The Frumious Bandersnatch

[Gurney Devries]

Brrzt, Brrzt, BRrzt, BRRzt, BRRZt, BRRZT!!!

"Gra... gruh," the man in bed grumbled as his alarm clock continued to blare at him quite loudly. He was wholly convinced that it was one of the most annoying sounds ever invented. Right next to a human baby's cry. But that wasn't really invented. Sort of.

Breet, Breet, Breet!, BREET!, BREET!!, the alarm clock continued, changing its sound slightly.

Groggily, the man's hand reached out and began to slap the nightstand, searching for that elusive Snooze button. After about a minute of trying this with no success, he remembered that he had moved the alarm clock to prevent himself from doing just that. Instead, he pulled open the drawer on the nightstand and dug around inside for a few moments, before his fingers slid across what he was looking for.

PETHOOOW

The blaster shot rang out through the quiet morning air, and the room fell silent. A faint smell of ozone filled the room.

"HEY!! Just what the frell was that for?? I'm just doing my job, you know!"

Fully awake now, Gurney sat bolt-upright in his bed, eyes peeled wide open. No one else was in the room, he was sure of it. He had locked the door last night. He gave a panicked look back and forth, trying to place the source of the voice with little luck.

"Over here, ya numbskull!"

Warily, almost afraid to look (because he surely knew who the speaker was by now), the baffled padawan let his eyes wander to the floor... where sat his alarm clock, half of it disintegrated by the blaster shot.

"What the... who the... WHAT THE FRELL??!"

The alarm clock hopped up and down, apparently furious. The number on it's digital readout was a zero with dot in the middle, resembling an eye. And the part of the plastic where the clock met the base had been split into what Gurney could only assume was a mouth, as it moved when the thing spoke.

"Yeah, you shot me! After 2 long years of good service and getting whapped on the head every other morning, you shot me! I mean, I don't expect a bouquet or roses, but come on man!"

Gurney could feel the gears in his head slowing to a screeching halt. He'd certainly had his fair share of Spice Beer the night before, to be sure. Probably enough to get him a little tipsy. But this... well, this wasn't something that too much of the drink caused.

"I think I deserve some workman's comp, here. I mean, this is going to cost an easy 200 credits. And while we're at it, I think I deserve a raise...", the alarm clock continued to ramble on as Gurney Devries - former combat instructor, Jedi Padawan and now-certified madman, stumbled out of his room and into the hallway.

On his way outside, he passed by an old-fashioned wallclock, which was insistently waving at him and demanding attention, two small tables having a 5-legged race and an overly-friendly yet comfortably plush rug. He'd hoped that the madness was somehow confined to this building - that, once outside on the streets of Coruscant, everything would return to normal. But he didn't really expect that, and was not disappointed. By the time the credit chit in his pocket tried to run away with his wallet, he knew it was just going to be "one of those days".

[Emily Rochette]

Emily giggled in delight as she wandered along the street, her firey eyes bright with excitement. People were stumbling about, some in fear of a friendly chair, others arguing with a disgruntled toaster; one fellow fleeing down the street, being followed by a lovestruck blaster.

She didn't understand it; although she didn't understand many things, but whatever had come over this world was something quite amusing for the deranged girl to watch.

Emily chirped with another spout of gleeful laughter as a trash compactor hobbled past. She leapt up, deciding the street was getting much too cluttered, and scrambled up a wall. Curling up on a window sill, she yawned, a childish grin remaining on her face as she watched the people below her.

After some time, she creapt from her perch and climbed further up the wall to slip onto the roof. The girl wandered along, humming to herself. A small ring was heard in her mind as she tilt her head, huddling a bit. Muffled screams and whimpers tingled in her ears, though only she could hear them. Emily closed her eyes and rubbed her pale hands against her ears, trying to get the growing noises to go away; they were growing more frequent lately, and always pulled her into the darkness. Her fingers trembled as the rush of noise made her body twitch in anger. Finally, she let out a blood-curdling, enraged scream, stomping her feet down.

"Tsk, tsk.. Such a temper tantrum"

Emily's eyes widened and she suddenly froze. Her head turned slowly to look over her shoulder. An old, discarded cloak was curled up in a bundle, the wrinkles forming an obvious face. Emily forgot about the voices and grinned in delight, scampering over to kneel by the pile of cloth.

"What, are you going to say something or just sit there? Come on now, I know you have a voice! Just gave me a lovely headache with it."

A giggle slipped from her mouth as Emily reached out to poke at the clothing. "He" frowned and snapped at her hand in a pathetic attack. The Jysbena frowned, pouting as she drew back.

"Mean old rag."

With that, she ran off to the other side of the roof and leapt onto the next building, using its gutter to slide back down to the street.

[Gurney Devries]

"But I have to ask: Just how, exactly, do you tell time?"

Gurney was sitting cross-legged on the permacrete sidewalk, his hands in his lap, as he spoke to an alarm clock that was very much like his own. Only without a blaster hole. And without the attitude. Come to think of it, it wasn't much like his at all.

"Well, exactly what did you want to tell Time?"

"Um, well... no, that's not quite what I meant. To rephrase: How do you know what time of the day it is?"

The clock looked kind of baffled at this, as one of it's zero-eyes grew larger while the other shrank. o_O "There's only one Time. So once you know him, you know all of them!", it declared in a huff. Then it turned and hopped away. "Next thing you know, he'll be asking me how to beat time," it grumbled as it stormed off.

"That was... interesting", Gurney commented as he stood up, brushing himself off. He looked around him at all the appliances and other items running around that really had to right to be running around. He had tried explaining that to one of them, by the way, and it started ranting about how it had all the same rights as he did, and then some. Far from them all dashing about at random, though, Gurney noticed that all of them seemed to be headed in one direction... albeit haphazardly. He decided to stop one of them and see if they were going anywhere in particular (although it wouldn't surprise him in the least to find out that they were going nowhere at all). He stopped a ysalamiri who was crawling rather sluggishly across the ground.

"Excuse me... you there!"

The ysalamiri stopped crawling and turned its head towards Gurney in an arthritically slow manner. ".... yes?"

"I was wondering... where is everyone going, if anywhere at all?"

The slug from Myrkr didn't respond at first. Instead, it reached into it's nutrient pack ("Aren't those things supposed to be much larger?", Gurney pondered) and removed a pack of deathsticks. It lit it, then stuck it into its long, beak-ish snout and took a puff.

"To the Imperial Palace, of course", its words were slow and measured, as if it had great difficulty speaking and did not enjoy doing so. "To hear Emperor Palpatine's speech."

"Emperor.... WHA? Oh, you have got to be kidding me!"

The ysalamiri didn't respond. Instead, it just took up it's sluggish crawl onward again.

[Enol Dryad]

da-dunk, da-dunk, da-dee-dee-dee dunk....da-dunk, da-dunk, da-deeee-dunk...

The ysalimir resumed its arduous path, crossing a man who sat on the sidewalk. A styrofoam cup overflowed with quarters, though he seemed not to notice, instead counting the bricks of the edifice he sat against, with a kind of inner dread that was assured that dire consequences would be upon him if one single block were to be unaccounted for. His knuckles were white at the parts where he gripped an old, neglected jack-in-the-box, turning the crank ever-so-slowly as he whispered fear-driven pleas in a mubmling breath.

"Come out, come out, oh I-I-sa-belle....come out, come out, and saave me..."

[Dante]

the jack-in-the-box was knocked out of his hand by Dante, as he flew past, gleefully exchanging blasts of iridescent fire with a squadron of toasters. he picked up a stick and threw it to them, which they chased, and returned to him like an obedient dog.
he patted the leading toaster on the head, before sprinting off again to play catch the fireballwith them.

[Wei Wu Wei]

"Just flow with it all, and things will turn out just fine," Wei said to the confused Gurney.

"Now, where were we?" Wei said, turning to look at the lightsaber he held in his hand.

::Do you honestly think that we lightsabers love to be handled like you people do? DO you think that we love combat, that we love to clang against each other, much less love to taste the flesh of others?:: The lightsaber said.

"Well, You are made to do combat."

::And? We can do other things too, you know.::

"Really? Like what?" Wei asked as he continued to walk along the sidewalk.