When last we traipsed alongside our dudely duo, they were traipsing along the motley-brick road on their way to King Kandy’s kastle, in search of the Katalytic Konvertor of Doom. After escaping the tacky clutches of Lord Licorice they made their dauntless way toward the towering Gumdrop Mountains in the distance.
“I like gumdrops,” Double Eleven commented.
“Do you know,” said Tuck congenially, “you are not a very interesting fellow?”
Double Eleven thankfully ignored this comment, as it would no doubt have led to some very tiring dialogue, and soon they were trodding through the aptly named Gumdrop Pass which passed through the Gumdrop Mountains.
“Do you suppose we will meet anything terrifying and deadly here?” wondered Double Eleven.
“It’s likely,” replied Tuck. “I would even say ‘definitely’ but that depends on whether or not you find that terrifying and assume it to be deadly.” He pointed over yonder with the knob of his bullwhip, and Double Eleven turned his gaze in that general direction.
A large purple blobby sort of creature dressed polka dot pants was loping towards them across the gummy peaks. It had yellow eyes and a disconcertingly jolly smile.
“He looks like a happy fellow,” Double Eleven observed. “One only gets that happy by drinking the blood of innocents and feasting on the fleshy bits of small children.”
“Indeed.”
“Small children have a larger percentage of fleshy bits about them than adults.”
“I was just thinking that.”
Having agreed that the rapidly approaching creature was both deadly and terrifying, our heroes pulled out their preferred weaponry and made themselves ready by chanting their preferred self pep talks. Tuck held his bull whip in one hand and his vorpal blade in the other, whilst Double Eleven whipped out a double barreled sawed off shotgun.
At Tuck’s questioning looked, he explained, “It’s loaded with gumdrops.”
“Ah. Gumdrops being a purifying element.”
“Don’t be moronic. I was out of bullets so I loaded the gun with gumdrops I plucked whilst passing through the pass.”
“And gumdrops are going to fend off that beast how?”
The beast in question was approaching perhaps not as rapidly as previously thought, but it arrived just in time to make answering Tuck’s question impractical. Tuck, realizing that he was with a person of questionable intelligence, decided he’d have to fend off the beast all by himself, and sneered in a heroic fashion as he ran to meet the thing.
Unfortunately for Tuck, he became ensnared in a mire of Gooey Gumdrops and appeared likely to be slaughtered. Double Eleven fired his shotgun directly into the face of the beast, but the drops only became lodge ineffectually in his face. He laughed in a jolly fashion, inspiring Double Eleven to christen him Jolly.
“Do not christen the deadly and terrifying monster,” Tuck admonished. “Help me out of this muck so that I can do battle with it!”
“We don’t have time for that,” Double Eleven said. “Let me borrow your vorpal blade.”
“What? Never!”
Meanwhile, Jolly ran past them, chuckling. The warriors watched him bound off down the path and were still staring after him long after he’d disappeared amongst the hills of goo.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” said Double Eleven.
“Perhaps we don’t have enough fleshy bits to entice him.”
“My blood is certainly not that innocent.”
“Well, there you go.”
Tuck climbed out of his gooey pitfall, and they continued on, prepared to take on any foe just so long as said foe actually wanted to take them on as well. This sort of moral conscience is exactly what separates the heroes from the villains. Just so you know.
“Our next stop,” Double Eleven announced, picking up a Visitor’s Field Guide to the Greater Candy Land Area from a newsstand operated by sentient breath mints, “is the Peanut Brittle House, a popular inn maintained by one Grandma Nut.”
“Sounds unpleasant.”
“I don’t see what’s so great about peanut brittle, it’s hard and it gets stuck in your teeth.”
“Exactly. That’s assuming you don’t break your teeth just trying to bite it.”
“What say we torch the place on our way by?”
“That’s an excellent idea,” said Tuck, his face lighting up like a Christmas tree, only less green. “Do you have matches?”
Double Eleven whipped out his ACME ArsonMan kit and nodded.
It’s probably best not to focus too much on the lack of social conscience being displayed by our heroes at this juncture. Don’t concern yourself with such details.
Next Chapter:
Ooh Lolly-Lollipop
Elevenses: The Daring Exploits of Agents 1111 and 711 
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