The TEABAG Goblins 7

Meanwhile, somewhere under D'ark's feet...

Darkness, pain, separation, hunger. A Mc Donut's would do, and a Mc Cola of some kind, maybe an Agricola... or Pensacola.

As you may have guessed, Ruhtra was not dead, just in pieces. Now it's not a very good thing for a shape changer to be separated from him/her/itself. With no Zathanian fluid around to make up any shortfall, the lack of body liquid could mean that he couldn't reconstitute himself.

If he could reconstitute himself, he might still have problems and end up as two of himself.

(This was obviously a humorous plot twist by me, any dedicated readers knowing that a single dominant Zathanian could swallow others [See The Detective One].)

Oh no (wink) what will happen?

Splurp. He squirted out of the earth just as D'ark and Traiton had left. He felt funny though...

Splurb... another of himself appeared, quite close, he was the dominant one.

[Hang on He (the original) was the dominant one or He (the second one) was?]

In fact neither was dominant, they were exactly half of Ruhtra, each.

“Oi you,” said little Ruhtra 1 in a slightly squeaky voice.

As little Ruhtra 2 said, “Oi you.”

It was a bit like a gnomified echo. They both ran at each other to try and glob into one organism but something stopped them and they both bounced off one another.

“What!” they both explained, together. “How can we get anything done if we are both saying and doing the same thing at the same time?”

“I don't know,” I replied, “I haven't thought about this properly. Just wait a little and I'll see if it gets funnier.” But it didn't seem to.

One Ruhtra was fine enough but two, doing and saying the same thing at the same time? What could I do with them? Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum? Small tug of war? Boxing match/game where one's red, one's blue and they look like those old fashioned toys?

“We can solve this,” said the Ruhtras, “one of us could be the left and the other the right.”

“OK,” replied I, “who's going to be the right?”

“Me,” they both answered.

“And who's going to be the left?”

“Him,” they both pointed at each other.

“I think I have a solution, both of you can be the right side, it's just that one will be facing backwards/forwards and the other will be facing forwards/backwards.”

“Uh,” they both uhed. “I want to be facing forwards/backwards.,” they both chimed.

“You can,” said I as I made them each take a half of Ruhtra so that he was looking both forward and backward at the same time.

“It looks like we've got two heads, one forward and one backward.”

“Well it's either this or I choose who will be the Ruhtra to be first and put a time delay on the other so that he speaks and acts after the first.”

“No thanks,” they replied, “we'll get along as we are.” But them not having a dominant one , they began to spin around instead of walking forward.

“This isn't working,” I thought, “either as humour or as a concept.” So by the power of my

imagination I got Ruhtra 1 to be the slightly dominant but not enough to join together and swallow the other one up one. They began to move forward. So that Ruhtra 2 didn't feel too bad I got him to think that I wanted him to walk backwards. It worked well enough to get him/them walking towards the town of Brug where he could be rescued by the others...