My Funny Friend and Me

(ooc: July 13. Closed to Ling and Crescent for some adorable goofiness.)

I'm bored.

Still bored.

I've never been more bored in my whole entire life!

With nothing better to do than use a stick he had found as a drawing tool, Ling was finding it very difficult to keep himself occupied. There wasn't any training going on - not like there had been any real training sessions as of late, but it was something Ling had taken note of - and Tripod, Chien-Po, and Yao were all off doing their own thing elsewhere. This left the lanky stick of a soldier to his own devices, and this had resulted in boredom taking over completely. The worst part was that he couldn't even start up a game like he had once before. There weren't enough people around to even begin a 'war of the sticks' game, and this displeased him. There had to be something he could do to relieve his boredom.

After much thought, he had come up with nothing of real consequence in relation to ideas. "Okay, that's it. Isn't there somebody around here that wants to do something fun?" Ling asked. He didn't expect anybody to answer, but it sure didn't hurt to ask.

"I have a stiiiiiick! I have a stiiiiick!" The dalmatian with the IQ of a donut, trotted across the plains, head held high. She had a thick stick in her mouth and short as it was, she carried it around as if it was made of gold. She'd found the stick by the water and had picked up the wet object with her maw. "I have a stiiiiick!" Echoed out of her mouth but with the object in her mouth it sounded more like "sith" than "stick."

Floppy pup plopped down on the ground by Ling and began eating her newfound golden object. No, not knawing on it. Eating it. She crunched the bark between her puppy teeth, swallowing bits of wood. Femme smiled up at Ling, wagging her tail.

"I gots a stick," she giggled.

Upon finally taking notice of the little dalmatian eating a stick on the ground near him, Ling just grinned a bit silly grin. Puppies! There was really no telling what they would do, now was there? He'd almost forgotten how silly they could be since the little spotted dogs had gone through so much trauma in relation to their family. He'd only known about it through Tripod, and what little he had heard from the three-legged pup was enough to confirm, at least in his mind, that the pups needed to have fun again. This little girl seemed to have the right idea, even if she was a doofus. Then again, Ling was kind of a doofus himself. Doofs just seemed to go hand in hand these days.

"That's some stick you got there." Ling said. He had to snicker just a little when he really took in the fact that she was eating the stick. "My stick's clearly got nothing on that stick. Yours is like like... the champion of awesome sticks!" Ling proclaimed. Compared to Crescent's stick, Ling's was just a thin little twig that probably would be better suited for doodling in the dirt or playing make believe.

"But you know, I bet you could find a better use for it than eating it. Why, I bet that stick would be perfect for being a stick warrior." Ling said. Maybe there was hope for playing a little after all.

Ears perked and maw dropped open. Her brown eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. She looked from the stick to Ling then back at the stick then back at Ling. Maw was still hanging open. "I...could be a stick warrior!?" She jumped up and grinned, her tail a blur of activity. She bounced up and down around the stick and giggled softly. To her simple mind it was almost as if they weren't in the war, all that mattered right now was that Ling was saying she could be a stick warrior.

"I'm gonna be the best stick warrior ever!" The scars on her back and on her white tummy would show that she wasn't the best warrior of anything. But with a stick she might be able to defend herself or grip a knife. But these thoughts were lost to her.

"How to I become a stick warrior, mister?"

"How do you... that's easy!" Ling replied. He readjusted the grip on his stick and crouched down to Crescent's level, gently tapping her on the shoulders with his stick while grinning giddily. "I, Ling, King of the Stick People, hereby dub thee an official stick warrior. Okay, that's the first step." Ling said as he rose to his full height again. Oh, this was fun. He hadn't gotten a chance to have any official stick warriors since his game months ago. Now that Crescent was there and evidently ready to derp around with him, he was ready to go.

"The second step is finding a stick, which you already have. Finally, you have to promise to dutifully uphold your duties as a stick warrior. You must protect the weak and helpless, fight with honor, and most importantly... have fun!" Ling explained. Really, it was mainly about having fun and making up things as you went along. That was all Ling really knew for certain, especially since he generally did that anyway. The best part was he finally had someone to do just that with.

"Okay, Lady... uh... what'd you say your name was?" he asked. He'd been so caught up in making Crescent a stick warrior that he'd forgotten to ask her name.

"Crescent! Lady Crescent! See causa' my ear?" She pointed to her ear again as she always did when introducing herself. She scratched at her blue collar and grinned up and Ling. She picked up the stick between her teeth and stood on two feet like she was begging. She saluted the stick of a man. "Yeth thurrr!" She said with the stick in her maw. She fell backwards on her bottom, dropping the stick. "Hehehehe," she giggled, bouncing upward on all fours and prancing in a circle.

"Uh," she mused, "Who exactly do I protect as a stick warrior again?"

Amusement flickered in Ling's eyes as he watched Crescent prance around. It was too precious! This little pup might have been the partner he had been hoping for and the one that would be willing to do silly things with him when they had time off from training and the like. Those thoughts dissipated quickly when she asked who she was supposed to protect. It was a fairly easy question to answer, as now he would have a chance to explain the game better. Well, the smaller group version of it anyway.

"That's the fun part. This is all about using our imaginations to determine what we have to do, so you can pretty much protect whoever you can imagine protecting." Ling explained. It was easy enough, right? They pretty much would get to act like doofuses and fight imaginary threats. How much cooler could it get? "So, what say you Crescent? What shall we defend the land from today?" he asked.

Crescent grinned. This guy was the coolest! "You sure know how to have fun, Mister!" She said with a grin, "Nobody else wants to play pretend! I love playing pretend. This one time on the farm I pretended to fight a big old dragon!" She tapped her chin softly. "Or we could fight a big old meanie pants of a ghost! Or a chicken! No wait...chickens aren't scary."

She wagged her tail and lowered her head with a grin. "Let's go off and fight a dragon!" She said with a nod of her doofy little head.

"You kidding? This is one of the best ways to pass time! Everyone else... they're just sticks in the mud." Ling said. Who cared if the others didn't find it so amusing? He enjoyed this little game of 'King of the Stick People', and he wasn't about to give it up just because he was an adult. Adults needed to have fun, too, after all. Otherwise the war would have just continued to drag on and on and nobody would know the meaning of the word anymore. That was why Ling liked playing with the puppies; they knew how to have fun still.

Crescent's idea of fighting a make believe dragon sounded good enough to Ling. The last time he had played around with the idea of the game, it had been more of a make believe war. With just the two of them, they could pretend they were fighting a dragon! "Sounds like a good idea to me. Come, Lady Crescent! We must vanquish the evil dragon and save the kingdom before he turns it into an ooey, gooey mess!"

Crescent covered her maw with her paws and giggled. "Ooey Gooey," she repeated as if it was a dirty joke she was giggling at, "Yay! Let's do it mister! Its a big dragon with three heads! And it breathes fire!" She bounced up and down and was very ecited. She finally had someone to play pretend with. None of the puppies on the farm wanted to play pretend. She grinned grabbed her stick and started running towards the nearest tree.

"This is the mighty dragon!" she said, through gritted teeth pointing at the tree, "Help me, mister! We need to fight the big ol' mean dragon before it eats peoples!"

Ling faked a gasp when Crescent mentioned that the dragon was three-headed. In his experience, those were the worst kind of dragons to deal with. Of course it was all make believe, but who needed to know that? The more realistically they treated the game, the more fun it would be! "There's only one way to stop a three-headed dragon. And to do that, we need to attack it head on!" he exclaimed. So, pretending there really was a dragon there, Ling ran forward and swiped his stick through the air as if he was slashing at the dragon. He had to leap back after a moment so he could pretend flames were coming his way in order to dodge them properly, but it looked convincing enough to him.

"Quick! While I have its heads distracted, you go around back and try to grab its tail!"

"The tail! The tail! Got it!" She turned back to Ling as she ran around the tree, not look where she was going. "Be careful mister! The middle head's coming right for ya! Watch out for the teefs!" Teeth. Doofus of a femme ran smack dab into a tree. She lifted her head, shook it and kept going.

Reaching the back of the tree she smacked the trunk with her stick. In her mind she could hear the beast roar out in pain as if she carried a sword. She grinned with delight, wagging her tail. This was the most fun she'd had in a long while.

As instructed, Ling began to step backward and forward as though he were dodging a barrage of attacks. In his mind there was the massive dragon trying to snap him in half like a twig. It would have been a befitting end for the King of the Stick People, but not today. He didn't intend on getting snatched up like that. He imagined that when Crescent had smacked the tree, there had been a roar that filled the air to signify that it had worked. Ling gave a triumphant whoop and pumped his fist in the air, but it wasn't over yet. It would be much too easy if the game was over like that.

"Oh yeah! We are the champions of dragon fighting!" Ling exclaimed. As his little victory dance came to an end, he came to a stop and looked to where he had been imagining the dragons' heads coming at him. He was visualizing one of the heads craning around and going in Crescent's direction. "Lady Crescent, look out! One of the heads is coming right for you!"

"Oh noes!"

Crescent saw the dragon's head coming for her and tried to leap out of the way. She banged the stick into thin air as if she was smacking the dragon's head with the sword. She grinned, eyes narrowing in a sort of cocky evil look. She'd beat this dragon with Ling no matter how long it took! She actually hoped it took a while. Femme was ready to keep playing into the night and into the next morning. NOBODY liked to play pretend like this human did! Fighting a dragon with a stick-sword was causing her to giggle like there was no tomorrow. One of the benefits of having a one digit IQ; she lived in the here and now.

"I've bonked the dragon on the head!" She said, "Now we must stop him from breathing fire!" Cutting off the heads never occurred to her; she wasn't violent enough.

While cutting off the heads of the supposed dragon had occurred to Ling, he didn't want to go that far yet. It was fun to pretend, obviously, but there was no need to get overly violent with their game. Instead, Ling would have to find a way to substitute killing the dragon so they could keep it from burning them. But how? What could they possibly do in a pretend scenario to keep a dragon from breathing fire? The most obvious solution came to him after a moment, and as silly as it sounded he wanted to go through with it. Despite being a grown man, Ling was quite ready to take the game of pretend further. He wanted it to last just as long as Crescent did.

"There's only one thing to do to stop a dragon from breathing fire. We need..." pausing for dramatic effect, Ling ducked down as though fire was coming his way before swinging his stick in the air as though trying to attack once more. He felt the pause had been dramatic enough, and so decided to continue speaking. "water. We need to throw water in his face with our imaginary buckets!" he exclaimed.