Part 2 : A Hunting He Will Go : Jareth's Unlikely Adventure

****

The ensuing mushroom cloud was visible from every corner of the Labyrinth.

Jareth struggled to his feet in the great crater where the Bog once churned
and roiled, and surveyed the damage. Everything was awash in smoky stench
and the charred, mutilated corpses of vile Round Robins. In spite of the
carnage, the smell of roasted Round Robin actually made him hungry for a
Big Mac.

Jareth's ears pricked up at the sound of a new voice, soft and deep and
distinctly feminine. It seemed to be getting closer. He squinted and peered
into the dwindling flames.

From the midst of fire and chaos emerged a tall figure, a hero, her long
legs making great and purposeful strides across the devastated waste.

"WARDROBE!" he called. "I need a change. NOW!"

Maed sighed, rolling her eyes. "Should we give him a ball gown or a
hazardous materials safesuit?"

Kitty smiled, revealing every tooth in her head. "I've got a better idea."

Jareth stood horrified, having just been changed into a bright yellow
speedo with obnoxious pepto-colored polka dots. He couldn't have been too
uncomfortable, as the whole thing was lined with bright pink fur. And
crotchless.

"Oooo...someone's been shopping at Fredrick's again," Hoggle snickered.

"YOU TWO!" he bellowed, going red from the neck up. "Fix this ATROCITY at
ONCE!"

Kitty hit the delete key, but not before Maed took a dozen polaroids. "It's
for the album," she explained.

Happily situated at last in his favorite black tights, white ruffled
blouse, rainbow feathered boa and sequined tiara perched precariously atop
his mountainous beehive hairdo-

"I hate you two."

"Okay, okay," they acquiesced.

All settled now, with everything where it should be, Jareth smoothed back
his hair and pulled his tights snugger across the crotch. Suddenly, he
caught sight of two exquisitely blue eyes, a river of flowing black hair,
and - his heart flip-flopped - a sinful amount of LEATHER.

"Gabrielle!" she bellowed, panic not far behind. "Gabrielle! Where are you?"

"Xena!" coughed another voice, several feet away.  "Xena, I'm here!"

The two women joined tearfully in the lingering smoke, stroking each
other's hair and weeping. Jareth, his mouth hanging open, found himself
incredibly turned on and had to turn away from them, lest he appear...obvious.

"I thought I'd lost you," Xena whispered, her cerulean eyes brimming.

"You lose me every week," the smaller butch blonde whispered. "But we
always find each other." She looked around, taking in the burnt landscape.
"Xena, do you know what this place is?"

The taller one shook her head. "Smells like sulfur and carrion."

"But Xena," the blonde interjected, "we don't HAVE any luggage!"

"Not carry-on! CARRION! Dead things!"

"But each week we have different clothes! Hats, swimsuits, shoes -
especially the shoes - and FOOD! Xena, do we eat? When do we eat?"

Xena grabbed Gabrielle by the shoulders and gave her a good shake. "Snap
out of it, Gabrielle! I know you're disoriented, but stay with me! The only
thing I can think of is that the explosion must have been so great that it
made an interdimensional rip and we were pulled through it to this...place."

Shatner's face appeared momentarily in a billow of smoke. "Inconceivable!"
he snorted.

"I can too conceive!" Gabrielle argued. "Her name was Hope and it happened
in the third season..."

"What about you?" Jareth sidled up to Xena, his gigolo face cool and
confident. He continued to ignore the yattering sidekick. "Can you conceive?"

Xena looked him up and down, as though he were something stuck to the
bottom of her boot. "I beg your pardon?"

Jareth puffed up. "I've got a little pad near here. It's dark, it's
private, and I can get you all the owl wine you want. How's five o'clock
sound?"

Xena sneered, but it was the little blonde who sauntered up to Jareth, her
round face sweet and smiling. "It sounds like THIS!" She smacked him
brutally five times, leaving angry red welts behind her fists.

Jareth crept from beneath their threatening glare and slunk off into the
bushes to lick his wounds. He hadn't realized this party was girls only.

Maed and Kitty followed, feeling slightly guilty about having Gabrielle
bitchslap him up and down the Underground. They looked at each other
questioningly when he happened upon a gorgeous redhead in a stunning white
sequined evening gown. She was unaware of his presence, being so involved
in her reflection in the small makeup mirror that she literally was in her
own little world.

"Why, hello there," Jareth purred. Tremont was bouncing back a bit after
his recent emasculation, feeling frisky enough to attempt to climb right
over the waistband of these tights and see just who had gotten the Big Guy
all excited again so soon.

She looked up, seemingly in a daze. "Hello," she breathed softly. "Are you
selling Avon? I'm all out of Glimmersticks and my eyes are a fright," she
pouted, her deep ruby lips turned down in a delicious moue.

"This must be heaven, for I've certainly never seen a star this close to
earth," he whispered. She giggled, batting her eyelashes in a coy gesture.

"And who are you, you terrible flatterer?"

"TREMONT!" came a tiny voice from Down There.

Jareth coughed uneasily. "Why, I'm Jareth, King of the Goblins."

"Oh!" she exclaimed softly, dollar signs lighting up her eyes. "A King! You
must be very powerful and persuasive and well endowed."

"YES!" came Tremont's triumphant reply.

"Yes, I am," he added. "But may I ask what a luscious creature like you is
doing in a place like this?"

She blinked vacantly. "A place like what? The island? Oh, you get used to
it after a while. I've been here nearly 40 years and I still look all of
25. Not a bad exchange."

It was Jareth's turn to blink in confusion. "The island?"

She nodded. Not a single hair moved. "Are you here to rescue us?"

Jareth was about to make some sweeping comment about how he would love to
be her rescuer, but the wrongness of it suddenly struck him. What did she
mean 'us'?

"We've been here such a long time," she told him. "It was difficult at
first, being trapped here with a crusty old millionaire, his senile wife,
an impotent professor that can make an atom bomb out of two halves of a
coconut but can't patch a simple hole in a boat, a fat bastard and his
idiot sidekick, but..." she shrugged absently, "the seven of us have adjusted."

Jareth counted on his fingers. "With you, that's only six. Who's number seven?"

"Ginger? Who are you talking to?" A chipper girl in a blue gingham dress
and white pinafore came bouncing out of a thicket. She was cute and
exhaustingly perky. "Oh hi!" she grabbed his hand, pumping it vigorously
until his arm became tired. "I see you've met Ginger! I'm Mary Ann, and
welcome to our island! Are you here to rescue us?"

Jareth stammered. "...rescue you?"

She nodded, and he could hear her teeth clicking. "Every week, there's
someone new! How wonderful!" She clapped her hands and giggled. "We haven't
had a drag queen on the island yet!"

"You must be mistaken," he explained. "I am not a drag queen! I am a drag
king - er, a king! This is my kingdom. I think." He looked around warily.

Mary Ann's button nose crinkled sweetly. "I don't think so. This is the
Gilligan's Island set. You probably want the Fantasy Island set."

"No," Jareth said, but it did sound intriguing. "This is my kingdom, the
Underground. I rule over the Labyrinth."

"Oh!" exclaimed Mary Ann with perfect understanding. "You just wandered a
little too far. Go back through the trees and you'll be on the right set
again."

"Thanks," he said, utterly confused. "Miss Ginger, would you care to
accompany me back? I'd love to show you...around."

She and Mary Ann exchanged sly looks. "I don't think so, Mr. Jareth. I'm
afraid I'm spoken for."

Jareth crooked an eyebrow. Forty years on an island with a stodgy
millionaire, a senile old broad, a fat bastard, a neutered genius who can't
fix holes, and a moron. Who was left?

It couldn't be...

Oh NO...

Mary Ann grasped Ginger's hand. "Come on, sweetie. I've made your favorite
coconut cream pie, low fat and sugar free just like you like it."

Ginger rose gracefully and gave Jareth a slight curtsy. "A girl has to
watch her figure, after all. It was lovely meeting you, Mr. Jareth."

Jareth wandered numbly back through the trees, wondering where he had gone
wrong. Even Tremont was limply hanging his head in despair.

Of course, Maed and Kitty had run back immediately and told everyone of
Jareth's most recent disappointment. Jareth rejoined the group, all of whom
fell silent at his approach.

Annette snickered, making googly eyes at Gabrielle.

She liked blondes, but up till now Jareth had been the only one at her
disposal. This cute little thing was a refreshing change from all the socks
and glitter and pomp...

Besides, Gabrielle was obviously twice the man Jareth was.

"Looks like we're stuck here for a little while," Gabrielle muttered. "It's
like a bad rerun of Gilligan's Island!"

Jareth groaned.

"They were all bad, Gabby. All of them. But wasn't Mary Ann hot? You know
how I like the farm girls..."

Jareth wept.

Gabrielle blushed, a former farm girl herself. "I know. I always fancied
Ginger, myself. She was so...tall. Xena, did you ever consider becoming a
redhead?"

Xena pictured it, nodding her approval.

Jareth curled up in a fetal ball on the ground, sucking his thumb.

Gabrielle sighed. "Well, if we have to be lost, I'm glad we're lost
together. I love you, Xena."

Xena's face softened and she held Gabrielle closely. "I love you too,
Gabrielle."

Annette sighed deeply. "Why are all the good ones taken?"

And when they kissed, Jareth very nearly lost it then and there. He eyed
Annette as though deciding whether she was dessert or the hors d'oeuvre,
and decided that she would do for a light snack. In his pressing need to
reassert his manhood, he excused himself and dragged Annette off behind a
rock for a very long time - nearly five whole minutes! Hoggle sighed with
relief; he was glad she had come along. He clenched involuntarily at the
thought of what might have been had she not been here.

After the honeymoon, Jareth emerged sated for the moment and was relieved
to find those two...women...had disappeared. In their place, Jareth was
surprised to meet a pale fellow with golden hair and skin like powdered
glass under which could be seen a spidery network of delicate blue veins.
His teeth were long and sharp, and his eyes held a curious melancholy.

"BLOODY HELL!" Jareth roared. "When will you people understand that I am
NOT a vampire?!? I do NOT appreciate these sad imitations of Myself!"

"You must be mistaken," the man whispered, his voice a distant carillon.
"My name is Letsat."

"Letsat?" Jareth wrinkled his nose. "Don't you mean 'Lestat'?"

"No," he answered primly. "Anne says it's absolutely essential that I not
be used-"

"Pity," Jareth sympathized.

"-in fanfic," the vampire finished.

About this time, Maed and Kitty were making their way back to the
holocaust. When they saw Lestat (oops...Letsat), they both giggled insanely
and made disparaging comments about tyrannical authors and their monolithic
egos.

Anne Rice slithered out from under a nearby rock, her bangs severe above
her beady eyes. "It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with
my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with
your own characters."

"We're not your readers," Maed and Kitty chorused.

Anne huffed, crossing her arms. "It is absolutely essential that you
respect my wishes."

Kitty held up a big pink eraser and smiled wickedly. Maed picked up a
freshly sharpened pencil. Anne went paler, if possible.

Kitty brandished the eraser. "Let's take out her eyes!"

"I think she'd look good with a mustache, too," Maed concurred.

"One eye like a Cyclops! And a mustache! And let's zipper her mouth closed
and cut her hair and feather her bangs like Farrah Fawcett on Charlie's
Angels!"

"This is our story, NOT yours," Maed quipped. "We can do whatever we
please. I think we should bleach her hair, too," she told Kitty. "And all
that fur on her upper lip. And maybe that in her nose, too, for good measure."

Anne quipped, "Well I never!"

"Yes you have!" Kitty argued. "You have a grown son. He's a novelist, and
he's very gay. We saw him in The Advocate a few months ago..."

Anne clapped her hands over her ears. "No! It's not true!"

Kitty erased her hands and Maed wrote her in some Dumbo ears. "Suffer, Your
Highness! BWAHAHAHA!"

"Stop it!" she cried, her great ears flopping in a passing breeze. "It's
not fair! Someone take me away from this awful place!"

Jareth shook his head. "Not me, baby. Not for all the tuna at Lilith Fair."

Kitty broke the eraser in half and handed a piece to Maed. "Shall we finish
her?"

Maed nodded. "I've wanted to do this since I saw 'Interview With the Vampire.'"

Kitty muttered something about not getting past the first two chapters of
the book. Maed muttered something about preferring a full-body raking with
an Epilady to buying another book by Anne Rice.

Anne, for the moment nearly forgotten, took the opportunity to slink back
under her rock, dragging her ears behind her. However will she write now
without her hands to pound the keys?

Only time will tell.

***

Letsat pined. He was a vampire. It was his job. Occasionally, he pined and
brooded, but brooding was a dark and sinister act, and he was far too
pretty to brood well. Oh, he pined well enough, thanks to Anne's more
menstrual prose, but the brooding was best left to a professional. Someone
who had reason to brood, someone whose true nature was black and foul and
horrifying...

"You will NOT write Jerry Lewis into this!" Jareth bellowed. "I won't have
it! It's bad enough that WOMAN had to put his name on my ass!"

"Be nice or we'll get Ana to put 'THIS SPACE RESERVED FOR DEAN MARTIN' on
the other side. Kitty?"

Kitty nodded thoughtfully. "I bet we won't even have to ask her twice."

"Wait a moment!" Jareth blustered. "What about this thing? We can't just
leave him here! I can't have a vampire - particularly not this lavender
bouffant - traipsing around my Labyrinth!"

"So whadda we do about it?" piped in Hoggle. "Take him with us?"

"Absolutely not," he clipped. Annette was already chatting it up with the
undead fop. What a pretty boy he was! "I'm going to have to
ask...THEM...nicely to take him away."

Kitty giggled. "You can't ask us! You can only ask one of us!"

Maed cackled. "It's in the rules."

"Will one of you PLEASE take this thing away?!"

Kitty shrugged and took to the keyboard. "He DID say please," she reasoned,
and began clacking away on the keys.

A moment later, Letsat's eyes took on a horrified cast. His mouth opened to
scream, but released only a whistling gurgle as the rest of his
whisper-pale body exploded in a puff of dust.

A perky, petite blond stood before his ashes twirling a VERY satisfied Mr.
Pointy in one delicate hand. From somewhere in the treetops, Spike drew a
deep and longing breath.

Kitty shrugged at Maed's questioning glance. "The only antidote for Anne
Rice," she explained patiently, "is Joss Whedon."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The blast had wiped out a huge number of the little buggers, making
Jareth's job that much easier. Oh, it wasn't a job, really; it was more
sport than anything. But still, there was something about bringing home a
load of dead things at the end of the day that gave one a sense of
accomplishment. After his long and dismal afternoon, he was looking forward
to affirming his masculinity by killing something again.

But now the Bog was gone, and he would have to deal with that as well.
Whatever. He could take care of it when his safari was over; depriving the
horrid little creatures of a nesting/final resting place didn't seem like
such a great tragedy, so far as he was concerned.

His most immediate concern was food and rest and another change of
clothing. His silk jacket and velvet breeches were wrinkled and lightly
soiled, and his tummy had started grumbling angrily when last they passed a
McDonald's.

"We're not stopping at that one," he'd told Hoggle. "Their bathrooms are
filthy and I hate it when toilet paper sticks to my shoes."

But now he wished they HAD stopped, even at an untidy McDonald's. Anything
besides listening to Hoggle's traveling stories.

Hoggle continued on, nonplussed. "...and this one time, at band camp..."

"Hottentot, if this involves a flute, I DO NOT want to hear the rest."

Hoggle shrugged and went silent.

They should have stopped, indeed, because here the land grew dry and brown
and even the hardiest of undergrowth strained to reach through the soil for
a bit of sunlight. In the forest ahead, no birds sang at all. They could no
longer even hear the piteous cries of the remaining Round Robins, so far
beyond the Bog had they traveled.

Jareth stopped for a rest atop a slight hill, looking out over the forest
with concern. Trees twisted and yawned, their arms tapering into feeble
gray fingers, gnarled and sharp above the grassless forest floor. They had
faces once, but not now; over time their eyes had grown scaly with bark and
their open mouths yowled, forever in the dark and silently screaming.

"We're not really going IN there, are we?" Hoggle asked.

Jareth was about to give him an emphatic "NO" and say they were turning
back, when from the forest's direction he heard a distinct and plaintive
wailing:

"EXCREMENT!"

"ROT!"

"DECAY!"

Jareth's lupine grin spread slowly, grinchly across his face. "They're in
there, Hondo. I think we've got them on the run."

***

The wind blew cold and sour, stripping the few remaining brown and papery
leaves from the skeletal arms of the trees. These same leaves tossed and
turned restlessly in the air, landing here and there across the broken
ground like the souls of dead children.

"Don't you think that's a little dramatic?" Jareth asked. "This is supposed
to be a comedy!"

"It's a black comedy," corrected Kitty.

Just then, George Jefferson sprinted across our heroes' path, jumping up
and down, his stubby arms waving excitedly.

"WEEZY!!!" He bellowed, his voice huge for such a tiny man. "HEY WEEEE-ZAY!"

"Oh George!" Weezy rasped back from slightly off-camera. "No need to shout!
I was visiting the Willises!"

Maed giggled. "NOW it's a black comedy!"

Jareth picked up a rock and begged Hoggle to end his misery quickly.

"Nuh-uh." Hoggle threw his hands up and backed away. "You ain't leaving me
to clean up this mess!

Maed shrugged and clicked happily away at the keyboard, thinking that it
had been quite some time since she'd satisfactorily mulched and cultivated
her dark side. Kitty sat on the couch playing on her Jornada
(affectionately named Mini-Me) and occasionally tossing out the odd story idea.

"All of your ideas have been odd," he reminded them. "Without exception."

They drew closer to the decrepified wood, their steps growing smaller and
weaker as the trees grew larger before them. They were horrid things,
nothing at all like shining mimosa and chipper yew; these monstrosities
might reach down and grab one or all of them at any moment. Some were even
shaped like huge question marks, as though begging an answer from this
empty, soulless land. Why? They beseeched. Why...?

Jareth pushed Hoggle on ahead, keeping a few paces back in case something
should attack. Hong-Kong was such a handy fellow to have around...

Jareth hadn't been paying attention when he ran aground, groaning as the
back of Hoggle's huge misshapen head whacked him in The Package. When his
vision cleared, he looked down at the little grunt and prepared to turn him
into a Bog leech.

But Hoggle had the strangest look on his face. His eyes were set, his face
frozen in terror. He stared straight ahead at that tree...

Jareth felt his own hair stand on end.

The thing was horrible. Twisted and warped, its wooden fibers jutted out at
odd angles like a broken and splintered bouquet. Its dried old wood smelled
of ancient days and bleak tomorrows. It reeked of despair.

Even worse was the body that hung from a creaking branch, the noose around
his neck old and frayed but still serving its purpose.

Just in front of him was a weatherbeaten old sign, some words hastily
scrawled across it in thick black paint:

UNNUTHER VIKTUM UV
THUH PEECH WORE

"Is it some kind of riddle?" Hoggle asked.

Jareth shrugged. "Seems clear from where I'm standing."

Hoggle tsked. "Horrible spelling. You'd think they'd've learned to use
spellcheck by now."

"Idiots," Jareth muttered, sneering. "They even left the H out of 'wore.'"

Hoggle stared at him a moment, then thought the better of saying anything.

"All right, ladies," Jareth announced grimly. "Now would be a good time for
a cameo! You know...lighten things up a bit? We haven't seen Will Shatner
for a while! How about Austin Powers? Or Harry Potter! Oh, I know...SHREK!
Bring that wonderfully funny Donkey in for a few lines of silly repartee! I
hear he makes a WONDERFUL date..."

Maed looked back at Kitty still playing on her little 'puter. "Sorry,
Jareth. Kitty might have taken pity on you guys, but I'm driving right
now." She continued typing away, shaking her head. "Donkey for a date?
That's just SICK. I'd rather have brought the ogre."

Behind her, Kitty snickered. "Nobody knew she was an ogre, though," she
pitched in. "It was a plot point."

"True. True." Maed buried herself in the keyboard again.

The wind rasped its sick, cancerous breath through the boughs, twirling the
body like a scarecrow on a hook. A sad and horrible thing, this lifeless
shell. Eyeless sockets gaped from its shriveled-apple face beneath a laurel
of brown, withered ivy. His head - too human to be a scarecrow's - lolled
unnaturally to one side, his broken neck telling once and for all the true
weight of his ass.

"Have some respect!" Jareth hissed. "This poor creature died horribly!"

The writers snickered. "Um...Jareth? You'll want to take a closer look at him."

"Why? Have you heartless dregs put this miserable, unfortunate soul in a tutu?"

"Not quite."

Jareth examined this strange fruit hanging unplucked upon the tree. It
looked normal enough, for a dead man. Normal, that is, except for the
tattered green tights and the faded but still recognizable question marks
all over his timeworn green tunic.

Jareth's face went pale. Hoggle's mouth unhinged with an audible click. "Is
that...?"

"It sure is!" Maed chirped.

"Oh my," Jareth whispered, at a complete loss for words. Jareth was taken
back suddenly in a blur of blinding nostalgia to the day when he had
stuffed this very creature into the trunk of his car and pushed it over a
cliff. And yet STILL he had lived.

But here - here now at last! - was PROOF!

Proof, coupled with a warning.

"This is a bad place," Hoggle said, looking around uneasily. "Whatever's in
here can't be any good."

But Jareth would have none of that doubting nonsense. "This is a good omen,
Honky! I'm certain this will be the finest hunt yet! I can feel it!"

"I'm glad somebody can," he muttered, stepping back.

"You'll see, Hoffa! We'll break the kingdom's record for most Round Robins
bagged in a single day! I only wish..."

"What? What do you wish?"

Jareth shifted from foot to foot. "I only wished we'd stopped at a
port-a-potty. Ah well. Let's pay our last respects to the old boy, eh,
Horseradish?"

Hoggle stared on in horror as Jareth dropped trow before the swinging
corpse. Annette tittered wildly and applauded.

Jareth sighed with relief and fanned the spray out to encompass the
surrounding fallen leaves. "Meet my little fireman, you fruity flambé."

[Next]