Beans was in the lead now, and he was a wise and fearless leader. They crawled straight back, the light behind them growing ever-brighter and the growling becoming ever growlier. Now that there was light, they could see that the cavern they were in was quite vast, and there was really no reason for them to have spent so much time crawling. So Beans made the wise and fearless decision to stand up and start running.

The rest of the gang followed suit, except for Nightnight, who wasn’t able to get up fast enough. Luckily, they still had the ropes attached to their waists, so as they ran they dragged Nightnight along behind them. It hurt, but Nightnight didn’t complain because he knew he was lucky to be alive. Also, his mouth was full of rocks and dirt.

Just as it seemed like the thing would overtake them, Beans saw an opening in the wall of the cave. He didn’t know where it led to, but he knew wherever it was, it had to be better than wherever they were now. So he leapt, and as he leapt, everyone else leapt with him, except for Nightnight, who flopped along behind them, probably dead. As they soared through the opening, the growling light whipped past them, and they could see it was a horrible giant flying cave insect! They escaped … but just barely!

Next Episode: Inside the Crystal Palace

Episode 20: Inside the Crystal Palace

The Storm Fighters tumbled down, down, down, for what seemed like forever, and then they came to land on a soft plot of what felt like grass. They all jumped up and slapped high-five because they weren’t dead. Everyone except John Nightnight, who was dead.

Hardy wasn’t the kind of guy to mess around when one of his men was in trouble. He sank to his knees and started punching Nightnight in the chest in a highly medical fashion. “Wake up, you motherfucker!” he screamed. “You’re not gonna die on my watch, you hear me? Not here, not in a cave! Never again! Never … again!”

Hardy thought back to the last time he watched someone die in a cave. It was back in the days when he and Mark Hazzard used to pal around together, before they were ripped apart by Jacky Minx and Mark Hazzard’s insanity. They were leading a mission of guys in Portugal, looking for the lost dinosaur lake, when they fell into a big cave in the ground. Only one guy in the government knew they were on the mission and he didn’t even bother to look for them because he thought they were just kidding.

They explored that cave for 3 months, looking for an exit. It was Mark Hazzard, Sargent Hardy, John Nightnight, and another guy they used to roll with named The Night Hobo. They got dangerously skinny because all they had to eat was cave spiders and bat guano. Finally, the Night Hobo couldn’t take it anymore. He went crazy and tried to kill the rest of them with an icicle. They fought back, and a fierce battle lit up the cave. Everyone who lived in the cave came to watch — including a dragon. The dragon sprayed fire all over the place. Most of the adventurers managed to get out of the way of the fire — everyone except for the Night Hobo. He got burnt all over, but not enough to die … just enough to be really ugly and sound scary when he breathed.

The Night Hobo stayed alive for almost twelve days after that. It was gruesome to watch and awful to listen to. Finally, they found an exit to the cave. But as soon as the Night Hobo saw the light, his face exploded — it was too much for his brittle mind and fragile body to take. All that was left was a bunch of burnt body parts and a jawbone, which Sargent Hardy kept as a toothbrush holder in honor of his lost friend.

“I’ve already got a toothbrush holder, you bastard!” Hardy wailed, continuing to punch John Nightnight.

“Stop all that punching!” shouted Professor Blowjob. “I don’t think it’s working! But I have something that could work. I have a life computer that I kept secreted away in my pocket for just this instance! What you do is you put it on someone’s tongue, and it saves his life using data. But we can only use it once. So we need to decide between us if John Nightnight’s life is worth saving, or if we should hang on to the medical computer for another instance. Like if one of us dies instead.”

They all had to think long and hard about that one. Beans reminded his companions that John Nightnight hadn’t shared a tale with them the night before. They all agreed that wasn’t really the action of a team player. Lady Midnight noted that John Nightnight had once asked her to a pancake dinner in a very suggestive manner. They were all protective of Lady Midnight’s honor, so that was one more point against him.

Finally, though, it was up to Hardy to talk some sense into his team.

“You look like a bunch of damn apes,” Hardy growled, “the way you’re picking at those nits. This is our team member. He’s one of my oldest friends, and he would never hesitate to save your lives, even if it meant getting all of his clothes wet and garbage all over his face. If you don’t give him that life computer, Blowjob, then I don’t even know what for anymore. And that’s an order.”

The remaining Storm Fighters broke into tears at Hardy’s moving speech. They took a good, hard look at themselves inside and found their thoughts to be unclean. But after Hardy spoke to them with sense, they apologized and realized that they were all for one, and one for all. They agreed that John Nightnight was as important as any of them, even though he hadn’t shared a story and to everyone’s recollection he hadn’t been much help in any of their adventures to date.

Professor Blowjob put the life computer under Nightnight’s tongue and forced him to swallow it by moving his jaw up and down. There was a loud sound that was like a fart, and then Nightnight came back to life. Everyone applauded and clapped him on the back.

“Where am I?” Nightnight asked.

“That’s a good question,” Hardy said. “Where are we all?”

They finally looked around themselves and realized they were inside a crystal palace!

Next episode: More Information about the Crystal Palace