Scherzo 11 – Breaking News with Fiona
I found this report in the Don’t Go Here Dino-News and decided, since I am more than a little bit lazy, I would quote it wholly to take the place of this part of the history you are now reading.
- Googal Marrou
Fionna Arbuckle here, your favorite cub reporter with all the gossip that anybody who is remotely anybody listens to and commits to heart to be able to repeat word for word to everybody in the town square of beautiful Bedrock City, for Dino-News’s gossip pages.
The breaking news this reporter was turned on to by the stealthy revelations of moderately leaky New Star League Fleet security personnel, has to do with a certain handsome new Grand Admiral and his Second-in-Command, inexplicably named after a two-winged insect and a color known in the Classical Worlds as “noire,” who were seen together in the lifeboat after having escaped a kidnapping of their new fleet flagship and accidentally turning broadcast cameras on with a stray limb in such a state of intimate compromise that they are now needing to get married at the point of a shotgun…
And yes, I do actually need to take a breath after a run-on sentence delivered at a high rate of speed in order to deliver every bit of juicy information possible in the time available due to the short attention spans of our supposed cave-man audience-members… whooo…
And here comes the couple now. We shall see if we can get a word with them.
“Grand Admiral Cloudstalker, is it true that you and Commander Black Fly are seriously on the brink of tying a knot that you may or may not regret for the rest of your natural life?”
“Um… no. No, it is not true that members of the radical White Spider Cult are at this moment taking our captured flagship full of traitors straight to Admiral Tang.”
“Wait, there’s a White Spider Cult? A cult that lives by the credo set forth in the Prophecy of Shan?”
“What…? No…. I mean, yes, that cult…. But not the ones who actually follow the teachings of the interstellar White Spider Ged Aero. Rather, a splinter group following the so-called Bishop of the White Spider and her insane interpretation of the Prophecy of …? What was it again, honey?”
“I think it was the Prophecy of Xan. But it is possible that all of the versions of the Prophecy speak of the betrayal from the acolytes of the Grand One.”
“The Grand One? Does that refer to… me? The Grand Admiral?”
“Possibly…”
“Anyway… we will not be deterred from our intentions to repel invaders when they come to attack the worlds of the New Star League. And we will get the flagship back before the battle takes place, I promise you that.”
“Actually, the Admiral doesn’t promise that. He will not be able to retrieve that ship at all, in all likelihood.”
“Oh, you have just heard from cute little munchkin Commander ADaB from Djinnistan. He and Commander PiP in all probability will also be getting married in a shotgun wedding arrangement judging by the accidentally switched-on cameras in their escape pod.”
“We will not, Miss Arbuckle. I have seven wives already to think about. We will just be having a torrid love affair. And we are called Peris… definitely NOT munchkins!”
“Admiral? You never actually answered that question when it was put to you and Commander Black Fly. Can you tell us now?”
“Fionna, I wish you were better at hearing what is not being said and figuring out why. Yes, we will be getting married. You specifically are being invited. And if wedding ceremonies on Black Fly’s planet include ritual human sacrifice, that honor will be entirely yours.”
“Oh, why thank you for that, Admiral. I only hope it is not a bloody sort of ritual. I cannot stomach the sight of blood.”
“He was joking, my dear Fiona.”
“Thank goodness… erm, I mean thank you for sharing, Miss Fly. And um… was it the wedding part that was the joke?”
“No, we are definitely getting married. We talked about it on the way back to base.”
“You heard it here first, folks. There is going to be a Grand Admiral’s wedding between the planet Don’t Go Here’s most notable power couple. And you heard it from cub reporter Fiona Arbuckle, representing the Don’t Go Here Dino-News.”
Catch a Falling Star 