“So long, chups!” Sir Broderick smiled and waved at the guards standing outside the choakie as he sashayed down the street, the saucepan atop his head as if it were a hat with the belt tightened around it and his chin in a buckled cinch.

Sir Broderick stopped at a horsedrawn trolleystop and leaned on a lampost lit by way of magical enchantment, staring into the two hot suns hanging in the middle of the midday sky.

“Shitface? Hey! Hey, Shitface!”

Sir Broderick blinked, noting that he’d almost permanently burned parts of his pupils as he tried to focus on the man walking through the middle of the busy street towards him.

“What? Who now?”

“Oh come on Shitface don’t pretend like you haven’t met me just because you have a fancy saucepan on your head now.”

“It’s fancy?”

“Well, it could be considered fancy if it was clean, but you know that anyhow,” the man got right up in Sir Broderick’s face, greeting him with the scent of stale onions, and slapped him on the shoulder, “Oh Shitface it’s been too long.”

Sir Broderick rolled his aching eyes as he realized who had accosted him, “Hello there, Biscuit Pisser.”

“Shhh shhhh come on now Shitface don’t call me that in public it’s embarassing. Call me Xavier.”

Sir Broderick pushed Biscuit Pisser away from him and almost into a speeding chariot, whose driver promptly screamed at them both to ‘watch it’ without elaborating on what exactly it was they were to watch.

“If you don’t want me to call you Biscuit Pisser, Biscuit Pisser, then I require you to call me Shit—er, Sir Broderick.”

“Okay, nice to see you, Shit—er, Sir Broderick.”

“Cluck off with that you know what I meant.”

“No I don’t. I called you exactly what you asked me to.”

“I clucking hate you, Biscuit Pisser.”

Biscuit Pisser smirked, twirling his moustache that was twenty times blacker and thirty times thiccer than Sir Broderick’s, “Say, Shitface, what are you doing waiting on a horsedrawn trolley? Don’t you have a fancy ass donkey?”

Sir Broderick suddenly felt a vein in his temple pop, and not just because Biscuit Pisser had started stroking his chin strap, which was in ways similar to his moustache far superior to Sir Broderick’s own chin strap, “I don’t know how I feel about you calling everything I own fancy, Biscuit Pisser. If you must know, my noble steed—which is how I prefer you refer to it going forward if you must at all—my noble steed has been ass-napped!”

“Excrete me?”

“You heard me. I am once again the subject of a brutal ass-nappery and I’ll be cockhamned if I don’t bring all of Caldonia to the ground in my quest to liberate my sweet, sweet ass from its unknown captors!”

“So by that you mean you’ll burn something down, right? Like last time? You know the carpetbagger’s guild still sends me mail asking for donations to this day.”

“What?! No! That was an accident, you spoiled can of paprika! I only mean to say I will do anything to get my ass back.”

“You’re definitely going to burn something down.”

“Don’t be an ass, Biscuit Pisser.”

“Maybe I should be an ass. Maybe I’d like it if you burnt down a building for me.”

“No you shouldn’t, no you wouldn’t and hen no I wouldn’t!”

“Sure. Anywhathownow, why don’t you just get another donkey? Hen, why don’t you get a horse?”

“You did not just ask me that.”

“Ask you what?”

“You know what you did not just ask me.”

“Now I’m confused.”

“Biscuit Pisser, you need to understand something. When you find yourself in need of an ass or a horse or hen even a hippopotamus if you will you will have to go to an adoption center or a breeding center or a magickal synthesis lounge. Or, if you have less money and even less principles, you can go to a hatchery that churns them all out like a fried pygmy chicken shop.”

“Okay.”

“So I filled out all this papertwerk. I poured my fart and soul and money into it, I got my magickal background check and I got approved. And then I went to that ass hatchery and it absolutely stank, Biscuit Pisser. I mean, it was the stinkiest place I’d ever been. My nose nearly hopped off my face, Biscuit Pisser.”

“Oh dear.”

“And then it all changed. Because the lady at the counter handed me my little Sassafrass in a cold wet bundle and told me to get lost before she started shooting arrows at me for loitering. Are you seeing what I’m saying?”

“That you’re a horrible person whose presence disgusts most everyone? Buddy, I already knew that.”

“Cluck off. I’m saying I’m never going to put myself through that experience again, not until my ass kicks the bucket, and even then I’d gladly pay an enchanter to reanimate his corpse than try and adopt or purchase or anything.”

“So what you’re saying is you love your ass and you miss him.”

“That’s not at all what I’m saying.”

“Exactly.”

“Now will you get the cluck out of my life please?”

“Depends.”

“Depends?”

“It sounds like you might be at the start of some sort of an epic quest. And if so, I want in.”

Of course he wanted in. Biscuit Pisser was the kind of guy that once you made eye contact with him he was already latched onto your neck like a leech. Except it felt more like he drank your sanity and soul away instead of just your blood.

“An epic quest? I don’t quite think so, Biscuit Pisser. I think this whole business with my napped ass is going to be rather short. A short, digestible ass hunt. A nice, brief, sterile ass hunt that no one can say no to. And what’s more is I know that the impending brevity of my journey is but a sign of sure success. Indeed, although my fart now weeps, fortune will surely smile upon me. Oh, they’ll see. They’ll all see.” It needs to be underscored, in case it has been previously unclear, that the word ‘fart’ in this context was in fact referring to Sir Broderick’s heart. Farts, the gassy kind that is, could not weep, not even in this land of fantasy.

“Stop staring off into the suns while you say this stuff, Shitface, you’re making me nervous. Also, they? What they? Who is this they? Did you get hit on the head recently?”

“Yes, but that’s beside the point. After all, why would you want to go on a really long, hard quest that pushes deep into your psyche when you could go on a much shorter, far less satisfying quest that leaves you wanting something more?”

“Well Shitface I mean there’s nothing wrong with wanting something more after a quest I mean that’s how great quests are made you can’t just go from no quests to an epic quest I mean you’ve got to warm up to it from square one if you’re starting from nothing. Do you think that the perpetually dehydrated desert people of outer EasternWest Caldonia went from not drinking water to drinking a ton of it immmediately after being the first humans to discover water?”

“Yes.”

“Besides that, wanting more, Shitface, wanting more is the human condition.”

“Maybe it is if you’re a loser, Biscuit Pisser, but look at me. Gaze upon my magnificence. I don’t just want more, I deserve so much more,” Sir Broderick shook as he said this, wobbling the saucepan on his head to and fro. “Shit, I’ve got to tighten this hamned thing up a little.”

“See, Shitface, if you’d been wearing that saucepan a long time you’d already have it all nice and tight in there like everybody likes.”

“Stop it with the philosophy, Biscuit Pisser, or you’ll give me an ulcer.”

CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP

The trolley pulled up to the stop, and its horse neighed and farted welcomingly. Three rich people stepped off with their neon twenty limbed designer dogs, laughing with eachother.

“Aand sao Ia saaid, thaat’s naot aa skay yaacht, thaat’s aa skay dainghay!” snorted one of them, the other two chortling in agreeance.

“Oah darlaing, haow wondaerfully quaiant thaat trollaey raide waas! Sao interaesting tao seea haow thae paoors laive,” she added, looking at Sir Broderick at Biscuit Pisser with a smirk.

“Iandeed,” agreed the third, “Aand haow delightfaully absaurd tao seea thaeir trollaeys daon’t eaven havae bautlers!”

All three of them laughed and sauntered off. Sir Broderick and Biscuit Pisser grumbled about one percenters as they stepped aboard their butlerless trolley and paid three chickensfeed each for the priveledge of sitting in soggy seats.

“I hate those people, Biscuit Pisser.”

“Don’t we all.”

“I swear to cock they all got dogs over the course of a month.”

“That’s because theys dids,” droned the deep voice of the bus driver.

“Ew don’t talk to us,” scoffed Sir Broderick.

“Yea, do your job, guy.”

“I’m nots a guys.”

“Whatever, lady, just don’t bug us.”

“I’m nots a ladies. I’ms a—”

“You know I don’t care what you are will you please pretty please just stop talking to us you creep?”

“Buts—”

“Thank you,” Sir Broderick sighed and stared out the dingy window to the dingy streets outside.

“You can’t get respectful trolley drivers these days, can you?” tut tutted Biscuit Pisser as he stared out his own window, “Why, when we were kids they would give us candy bars.”

“I remember that. Apparently trolley drivers are too hood for candy bars now. Or they don’t think we’re hood enough.”

“I bet they gave those snobs loads of candy bars.”

“Probably full sized candy bars. You know they only ever gave us the miniature candy bars because we’re so poor.”

“Duh.”

“Well?” Sir Broderick leaned up and glared at the trolley driver, “Where’s our candy, asshole? Why’d you people stop giving us candy? It was the only thing I had to look forward to when I was waiting on the trolley every morning to pretend to go to triple n school!” Triple n stood for nonmagickal, nonaffluent, nonworthanything.

“She’s ignoring you, Shitface.”

“Why are you ignoring me? Hello? Anybody there, trolley driver?”

“Yous tolds me to stops talkings to yous!”

“And yet you keep talking! Ugh! I bet he didn’t talk to the rich people.”

“You said it, Biscuit Pisser. Nobody treats us right.”