The Great Adventure

Over the following week, the gang was woken up at traumatizingly early hours of the morning and were forced to help build the stadium for the showdown between the dragon and the Flamingo Kingo (the king of flamingos, in case you’re stupid). The stadium was stadium-shaped and had hundreds of seats. The field in the center had nothing except for three goalposts held up high on poles on the far end of the field. That was all that the dragon ordered.

During this week, the Bearmy went to Smack-Smork looking for the gang, but did not find them. On this fateful day, hundreds of flamingos walked out of the spikes and filled up the stadium, as well as hundreds of prisoners. The Flamingo Kingo was standing in the field in the center, waiting for the dragon to show up but hoping it wouldn’t. But it did! A great flapping of wings was heard and the dragon descended into the field with a roar.

“Listen up, everybody!” it yelled. “The Flamingo Kingo and I are going to have a showdown. If I win, I will kill everyone! If I lose, I will stop forcing you to make my room bigger.” The dragon then looked around the place, seeming to expect something. “WHERE ARE THE PICKLES? WHERE ARE THE GOLF CLUBS???!” Now everyone was very confused, but they didn’t want to make the dragon angry so the referee grabbed pickles and golf clubs.

“Why exactly do we need pickles and golf clubs?” asked the Flamingo Kingo.

“Because we are going to play the game of Pickle Smack,” responded the dragon. “Where I come from, it is a game known and loved by all. The rules are simple. Basically, there’s 3 goalposts on the other end of this field, as you can see. Every round, each player smacks their pickle with their golf club as hard as they can. If their pickle goes through the goalpost on the left, 30 points are won and the player must immediately put a pickle on their head and run from one end of the field to the other. If the pickle does not fall, they are awarded with another 30 points.

“If their pickle goes through the middlemost goalpost, 59.3 points are awarded and the player must eat 3 pickles within one minute. If they successfully do it, they gain an extra 0.7 points.

“If the pickle goes through the goalpost on the right, which is the hardest to get through, they are given the Pickle Bat and must hit ten pickles which are thrown at them in succession. Each pickle thrown is worth points in accordance with the Fibonacci Sequence. For example, the first one is worth 1, the second is worth 1, the third is worth 2, the fourth is worth 3, the fifth is worth 5, and so on. If the player hits a pickle, they gain points equal to how many points that pickle was worth, but if they miss, they lose that many points x2. Also, if they fail to hit every single pickle, their total points value is divided by seven. The first player to 400 points wins.

“If the pickle makes it through no goalposts, the player loses 10 points. However, if the pickle lands in the special Pickle Zone, which is in between the two white lines on the field (one is halfway between us and the goalposts, and the other is 3 quarters of the way between us and the goalposts), the player does not lose 10 points and is given an extra shot. If they land their pickle in this area 3 times in a row, they must stand in the Pickle Zone for the remainder of the next player’s turn, and if the other player lands their pickle in the Pickle Zone, then the player in the zone loses their next turn. However, if the pickle hits the player in the Pickle Zone, the shooting player steals 50 points from them and they win a Pickle Card. Using a Pickle Card at any point on another player’s turn causes all points they win on that turn to be reduced by half. That’s all the rules. Understand?”

“Yes, I understand,” said the Flamingo Kingo. “All the rules are clear and everything makes sense.”

“Okay then let’s begin.”

A pickle was placed in front of each of the players and they were both given a golf club.

“Oh, there’s one thing I forgot to mention,” said the dragon. “In order to determine who goes first, we must play a game of Pickle Smack First Player Determination. I shall explain the rules. Basically, there is a large grid on the ground of five squares in a plus shape. We each choose one square to start in, except we may not start in the same square and we may not start in the center square. Then the audience votes on a number from 2-5. The most voted number is chosen. Depending on the number chosen, 2-5 pickles will be thrown into the center square. If any of the pickles are touching each other after they settle in place, each player shall move one square counterclockwise and the pickles shall be rethrown. If not, the players move clockwise. Then the process repeats five times. If the players are in their starting positions, the player on the square marked with the lowest number moves first. If not, the player with the highest number goes first. Got it?”

“Yes,” responded the Flamingo Kingo.

After playing a very intense game of Pickle Smack First Player Determination, which took a rather long time, it was decided that the dragon would go first.

The dragon gripped his club and charged up the shot for a while. Just before he shot, the sound of a ship’s hyper engines boomed through the stadium. Everyone looked up and saw a Bearmy ship floating above them. It lowered down and landed in the center of the field, and approximately 5 bears walked out.

“We are looking for a cat-person and a penguin!” yelled one of the bears. “Give them to us and we will let… you… live?” The bear stopped because the dragon was staring at him with a face of fury. These bears had disrupted the game of Pickle Smack, and that was not okay to the dragon. It huffed and smoke puffed from its nostrils.

The (approximately) 5 bears on the field retreated closer to their ship, and when the dragon started to growl, they all ran into it, shut the door, and powered up the engines… but not the hyper engines. They flew the ship into the air and the guns on the ship began to charge. That’s when the dragon released a burst of flame from its mouth and the ship crashed into the field in a burning wreck, looking quite like a fireball in its new state.

“Remove this from the field at once!” roared the dragon. However, considering the fact that the spaceship was burning, there was nothing anyone could do. The dragon was informed about this, and that they would have to let the ship cool. The dragon eventually grew impatient and also it had some serious anger issues (if not already apparent), so it lifted off of the ground with a spectacular flap of its wings and let loose on the entire stadium with a blazing inferno of death.