Part Five and a half
The age of oppression
And so it came to pass that Chappy Chappy found himself bored. Also bored was Beireia,
his would-have-been wife. Upon careful consideration of what they should do, Chappy
remembered the elf that he had come across in the forest. "Where there's elves, there's... more elves, I guess!" he thought to himself. His suggestion to Beireia was that
they return to that spot and capture the elf village. She agreed, and they set out
immediately, carrying nothing other than their swords, and the clothes on their back,
as was their custom. This turned out to be a bad idea. Having been there once over a
week ago was not nearly enough to make an impression on either of them, they could
just barely remember where the Banana house was, and they had sort-of lived there
for over sixteen years. They wandered about for many days, and not a single elf did they see.
Beireia became frustrated, and decided that they should no longer wander pointlessly,
instead they should think of a plan to make the elves show themselves. Not long had
she thought when she remembered the grief stricken elf, and his reason for confronting
them. He was upset that Chappy was destroying trees to mark their progress. She reasoned
then that if she were to knock over trees in a similar fashion, the elf would surely come to their defense. This she did, and also yell at Chappy to help her. Chappy
however, decided that he would ask in a sarcastic manner why is it that she now wants
to push over trees, when before she said that it was pointless. But he did not continue this for long, however, for he liked to smash trees. No sooner than the 57th tree
crashed to the ground, than the very same elf emerged from the brush, elf sword in
hand. "You two again! How dare you destroy these beautiful trees?!? This fight will
not be like last time!" this he said, confident that the helmet he now wore would prevent
Chappy from knocking him out with a rock thrown at his head. Nevertheless, Chappy
hurled a rock at the hapless elf, just in case. It struck him upon the helmet, and
bounced off. Curses! he said, clenching his fist. The youthful elf had little time to
gloat, however, for Chappy closed the gap between them in less than a second, and
delivered a lightning uppercut to his solar plexus, driving out the air, causing
him to pass out for lack of oxygen in the brain. Beireia and Chappy heaved the fallen logs out
of sight, then climbed a nearby tree, as per the plan, and waited for the elven lad
to come to.
When he did regain consciousness, however, they nearly forgot to follow him back to
his village. It took longer than they had expected, like three whole minutes, and
so they began a paper-rock-scissors tournament to relieve their boredom. It did not
serve this purpose well, however, so they quit. They then noticed that their quarry had gotten
up, and began walking, presumably in the direction of his village. Although they
followed him as quietly as possible, his elven ears eventually alerted him to their
presence. He spun about to confront them. "Alright! I know you're there, S-" this was
all he said, however, for Beireia quickly knocked him out again. "My turn next time"
Chappy asserted, and they both climbed another tree to repeat the plan. This cycle
repeated itself three or four times before they finally reached the village. The young
elf never imagined that the greedy humans wanted anything more than lumber for their
various selfish purposes, and since placing themselves within arrow range of an entire
village of elves would severely limit their ability to harvest the trees, he had no
idea that he was leading Chappy and Beireia to his village. He arrived to the sound
of many elves screaming. Rushing forward, he saw to his horror an evil black shape
soaring above the village. Chappy and Beireia immediately recognized the monstrous silhouette
as Jim the dragon. "Look, it's a big mosquito!" Chappy exclaimed in surprise (well, okay, not immediately) Beireia corrected him, and the two discussed their mutual dislike for the brutish
creature.
Even as they did so, the elves rallied themselves for a defense against Jim. "Let's
show him what elves can do with arrows!" their leader shouted. Unfortunately, he
was in command of a comic relief squad of elves, rather than one that actually tries
to fight. "Umm.. shoot them?" one elf hazarded, shoot them being what elves can do with
arrows. The captain confirmed his subordinate's guess, and urged that he do just
that. Another elf, I guess I should start naming them now, his name is Fleeht. Fleeht
informed his captain, captain Pronoun that they were all out of arrows. Pronoun expressed
his disbelief, and tried to think of a substitute for arrows. "Arabs sounds kind
of like arrows" he thought to himself. "Right! we'll use Arabs instead!" he shouted.
The troops gave a great cheer, and regained their confidence. Each plucked an Arab from
his quiver, notched it to the string, drew back, and let fly. Unfortunately, the
average Arab weighs hundreds of times more than an arrow, and does not serve well
as a projectile. "Ha ha ha! listen to their stupid language! it's different from ours!" Chappy
exclaimed, pointing at the Arabs, who were waving their arms and yelling in Arabic
as their trajectories approached the inevitable conclusion of crashing into the ground.
In case you are wondering why the elves had a quiver full of Arabs handy, remember
that it was a comic relief squad. Comic relief squads are not intended to fight effectively,
and usually have a lot of stuff that doesn't belong to promote zanyness. Since humans had developed guns and tanks and such, the elves decided that an actual army
would not help much, and they might as well just hide in the forest and hope no-one
found them. Their army now only patrols the forest, and has madcap adventures and
wacky hijinks, rather than defending the village.
Chappy knew that if he was cool, then he would be able to analyze the current situation
and develop a plan that used it to his advantage. After a bit of thinking, he decided
that if he defeated Jim, the elves would praise him as their savior, and he could
rule as tyrant. He explained his plan to Beireia, and they moved to implement it. Chappy
split a tree along the grain to create a 50 foot tall, wickedly pointed shard. This
he hurled with all his might at the reptilian menace, making it very clear to the
elves what he was doing. Jim had been alerted by the previous flurry of Arabs, and spotted
the tree fragment as it hurtled toward him. With a flip of his wings he avoided injury,
the wooden missile merely brushed him. "Ow! Splinter!" he cried, clutching his arm, where a smaller fragment of tree had separated from the rest, and burrowed deep
into his flesh. "Geez! this really hurts!" he exclaimed. He then decided that he
really didn't want to terrorize the elf village anyway, and flew back to his lair
at the wrecker academy. A resounding cheer rose from the village, and the elves thronged around
Chappy and Beireia. "Thanks for slaying the dragon, though we were gonna do it ourselves
in just a little bit!" they explained. The young elf who had been upset at them earlier tried to protest, recounting the many occasions in which he had seen them
destroying nature, something that elves were strongly opposed to. The elves, however
were reluctant to believe this. "Oh, come on, Drawkab, they probably had a good reason
for doing it!" one reassured him. Beireia confirmed that this was correct, they did
indeed have a good reason, but she pretended not to hear when they asked what it
was. This would have made most people curious, but elves are not really all that
bright, that's why they live in the forest like a bunch of chumps, while we have cars and playstations
and cancer and stuff.
According to Elven law, Beireia and Chappy were proclaimed rulers of the village of
ChaChaCha. Chappy addressed the assembled elves. "Right, first thing, we're going
to install some plumbing, because I don't want to have to run out into the forest
and dig a hole every time I've gotta go" he explained. He described the basic concepts behind
indoor plumbing to the elven wise man, Egas, and told him to put the system together.
As the elves went to work, Chappy and Beireia were contemplating their next action
as joint rulers of the elves. Chappy remembered hearing that sometimes elves have spells
written on their body, and proposed that they inspect all of the elves, so that they
might learn some elf magic. Beireia agreed, but, knowing that this would require
him to look at naked elves, declared that it would be she who did the inspecting. Chappy
argued this point, but before the matter could be resolved, Drawkab the elf, who
was hostile toward them, said that no elves in this village had anything written
on their bodies. Disappointed, the two continued their contemplation. Beireia's plan was to
pass some stupid laws that the elves wouldn't like, to see what they would do. Chappy
commended her for her excellent idea, and then said that their first oppressive law
would be to establish a curfew at 6:00. The elves did not have clocks, though, so it
was changed to sundown. An assembly of elves was called, and Chappy announced the
curfew, saying also that the penalty was a severe beating with a stick that he had
found earlier in the day. Surprisingly however, the law met with universal acceptance. "What
a great idea!" an elderly elf exclaimed. "It's about time!" another asserted. "Ummm...
I'm glad you like it!" Chappy lied, "You can rest assured that we will make great
laws like this one a tradition!!" he continued, and saluted the elves with the Chappy
salute. The elves cheered and cheered, and Chappy as well as Beireia eventually got
a headache from all the yelling, and retired to their palace. Calling it a palace
was kind of a stretch, it was really just a big treehouse that had "Palace" written on the
side, and a room with a red carpet leading to two chairs that said "Throne" on the
side. Beireia scolded Chappy, and assured him that he had not announced the curfew
in a mean enough way. She also decided that she would reveal their next diabolical law
to the public. Chappy Chappy could not argue, and began to think of another law.
The elves rejoiced when they heard about the 10% income tax Chappy Chappy and Beireia
levied to feed themselves, and were moved to tears when it was raised to 20%. The
only elf that was opposed to their oppression was the one who had seen them smashing
trees, Drawkab. He tried hard to convince the elves that they were not being led by a
benevolent government, but had no luck. Beireia, frustrated that she was unable to
upset the rest of the elves, made up for it by taunting Drawkab for his failure to
alert the same contented elves. Chappy organized a military, and declared war on a nearby
river. He focused most of the elven economy on the production of arrows, which were
then fired into the river by the hundreds. The elves began to have very little to
eat, but still, they were enthusiastic. Indeed, they formed a parliament, and began to vote
on their own cruel and unnecessary laws. One of these was a routine beating of all
the elves in daily rotations. In a desperate attempt to anger the elves, Chappy disbanded the parliament. This caused no more than general disappointment, a thoroughly unsatisfactory
response for the two tyrants. Frustrated, they started to commit random acts of cruelty,
tying elves to trees, burying them up to their necks, and throwing dirt. When none of this worked, the two finally gave up and left, after first taking all
of the possessions of all of the elves. As they left, Drawkab addressed the elder,
Egas. "Why did you all like that oppression so much? I found it fairly painful."
The elder drew himself up to look cool and said this: "By not showing our displeasure, we only
had to deal with their cruelty for a short while. Had we resisted, we would only
have encouraged them. When you are older, my son, you will know that the path of
the wise is often the most difficult." Drawkab did not say that they could have just impeached
them as soon as the oppression began, or just never made them leaders in the first
place. Instead, he gathered his few belongings from the hole where he hid them, and
set off to find another settlement of elves that was not composed entirely of idiots.
End Part Five and a Half
Chapter Six