The Speeling Manuscript

The Speeling Manuscript (Because we Might as Well Call it What it Is)

*Written by Jonna on 9-10-16*

“I’m bored.”

A man named Jim, who at the time was supposed to be busy cleaning his battle gear, spoke these words. He was sitting on his bunk in the barracks with two of his fellow Paradox Rogues, staring at his rank three rocket launcher on the floor. With a sigh he kicked it. It quickly spun across the slippery metal floor and accidentally fired, blowing a hole in the wall.

Unfazed, Jim sighed again through the resulting smoke. “So bored.”

“Please don’t kick explosives across the room, Jim. It’s not safe,” his teammate pointed out sensibly as he meticulously checked and double-checked every safety on all his weapons. He then turned to tack up a new poster with a picture of Barney with the words “Look both ways before crossing the street!” on it, before realizing that the wall was also metal and therefore unreceptive to tacks.

“We’ve been on this space station for two years and there’s been no invasions, no infiltrators, and nothing to do! For being a part of Lord Enfawr’s elite security team, we do a whole lot of nothing! NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING-“

“So let’s do something,” the third rogue, Robert, suggested. He bent to pick up the errant rocket launcher and found himself to be eye-level with a jawa.

He watched as it fired up a welding torch, pulled a welding mask over its face, then turned and got to work repairing the wall. On the other side of the hole, more quibbling jawas started welding new sheets of metal in place.

Shaking his head, he returned the launcher to Jim. “Guarding this space station has turned out to be the weirdest assignment ever.”

Jim accepted the launcher and eyed it dubiously. “And the boring-est.”

“Aren’t the jawas interesting at least?” asked the second rogue who had now resorted to duckz-taping the poster up.

Jim now eyed the brown-clad scavengers dubiously. “They were until they’d disassembled my rifle for the third time.”

“Utinni,” one of them snapped back.

“How about we go outside?” Robert suggested.

The other rogue- William- declined because he wanted to stay and admire his poster for a while. Since he didn’t particularly care for the poster, Jim agreed to go. He and Robert grabbed their helmets and space uniforms then climbed into the hallway through the hole the jawas were patching up.

<>

Jim and Robert sat down on the cold, silver metal that was the outer surface of the Rhoddwr Marwolaeth. Its sheer size really was impressive, even though they knew the inside was years from completion. But they’d been up here plenty of times and the enormity of the station was no longer as exciting as it used to be.

“Still bored,” Jim grumbled. He took out his rocket launcher and fiddled with it aimlessly.

“Careful,” Robert warned, but it was too late. Jim’s hand slipped and the second rocket fired out into space with a loud FWOOSH sound, heading away from the Rhoddwr Marwolaeth at an angle. However, it was designed as a short-range missile, and began to run out of propulsion quite quickly. As its flame trail faded to a tiny sputter, the two paradox rogues noticed something odd. It had begun floating in a different direction. They craned their necks to follow it as it floated sideways, along the Rhoddwr Marwolaeth.

“I think it got caught in an orbit,” Robert speculated as it disappeared over the horizon of silvery metal.

“Maybe,” Jim said, finally interested in something at last. “Let’s see if it comes back around.”

They waited there for a while, over a half an hour. Sure enough, the missile appeared came from around the other side, very slowly.

Jim watched it for a minute. “I guess we’d better shoot it before it blows something up.” He pulled out his rifle, took careful aim, and shot it. It exploded harmlessly. Then he sighed and went back to being bored.

Robert stroked his chin- or rather his helmet. He looked at his friend and saw how bored he was. Then he thought about how bored he himself was, and decided he couldn’t take another minute of this.

“I have an idea,” he said. He ducked back into the station. Jim just leaned back on his elbows and stared up at the holographic Darneu disguise.

Not too much later, Robert returned carrying a fire extinguisher. He quickbuilt a gigantic ramp in front of them then pulled out a skateboard.

“Do you know where the rocket hanger is?” he asked.

"Yeah," Jim said, perplexed.

“Good. I trust you. If I don’t reappear in twenty minutes, grab one and come looking for me.” Having said this, he quickly duckz-taped his own rocket launcher on to the skateboard, stood on it, and fired both rockets with his foot.

The skateboard shot along the ground and up the ramp, carrying Robert with it. Jim gaped as his friend zoomed up the ramp, off the ramp, and right out into space!

Not too far into space, however. The rocket-skateboard began to sputter and drift lazily, while Robert started tinkering around with the fire extinguisher. He fired it a few times and the resulting force propelled him in the opposite direction. Carefully, he looked over his shoulder and fired the extinguisher multiple times until he felt he had settled into an orbit. He waved at Jim as he floated away.

Meanwhile, Jim simply stared. He stared at his friend disappearing over the horizon, twirling and spinning and probably screaming gleefully. He stared at the rocket-skateboard as it followed more placidly. He stared at the floating puffs of fire extinguisher foam that didn’t seem to be going anywhere at all. Then he quickly ran back to the barracks to get William.

<>

William was a bit cross at having been pulled away from his nice new poster and the jawas, which were almost done fixing the wall, and so it was with some misgiving that he stood on the outside of the Rhoddwr Marwolaeth with Jim.

“What did you want to show me?” he asked, trying to be patient.

“Just wait. He’ll be here any moment. At least, I hope so.”

“Who will?”

Jim pointed. “Robert.”

Indeed, Robert was now coming into their field of vision as his orbit neared a complete circle. He didn’t seem to be completely in control as he spun upside down and towards his comrades. William was aghast.

“This breaks so many safety codes,” he bewailed.

They watched as Robert came nearer and nearer. Soon he was right above them, and he waved enthusiastically. They waved back. It was at this point that Robert realized he hadn’t thought about how to get back down. Perhaps the extinguisher could help propel him back to solid(ish) ground?

His friends observed silently as they saw him shaking the extinguisher, kicking it and looking down the nozzle- it had apparently run dry, so he tossed it away. He tried swimming downwards, but that also proved futile. His shoulders slumped and they could practically hear him sigh as he continued floating, now having gone past them and once again approaching the horizon.

Jim spoke up. “You know, maybe we should go get a rocket.”

“Yeah,” William agreed.

They went to the hanger and chose a rocket that would accommodate the three of them, and blasted off. Getting Robert in the rocket was more difficult than actually finding him; nonetheless he was soon safely in the spacecraft and chattering non-stop.

“That was amazing! Did you guys see me?! It was great, I could see everything, well I guess the holographic Darneu disguise kind of blocked the view to the rest of space but man, did you guys know how big the station is it’s amazingly huge wow I can’t wait to do it again do you guys think they’d miss the extinguisher by the control room if I took it-“

“Please stop talking,” William interrupted with a groan, “You’re hurting my head.”

“Sorry.” He was silent for a moment. “It was awesome though, right?”

Jim hooked an arm over the back of his chair as he twisted around, keeping one hand on the spaceship controls. “How should we know? You’re the one who was out there.”

“Good point. Then I declare that it WAS awesome,” Robert said strongly. He grinned and flung his arms up. “So when are you guys going to try it?”

“Try THAT? Do you have any idea how unsafe that is?” William screeched in horror.

“It’s not *that* dangerous. We could tie a rope to you to keep you from flying out of the range of the artificial gravity, just in case.”

“A safety tether?” William seemed more open to the idea now.

Jim nodded slowly as his guided the ship into the hanger. “You know, this could be the answer to all our problems. I don’t think I’d ever get bored doing that.” He started to land and began flipping all the appropriate switches. “But what is that? I mean, what are we going to call it?”

“Way ahead of you,” Robert cheered. “I’m going to call it… speeling.”

Jim and William looked at him blankly.

“Best name ever!!!!” they whooped.

<>

It wasn’t long before almost all the minifigures of Lord Enfawr’s elite security team had tried speeling. In fact, it wasn’t long before almost all the beings that worked at the Rhoddwr Marwolaeth had tried it during their lunch breaks. It was turning into quite a competitive sport. Robert and Jim created categories and periodically held contests for each one, such as the Fastest Orbit category, the Free Style category (for those who eschewed the safety tether) or the ever-respected, awe-inducing, and spine-chilling Most Erratic Flight Path category.

William was put in charge of safety, a job he was overjoyed with. Even still, despite the excellent policies and stringent safety practices he established, there were a few accidents here and there, though one could say that accidents are inevitable when dealing with extreme sports. Such as that one time when there had been a group of jawas with retro-bubble helmets welding together the new western cannons, and Jim had come speeling by at a high velocity and taken out the whole troop.

“It was an accident,” Jim had said with a straight face when he filed the incident report.

Next to him, the head Jawa had crossed its tiny arms and tapped its foot skeptically.

But as the years went on and the craze remained ever popular, Jim began to feel disenchanted with the whole thing. Maybe it was because it had become so competitive. Maybe it was because he was now one of the most popular guys on the station and could hardly get a moments rest. Whatever the reason, he decided to go out speeling by himself for awhile to relax and gather his thoughts.

Outside, he took a deep breath of air from inside his helmet. Then he strapped on the safety tether since he was only doing a casual run, and launched off the ramp. Once settled into a steady, gentle orbit, he allowed himself to enjoy the all encompassing silence of space in contrast to the busy space station.

Unbeknownst to Jim, on the other side of the Rhoddwr Marwolaeth, a rocket carrying two ninja and one super sentinel had just crash-landed. Of course Jim could not see through the gargantuan station and remained unaware of this. He was so engrossed in his own thoughts that he also did not notice when an intruder alert popped up on his helmet HUD, issued by Corporal Mae Guy Drwg asking for members of the elite security team to respond to the threat.

*I need a change in my life,* Jim thought distantly to himself as he floated. *Maybe I could get a job as a painter.*

He was just passing over the main gun now. That’s when the station began moving.

This jolted Jim out of orbit, and out of his daydreaming. His flight path interrupted, he drifted out of the way of the main gun just as it fired its laser!

*That was a narrow escape,* he thought with a gulp. The floating paradox rogue stared at the brilliant beam of green light as it streamed out of the Rhoddwr Marwolaeth and shot towards its target. He couldn’t help but swell with pride a little bit. He had helped build this- this incredible station, this powerful weapon, this rad machine.

Unfortunately, his admiration was cut short when the beam inexplicably ricocheted back and blew up the Rhoddwr Marwolaeth.

The resulting explosion blew Jim all the way out of the Darneu and into the Great Tree at Forbidden Valley. Seeing as his previous place of employment was no longer able to employ him, he decided to pursue his dreams as an artist and became a world-class painter. And when that got boring he took up speeling again, popularized it around the galaxy, and it became known as the first extreme space sport.

**THE END**

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