image [https://i.ibb.co/cX8DNxt/EP-C03.jpg]
Chunks, reaching out the more muscular of her mismatched arms, punched the president square in the face, Then she grasped his long, slithery neck and strangled him violently.
"Drop that plunger- drop it!" yelled Chunks, and the president quickly obeyed. The thaumaturgic toilet plunger fell to the ground and Pucas promptly seized it and clutched it to his bosom. Then Chunks let go her hold and the president staggered to a nearby bench, choking and coughing to get his breath back. The president belched loudly three times. Then he let out a loud series of long and short farts.
"I told you to let things alone," growled Chunks, rolling up her patchwork sleeves. "If you don't behave, your majesty, this turquoise island'll have to get a new president."
"Don't kill him, Chunks!" said Soda.
"Kill me? Why, she couldn't do that," coughed the turquoise president, who was trying to rearrange his turquoise neckerchief. "Nothing can kill me."
"Why not?" asked Soda curiously.
"Because I haven't lived my six hundred years yet. Every being in Meningioma Island lives exactly six hundred years from the time he is born. Nothing can kill us until we've lived to the last day of our appointed lives.”
"But isn't six hundred years an awful long time to live?" questioned Soda.
"It seems like it, at first," replied the president, still rubbing his throat. "but I notice that whenever any of my subjects get near the end of their six hundred, they grow nervous and say the life is altogether too short."
"How long have you lived?" asked Soda, who was very interested.
The president coughed again and turned a bit turquoisier.
"That is considered a very rude question in Viralvania," he answered; "but I will say that every president is elected to reign three hundred years, and I've reigned not quite- ahem!- two hundred." His voice was still raspy from being strangled.
“Soda, we should probably go,” said Chunks. “I’ve seen all I want of this island and its dork-butt, expositional president." Soda agreed.
"Hang on,” said Pucas.
Pucas stood on another bench and held up the thaumaturgic toilet plunger in one hand and clutching the attached knotted intestine with the other. Chunks and Soda had just grabbed a hold of the pink-and-red large intestine when a turquoise veiny vine shot out from behind them and in a twinkling wound itself around the toilet plunger, pulling it from Pucas’s hand. At the same instant another vine wound itself around the mauve boy's body, and others caught Soda and Chunks in their coils, so that all had their arms pinned fast to their sides and found themselves absolutely helpless. More slimy turquoise veiny vines whipped around their heads, covering their mouths and turning their yells of displeasure into muffled mumbles.
President Scrumpox was laughing and dancing around in front of them. A posse of Viralvanians, resembling the president in shape and color and costume- tiny iguanaboy hats, leather vests, iguanaboy boots (but with no dusted diamonds glued to them)- stepped in front of our friends and bowed low to the president. They had used their veiny vine lassos to capture the adventurers.
"We heard the belch-and-fart code and came right away," said a Viralvanian with bushy moustache and a shiny turquoise star on his vest.
"A’yup, sheriff,” said the acquisitive president dismissively. The iguanaboy who had whipped the toilet plunger out of Pucas’s hand handed it to Scrumpox, and Scrumpox handed it to the sheriff. “Take this booty and carry it to my treasury. See that it is safely locked up. Here's the key, and if you don't return it to me within five minutes I'll have you spliced."
The sheriff took the key and the thaumaturgic toilet plunger and hastened away to the enormous ranch house. At every few steps the intestine attached to the toilet plunger would trip up the sheriff and cause him to take a tumble, but as he had only five minutes' time in which to perform his errand he would scramble to his feet again and gather up the intestine and dash along the path until the knotted intestine tripped him again.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
They all watched him with interest until he had disappeared within the ranch house, when the president turned to his men and said:
"Release the prisoners. They are now quite safe, and cannot escape me."
So the iguanaboys unwound the long, slightly pulsating turquoise veiny vines that were twined around the arms and heads of our three friends, and set them free. These iguanaboys bore no weapons except the veiny vines, which they used expertly as lassos and whips. Some of the vines had heavy, jagged chunks of petrified poo attached to the ends.
Soda was greatly surprised by the suddenness of her capture, and so was Chunks. Pucas leaned over and vomited up his breakfast onto the turquoise grass.
"That is highly unacceptable!" called President Scrumpox, sternly. "You are already condemned to severe punishment, and if you vomit or emit any other bodily fluid on my compound, you are liable to be spliced."
"What's being spliced?" inquired Soda.
The iguanaboys all laughed raucously at this question, but the president did not reply. Just then a door in the ranch house opened and out trooped a group of teenage girls. There were six of them, all gorgeously dressed in fancy, elaborately designed gowns with many puffs and tucks and ruffles and zippers and buttons and flounces and badges and laces and ribbons, everything being in some shade of turquoise, grading from light turquoise to dark turquoise. Their shiny turquoise hair was elaborately dressed in beehive hairdos.
The most striking thing about the girls was that each one had a live wasp for a nose.
"Ah," said the president, with a smile, "here come my six waspnosed daughters- the most beautiful and desirable ladies on Meningioma Island." The six waspnosed sisters now stood in a row, staring with haughty looks at the strangers.
"Goodness me, father!" exclaimed the first; "what queer, dreadful-looking uggos are these? Where in the sky did they come from?"
"They say they came from Pus Continent, Ebola," answered the president.
"But that is impossible," said another sister. "Our scientists have proved that Pus is not inhabited."
“It is!” shouted Soda, and Pucas nodded in agreement.
"Your scientists'll have to guess again," said Chunks.
"But how did they get to Meningioma Island?" inquired the third waspnosed one.
"By means of a flying toilet plunger, which I have captured and put away in the treasury," replied Scrumpox.
"What will you do with the monsters, papa?" asked the fourth sister.
"I haven't decided yet," said the president. "They're curiosities, you see, and may serve to amuse us. But as they're only half civilized I shall make them our servants."
"What are they good for? Can they do anything useful?" asked the fifth.
"We'll see," returned the president, impatiently. "I can't decide in a hurry. If there's anything I hate it's a hurry."
"I've an idea, dad," announced the sixth waspnosed sister, "Let us take the little girl to be our handmaiden- to wait upon us and amuse us when we're bored. All the other ladies of the ranch will be wild with envy, and if the child doesn't prove of use to us we can keep her for a living pincushion."
"Oh! Ah! That will be fine!" cried all the other five, and the president said:
"Very well, Diptheria; it shall be as you desire." Then he turned to Soda and added: "I present you to my six lovely waspnosed daughters, to be their slave. If you are good and obedient you won't get your ears boxed oftener than once an hour."
"I won't be anybody's slave," protested Soda. "I don't like these snotty waspnosed ladies and I won't have anything to do with them!"
"How impudent!" cried Ebola.
"How vulgar!" cried Varicella.
"How unladylike!" cried Papilloma.
"How crackers!" cried Neisseria.
"How absurd!" cried Pertussia.
"How nefarious!" cried Diptheria. And then all six held up their hands as if horrified.
The president laughed.
"You'll know how to get her in line, I imagine," he remarked, "and if the girl isn't reasonable and obedient, send her to me and I'll have her spliced. Now, then, take her away."
But Soda was obstinate and wouldn't budge a step.
"Keep us together, your majesty," begged Soda. "If we're to be slaves, don't separate us, but make us all the same kind of slaves!"
"I shall do what pleases me," declared the president, angrily. He then gave a command to an iguanaboy, who hastened away to the ranch house and soon returned with a number of long turquoise veiny vines. One he tied around Soda's waist and then attached to it six other veiny vines. Each of the six waspnosed sisters held the end of a vine, and then they turned and marched haughtily away to the house, dragging the little girl after them.
“Bye,” said Pucas, waving.
"Don't worry, Soda," shouted Chunks; "we'll get you out of this trouble pretty soon!"
"Oh, I'm all right," answered Soda, with fine courage; "I'm not afraid of these stuck-up dork-butts!" The sisters pulled her after them and soon they had all disappeared into one of the entrances to the turquoise president’s ranch mansion (or “ranchion”).
image [https://i.ibb.co/JHjJvqZ/EP-C03-222.jpg]