Side stories to add to the mix. Excellent.

It had to happen eventually. Might as well have been with
ArbyFish. ^_^

I suppose I'll need a few more eventually, most notably with
ASK and S.Stylin', but that won't happen until CPSS's major
arcs are done.

Then there's HoS and a few others to do while evading school
and video games... Funny how time simply vanishes nowadays. ^_^;

Within a crater, a Green ArbyFish did spy,
A tiny White one, its eyes all sly.
Out of the basin Flanburger did take,
A tiny spit, covered in milkshake.

Your gift for poetry astounds and confounds me.

Roight propa' poetry, it iz! It's Revisionist 'Istory!

"...N' yew back in return. Yew'z a cute lil' spit,"
Green did say to White.
"Noice knoife ya gots there. Only missed by a bit.
Me jugular vein, if Oye one did 'ave,
Would've been split, roight down to the calve."

So he hit the calf instead of the jugular? :)

It would've split from neck to leg if most ArbyFish weren't
so annoyingly damage-resistant. (Harder to get rid of than
cockroaches, they are.)

So think he did, and before long,
A better name he found; it could not be wrong.
"Mouldey Pants, think Oye should you call.
A 'shroomy name, it does make more o'erall."

Nah. Bruce works.

Flanburger just thought he needed a more fungusy name,
I suppose.

"Yeech! You'll neva' get very far in loife bein' called 'Bruce!'"

Thus it was that Bruce, the White ArbyFish, found himself taken
from his natural environment by an equally natural disaster. He spent
his years apprenticed to Flanburger, the Second One, in order to
become a right proper ArbyFish when he grew up.

Whatever a right proper Arbyfish is. They do tend to be a bit emphereal.

Well, ya see, a right proper ArbyFish is an ArbyFish that respects
the proper improprieties of ArbyFish society. They adhere to, reject,
reform, rewrite, and obey strictly the rules to which they are bound.

"Roight. Very good," Flanburger said after a moment. "Next
problem." He scrawled some more mushrooms onto the board. "'Ere,
we'z gots two 'shrooms n' anotha' two 'shrooms." He drew an equals
sign. "That will surely equal six. Who can answer this one?"

Like a savannah full of meercats,

Such a silly adage. Meercats inhabit swampland, not savannahs. Anyone
knowing their ecology would realize this. :P

Arby(pauses, then continues): Oh. Well, that wuz th' old school group
a' meercats. The new ones've been educated n' civiloized ta the point
where they can be propa'ly processed n' introduced ta savannah
loifestoyle. (Hands a nearby meercat a diploma) Roight! Yew is no
longer a swamp meercat. Yew is now n' official Foreign Linguistics
Savannah specialist meercat. (slips the meercat some mold) 'Ere.
Go foind ya'self a noice savannah apartment.

Meercat(turns around and heads back to the swamp)

Arby: 'Ey! Get back 'ere! (flutters off after the meercat)

Exuent.

Flanburger scraped the board clean with a broken rubber
windshield wiper

Better than using that iron claw to do it. :)

It's excellent classroom control, though. ^_^

and drew another mushroom on it. "Ya see, ya'z gots

In some texts, this was the second recorded incident of a White
ArbyFish actually being in wide-eyed, stuttering shock. "You're a
p-p-p-P--"

Heh. Finally had an effect, Brucie did.

He's not totally unflappable. Just unusually focused. 'Sides,
Pink ones don't typically frequent Green institutions.

"I always wanted a quality education, and you know how everyone
sees us Pinks. Nobody understands us and we look out of place."

"I think I understand. I've felt out of place most of the time,
as well."

That's because he is. :)

Indeed, he is, at that. A White ArbyFish with a troubled 'spithood...
Does that mean he's traumatized and going to end up doing "good"
things on occasion?

In a flourish, Bruce whipped out a pair of switchblades, one in
each opposable flipper. "If you want her, come and claim her!"

The members of the death squad blinked, looked at each other,
shrugged, then looked back at Bruce. "Alroight!"

I knew they would.

Yes. They're fairly agreeable for instigators of genocide.

...

Okay, so ArbyFish have horrible social problems. So what? ^_^;;;;

The history books are a bit fuzzy as to how long the battle
lasted, but Bruce finally succeeded in knocking out the Purple and
Black while tiring out Flanburger.

Huffing and puffing in an attempt to get some air back in his
system, Flanburger asked, "How? Oye mean... yer flipper... the
odds...?"

"Don't you remember?" Bruce growled. "I'm terrible at math!"

That would do it.

It seemed the appropriate punchline to the situation.

It's a big universe, and though Bruce looked, he never found
Ribbons DewBlossom again. He spent the remainder of his days plotting
and knitting while studying his species's history. Of greatest
interest to him were tales of a legendary "First One," the beginner
of all ArbyFish life. Many years were devoted to finding out who
he was, where he lived, and what he did.

And eventually killing him. :)

Brucie bit the fabric softener that time, he did. Had a lovely,
climactic, Pokemon-style DBZ struggle... Bruce had an evil SSJ10
to work with and yet Arby won the match against him, sort of. And
all _he_ had was Tux-boy to work with.

I guess Arby's one of those crazy, flambouyantly powerful and
insane genius characters that doesn't mind messing with and bending
reality's rules to suit some strange, mushroom-encrusted end...

After all, his species sort of ended up conquering the multiverse
without anyone noticing...

In any case, Bruce resolved to go there and find out for
himself, once and for all, what was so special about Humans.

And eventually kill them.

That too. But killing off the entire race would make a lot of
people very happy in the long run, and White ArbyFish don't
generally like that.

Okay, so what did everyone think of the side story?

Worked for me, in that silly way.

Cool! Gladja liked it. It seemed to be the proper thing to do while
revising the entire NETTG series. (Special Extended Edition DVD?
Sure! ^_^)

And, I've recently gotten to see the entire Excel Saga series,

Must finish that myself.

It's good stuff. I LOVE how they handle Annoying New Characters. ^_^
(Pedro, Roppomatsu, etc.) ANCs have to take their lumps and have
nobody feel sorry for them, just like the rest of the cast.

so that'll likely reflect in the next few fanfics I write. Of
course, I'm also watching FLCL, so who knows how that will affect
things.

in your case it can't make anything worse. :)

Furikuriiiiii!!! (Drives around in circles on a Vespa, wildly swinging a
guitar)

In any case, thanks for reading!

And thanks for sharing.

You betcha! I'll see if I can't scrounge around and do more CPSS,
NETTG, or HoS...

Going At It Like Rabbits is giving me trouble, though. I recently
got a hold of some Ranma and I'm having difficulty doing anything
any better than what Takahashi already did... not to mention the
Cardcaptor Sakura stuff.

...

Hey, maybe that's one of the reasons why my stuff can get so
confusing!

Take it easy, DB! I'll try to write more and fend off the Evil,
Time-Sucking Mechanisms surrounding me. Bye! ^_^

----------------------
Benjamin A Oliver
boliver@email.arizona.edu
http://rakhal.com/florestica/ben-oliver/index.html

        "We are the Bored. Lower your shields and surrender your fics.
         We will add your standup and slapstick comedy to our own.
         Your humor will adapt to make us laugh.
         Resistance is and always has been: Futile."


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