Chapter 39 - Obstructions

*The list came with a bonus 15 cities if you bought the matching tote bag

Much to Cobbler’s displeasure the fly mob had successfully torched and tickled 23 cities on their “top 10 most ticklish cities*” list and were quickly moving onto the next. It seemed to Cobbler that everything he tried to stop this mob from destroying things resulted in even more destruction. Even when they listened to his pleas to stop destroying things and rebuild the city somehow ended up entirely leveled (Cobbler was still not sure how that happened). It appeared to Cobbler that he was extremely ineffective at whatever he tried and thus he decided that the surest way to stop the fly mob’s destructive rampage would be to attempt to assist it as much as possible. Cobbler grabbed a feather and flew off towards the next city ready to tickle and pillage in hopes of bringing peace back to the land.

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As Joe journeyed farther into the not-forest the sounds of the chasing hoard grew quieter. This was mostly due to many of the participants growing bored with chasing Joe and the ones that were left were much stealthier in their pursuit. Joe, thinking he had outran his pursuers, took a break from his skedaddling and surveyed his surroundings. Joe soon discovered that most things around him did not like the tsetse flies, but there was a sizable minority that viewed them with indifferences as they were inanimate objects and just could not be tickled to death from the flies. After the quick poll Joe looked around and saw that the not-forest had gotten much more not-like and much less forest-like all of a sudden. The non-trees were more spaced out and the ground had gone from a nice not-forest floor to a mountainous climb made of jagged rocks and nefarious pudding. Joe was certain that this mountain of unusual composition was the way to the magic-8 ball of close-but-not-quite-correct-answers, or at the very least it would be a cool view at the top. As Joe started his accent up the mountain in the middle of the not-forest the pursuing former and current residence of the forest and not-forest respectively watched on in horror. That mountain was home of a hideous creature, and no one dared climb its jagged and pudding coated slopes for fear of getting caught by its unliked resident. Joe, being ignorant of the inhabitant of this unusual geographic feature, fearlessly trekked up the mountain, determined to get to a place that would hopefully result in meeting an object that would probably have an answer to solve a problem that somehow would result in getting him home. Entirely undeterred by the amount of uncertainty and general unfound ideas surrounding his current endeavors, Joe continued his foolhardy endeavor up the mound of most certain problems. Joe climbed higher and higher until about ten feet up he came across a large wooden spoon blocking what seemed to be the only path forward. While the spoon itself wasn’t very obstructing it was covered in a thick layer of pudding which had an ominous glow. Joe certainly did not want to touch glowing pudding and he most certainly did not want to know what flavor it was (it was banana). With the spoon of questionable pudding blocking the path up Joe reluctantly turned around and started to head back down, but upon turning around he saw another blob of nefariously glowing pudding blocking the way, this time in a bowl (and strawberry flavored). Having no path up or down, Joe trekked around the side of this mound but alas as he rounded a bend there was a massive fork with a blob of extra thick (chocolate) pudding stabbed on the end. The eerie glow emanating from the pudding was even more unappetizing than the others causing Joe to completely freeze. The extra thick (chocolate) pudding stabbed on the fork was so shocking and non-food like that Joe became completely unaware of his surroundings, a shadowy figure darted by, the creatures following Joe watched from below making bets as to what sad fate would befall Joe. All the while Joe stood there staring at the pudding, his only thoughts were how unnatural the pudding looked and how much he most certainly did not want to know its flavor (which still happens to be chocolate).