The Comeback King

Prologue

The loss of the crown had been devastating, or so it seemed to his royal subjects. The King of the Universe was destined to rule all for the benefit of everyone. And yet, seemingly on a whim, he had just thrown it away … or so it seemed to those who knew him. He had been exhausted from the harsh, nagging words of his court. The thought of having to rule such a wide expanse every single day drove his spirits deep down. And so, the King of the Universe had relinquished his royal duty.

Now, one does not just throw away one’s responsibilities and get away with it without a scratch. Those who abdicated were doomed to seek out that very crown which weighed so heavily upon the royal head…

The former King of the Universe wandered to and fro, forever without home or purpose. At the time, it seemed to suit him. And yet, as he was turned away from each and every land, he began to doubt his decision. The universe was one big disappointment after another: sometimes he barely kept warm in the glacial lands of the north, sometimes he felt as though he were fully baked under the hot and searing sun of the west, sometimes he nearly fainted from infection in the cesspools of the south, and sometimes he had to fight off endless enemies in the east. He knew only the comfort of his own spirit, and that was waning by the century’s end. He had been wandering and suffering such deep loneliness for a few centuries, although he had honestly lost track of time. Eventually, time ceased to have meaning. So, too, did other things: good food, his last remaining royal robe (worn to tatters through the centuries), companionship (of which he had none, as he had been known as selfish and strict, which endeared him to few) …

On one particular occasion, weary from a particularly bad run-in with impish fire elementals who insisted on trying to eat him, the former King of the Universe slumped down next to a young tree atop a high hill, overlooking a fertile plain. He had grown tired of walking. He stared at the plain, filled with grasses of all kinds, flowers blooming in large groups, and bordered by a sparkling, winding, majestic river that shamed even the vast oceans.

Perhaps, just perhaps, he might stick around for a few days…

A black-haired Caucasian middle-aged woman, with crow’s feet in her eyes and a wide, sensitive grin, looked up from the stack of papers on her desk. Her voice was gentle and cheerful. “This is great so far.” She leaned back against her black leather chair. The woman wore a black suit with a light blue blouse underneath. Her office was located in a rather posh section of Manhattan, courtesy of years of Broadway success under her belt. She maintained her grin as she spoke with the thirty-eight year-old brunette, who herself had been busily climbing the entertainment ladder after a stint teaching college drama students. “It’s a good thing your stories are proven cash cows … you tend to like re-using themes a lot,” she noted, chuckling.

The other woman shrugged, returning the smile. They had worked together on a couple of projects now, so she realized her business partner was just teasing. “Hey, we’ve seen a huge resurgence in fairytale crap over the last decade or so,” she informed the woman across the sleek desk. “RPGs are getting some respect, we’ve got the nostalgic 80s flavor … this has the potential to rival Cats.”

The other woman frowned, though she quickly tried to regain her normally cheerful composure. “Sarah, do you think your work is ‘crap’? I mean, if you’re starting to feel a need to move on, let’s get those feelings out in the air now, shall we?”

Sarah shrugged, looking at the floor, trying to avoid her friend and business partner’s eyes. She hesitated to answer. She really didn’t want to say the words out loud, remembering what problems that could cause. “I feel it’s personal, Jenny,” she exclaimed strongly. It wasn’t that she was afraid of losing the job … Jenny wasn’t like that … but there were, more private reasons to think her statements thoroughly before stating them. “This isn’t just about capitalizing on the retro thing … some stories need to get told. I’ve had a great time writing for you, but there are some things … I dunno, Jen,” she continued, her voice becoming more and more subdued, “I just … regret …”

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The book slammed shut with the help of large brown furry hands and was tossed over the right shoulder, making some strands of hair on the side of the even larger head sway.

“Whoa!” a female voice screamed out as the book raced past her as she sat on the big lug’s shoulder. The googly-eyed, yellow-orange creature with the red-orange frizzy pigtails and the bright red turtleneck sweater ducked out of the way just in time, hanging onto some body hair on the reader’s back.

The brown furry giant looked over to the right and shrugged, nearly sending the female creature flying. “Sowwy, Red,” he told her casually, reaching back to help her up. His voice was smooth and deep, though his pronunciation still left a little to be desired.

Red, a Fraggle who made her home in Fraggle Rock, a large cave system that connected at least two worlds, maybe more, glared at the humongous guy. However, she shook her head and sighed, trying to hide her irritation in her voice, “No, it’s okay, Junior. I think I’ll live.”

Junior smiled. “Gweat!” he exclaimed, laughing, his belly heaving up and down with each guffaw. Junior was a Gorg. Think a brown shaggy King Kong but with a light brown bulbous nose with a loose khaki jacket, no pants, and spiked brown leather boots and no pressing girl problems.

“For now,” Red griped under her breath.

“When did you start reading The Legends of Sir Hubris again, Junior?” a high-pitched male gravelly voice asked from the ground where other Fraggles had gathered to hear some Gorg tales at the edge of the radish garden near the tool shed.

Junior shrugged as he faced Wembley, a green-yellow Fraggle with a tussle of almost blond hair and a banana-tree shirt, which was never buttoned all the way up.

“Watch it,” Red cried out angrily, hanging onto Junior’s shoulder with a death-grip, “you dunderheaded…”

“RED!” a teeny male voice with an occasional Canadian accent barked from below.

“It’s okay, Gobo,” Junior wistfully told the exploring Fraggle with the orange skin, purple hair, orange and yellow-striped long-sleeved shirt and a brown vest. He looked over at Red and tried to keep his voice down, since at that proximity, Gorg voices could rival avalanches, “Sowwy, Red … you want down?”

Before she could answer, Gobo interjected. “What she really wants is to know why you started reading from those legends again!” He frowned at Red, craning his neck to see her. Fraggles were roughly two-feet tall, give or take, so having conversations with two-story Gorgs could sometimes leave them with a stiff neck.

Wembley, standing next to Gobo, shrugged and looked at the ground. “Actually, uh, I thought I was the one who wanted to know.”

Gobo glanced over at his friend. “And Red wants to hear it too … don’t you, Red?” he asked in that not-so-subtle tone he used when Red, he felt, was coming on too strong.

“Well, I …” Junior began.

“Juuuunnniiiooorrrrr,” sang a melodious female voice from within the Gorg’s castle. At the front door appeared a lavender Gorg with a sharply upturned nose and a tremendous amount of blonde hair pulled up with a few pins, which were each the size of a tall Fraggle. She beckoned for Junior. “Come inside, sweetie-kins … I need you to try on some new clothes I’m sewing for your Five-hundred party.”

“Five-hundred party?” Red, Gobo, and Wembley asked in unison.

Junior began to rise, but remembered Red and gently put her down before standing. He glanced at the female Gorg. “But Maaaaa,” he whined to his mother, “dat’s tree ye-uhs away!”

Ma Gorg shook her finger at her son. “If you want it to look good I need to start on it now, Favorite Son and Former King of the Universe,” she lectured.

“But you just made dis shirt for me a hunnahd ye-uhs ago!” Junior pleaded. He didn’t mind helping his Ma with cooking, since he enjoyed finding uses for the vegetables he grew, but fashion preparation could take a decade or more. He picked up an edge of his shirt and sniffed it deeply. He looked back at Ma. “Besides … it’s not even duhty yet!”

Ma Gorg frowned, slapping her hand on the bottom half of the door. “You know how I get when you start sounding like your Father,” she warned, almost growling.

“And what do I sound like, dear?” yelled a gravelly aged voice from deep within the castle.

Ma Gorg’s eyes widened and she turned toward the voice of her husband, who had been resting more … well, much more ever since Junior forsaked the crown. “Like a brisk summer wind, Oh Gorgeous Husband of Mine,” she laughed nervously. “All of nature rejoices when you open your mouth!” She turned back towards Junior, who had made little progress towards the castle. “Although sometimes they appreciate when it’s shut,” she mumbled quietly. She looked at Junior expectantly. He had better not need another … motherly suggestion, she thought to herself.

Junior sighed, defeated. He turned to his Fraggle friends. “I guess I can’t avoid my destiny, Fwaggles,” he noted sadly. “See you whenevah I see you.”

Author’s Note: This story takes place in 2008. There will be some parallelism here, as it’s tradition in Fraggle Rock, but I’m advancing the story. I have a small obsession with tying together multiple Hensonian franchises into a single timeline. This fanfic is based upon a chronology I wrote on another forum, which I don’t think exists anymore.

*Loves the new fic. Breath of fresh air this is. And you have me from the start. Sara and Jenny and Fraggles! Yaey! More please!

And we have some stories here that tie in multiple Hensonian franchises, heck, we even borrow from each other's work referencing it all the time. That's half the fun of fanfics.
So like I said... More please!

Thanks! Well, besides the "Let's Accept Our Destiny" theme (whether or not the characters do, though, I haven't decided yet), I also hope to explore the history of the Muppetverse ... even going back millions of years...

EDIT: I like the idea of teaming up Jenny and Sarah, since they're both into theater at some point. And although the manga Return to Labyrinth isn't done yet, since technically this fic would occur after the manga (ca. 1999), I guess I'm free to make stuff up. I also have a deep obsession with the Legend of Sir Hubris. I'm kinda surprised it was never delved into as much as it was. I've got some challenges ahead of me, as I not only have to do justice to FR's parallelism and music, but also Labyrinth's language and literary focus (in the sense that whatever is in a book/play in Labyrinth tends to happen to the characters), and Muppets' showbiz and diversity celebration.

Oh wow, you can never have too many Fraggle Rock stories in my opinion! Very excited to see how this one pans out, and what other Henson projects you plan to incorporate into this!

Chapter 1: Planning

The proud former King of the Universe had grown weary of wandering. However, he could not admit to any desire to reclaim his supposedly rightful place. Of what use had the King been? Despite his power, only the most loyal had really listened to him. Most beings just went ahead and did whatever they wanted to do anyway. Everyone had their own lives, their own dreams, their own loves. Those were things he could never REALLY control, at least not without exhausting himself to the point of death … which was a hard thing to fathom, for such a long-lived being. Although he had had a court, he had always felt completely alone. No one had been there to share in his joys and sorrows intimately.

Unbeknownst to the former King, as he sat atop a large hill overlooking a flowering plain, a small oval rustic ship floated serenely behind the clouds. It had acquired quite a bit of debris as it traveled through the “true” universe, crossing galaxies with ease thanks to the random wormhole here and there. Inside the ship, a pale grey entity, shriveled with age, coughed and wheezed through its mouth. It didn’t appear to have a nose. It had long spindly fingers which tapped at a console above the reclined soft chair on which the being rested. On the floor by the chair was a spiky crown reminiscent of thin branches of bleached coral, as well as a pile of silvery robes.

Millennia ago, a great crisis had nearly consumed its world. All peace and light in the universe would have been lost, but for the heroics of the supposedly last of a small species. Hope had been restored, and all was assumed to have been made right again. However, a catastrophe on a distant planet compelled this creature to seek out survivors and, maybe, set things right again. And yet, by the time the ship arrived, it was surely too late, for no evidence of life could be found among the dominant species of the planet. All that was left were some mammalian species and some marine life. They had hidden in caves during the catastrophe. It was difficult to communicate with such primitive creatures, but apparently, some years before the freezing started, as the world began to die, a new type of creature had been born … a creature born of hope with the unrealized potential to accomplish that which this entity had longed for. The dominant species had been fighting over resources, and the innocence of a child of that species revealed the existence of this new type of creature.

So the entity had left, knowing that life would begin anew. However, as time passed, its mind began to tear asunder. It knew that darkness again threatened a world, and it turned out to be the very one it had hoped to save millions of years ago. Parts of it were dying, darkness creeping in and siphoning the very essence of beings, leaving them vulnerable to complete destruction.

As two had become one on its homeworld, so too must two join forces to stop the darkness on this one. Otherwise, this planet would yet again face the threat of utter extinction. And, as usual, a primitive might have to risk his or her life to help the two powers unite…

Jenny pitched the show’s major concepts as best she could via video conference. What had started out to be a simple tale of a Tolkien-esque quest for a king had evolved into something far grander. She forwarded some of her business partners detailed sketches she had drawn up. The identity of the King of the Universe was to be shrouded in mystery. He would not be revealed until the character had returned to his rightful role. Out of the blue, Sarah had added some sci-fi elements as well (“The more geeks we draw in, the better,” she had said jokingly). So far, most of those partners had expressed delight in the concept, but distrust of the economic feasibility. One, however, a thin pale woman with short reddish-brown hair, had the most to criticize.

“Well, I, for one, will not be sinking more money than I already am into the theater racket,” she griped sourly. “It’s bad enough I had to adopt your old Broadway has-beens, Miss Evangelos,” she continued, jabbing her index finger at the camera.

“We could stand to make a lot of money here,” Jenny replied testily, despite her hesitancy to do so. Insulting her old friends, however, tended to rile her up. “We could be talking franchise.” She paused, grimacing. “And, quite frankly, losing money on a property just shows bad leadership and business acumen. Properties are like plants: if you don’t water it, it shrivels up.”

“How dare you lecture me?” the woman on the screen scoffed.

Jenny smiled. “At least I can turn a profit with even the flimsiest of scripts, Ms. Bitterman,” she replied. “And this is not a flimsy plot ... it could be epic. All you have to do is believe in it.”

“More of that ‘dream’ crap,” Ms. Bitterman grumbled, looking away from the camera. “Why can’t anyone join the twenty-first century?” she continued to herself, though loud enough for the others to hear. “Why must some people refuse to let go of seventies hippie nonsense?” She finally stared straight ahead, glaring into the camera. “You’ll need to show me the money, baby girl. Let me know how that fairy-tale ending works out for ya.”

Jenny stood up, preparing to turn off Ms. Bitterman’s screen. “When this becomes a blockbuster, I’ll even donate a share of the profits to you. Maybe then you can afford to get yourself out of the money-grubbing eighties.” With that, she shut off the feed and sighed. She looked at the other screens. The other partners were fidgeting slightly, uncomfortable with the “discussion” that just happened. “Well, is there anyone else who is afraid to make a name for themselves?”

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A gray long-nosed rat-like creature screamed out in terror, jumping up nearly five feet off the trash-covered ground where he had been sleeping. He and his friend had barely had enough sleep all day, since Marjory had had them doing chores all day and the Gorgs had been arguing about the most becoming seams for hours.

“What is it?” asked his friend, a pinkish rat-like creature. His voice was higher-pitched than the gray one, but they both had the same type of street-smart accent. After a pause, the pink one asked again, “Huh? What is it, Gunge? Lay ovah anudder pin cushion again?”

Gunge trembled, shaking his head. “Uh-uh, Philo,” he replied. “It was a nightmare … I dreamt I was swallowed whole by a monster dat made da Gorgs look like fuzzy bunnies.” He whimpered. “It had great big horns, green scaly skin, and jaws bigger dan dat well ovah dere,” he continued, pointing toward the well which led to the Fraggle pond in the Great Hall, the central cave of Fraggle Rock. “It was scarier dan Wandah McMooch!”

“Boy, dat’s rough,” Philo replied sympathetically. He soon smirked, however. “Bet you gave him indigestion, though, right, buddy?” He began to snicker.

Gunge nodded. “Yeah, yeah … just you keep laughin’, Philo. You ain’t exactly a deodorant spokesrat yourself, y’know…” He was going to continue berating his teasing friend when the ground underneath them began to shift, the trash piling up and forming a pointy head with a banana peel for a head decoration and two large hands that melted seamlessly into the pile of trash.

It spoke. “Boys, boys … are you having bad dreams again?”

Philo pointed to Gunge. “It’s all Gunge’s fault, Marjory,” he exclaimed, trying to stifle a yawn. “He OD’d on some rotten carrot cake and now we all have to suffer,” he continued, feigning melodramatic suffering.

“Hm,” Marjory said, stroking her “chin” (what little there was) as the two rat-like creatures continued to trade insults at one another. She finally picked both up with each hand and held them apart. “Now listen, boys,” she said sympathetically, “loose ends are getting tied up all over the universe. It’s perfectly normal for you to be suffering from its effects, especially since you live so close to me.”

The two looked at each other, then at her. “So, dis is all your fault?” they asked in shocked unison.

Marjory dropped them both in a huff. She leaned back as far as she could to “distance” herself from them, crossing her arms in indignation. Music started to play, with a kind of jazz feel to it, reminiscent of I’ve Seen Troubles:

Da universe … is made of so many t’ings,
Gorgs and Fraggles, boys, share friendly company…

“Uh,” Philo interrupted, “Marjory? It’s eleven o’clock at night … can we pick dis up some udder time … please?”

“No!” she shouted, slapping her hand on Philo’s back. She shook a finger at him. “Don’t interrupt me again … or I’ll stop reading you bedtime stories!” She started singing again as Philo and Gunge gulped. The only way they’d get back to sleep is if they played along. Marjory was definitely in one of her “oracle-y” moods again.

But in other places hence, the pleasure’s nearly being spent …
That means troubles, that means pain, that means woe, woe, woe …
That means troubles, that means pain, that means woe, woe, woe...
The Rock is light-filled, Goombah soup spilled,
But beyond the Swamp lie crowns so lon-el-ly (Philo & Gunge: lon-el-ly)…
But in times of trial and stress, we need a king for all dis mess,
That means troubles, that means pain, that means woe, woe, woe…
That means troubles, that means pain, that means woe, woe, woe…

And on the last note, Marjory slipped back quietly into an inanimate trash heap, while her two companions shrugged and nodded off themselves…

*Drinks it all in... Aaaaah, my precious. More please?

Hmmm....this is interesting. I love Fraggle Rock, and I love Labyrinth, I think I've only seen the Dark Crystal once, but I really like what you're doing here and tying it all together. I'm anxious to read more!

Miss Bittermen? Thant makes sense then. And Jenny? Thinking about it, Evangelos sounds Greek. Could it be? And is Sarah?...
This is all very intriguing! More please!

*Sambas into the thread.
:roll eyes: Oooh! Evangelos, that sounds sexy okay. Even sexier than Ms. Bitterpill over there, with all of her celeries... Oh jes, please to be posting more okay.

I looked up Greek names on the internet. Sarah and Jenny are kind of like the Doc and Sprocket of this story (respectively).

I will patiently wait until the snickering has died down...

Anyway, there are also 3 Dinosaurs references: the Gunge cameo when Robbie gets eaten, The Pistachio War (where we see a kind of proto-fraggle creature living behind the Sinclair's walls ... and yes, I know it looked nothing like a Fraggle, but the idea is that ... well, I'm getting ahead of myself) and the series finale, when BP and Earl instigate the end of the world (for dinosaurs, anyway).

And although I don't really plan on having anyone from Farscape in here, I might reference some goings-on or races from that series, since Dark Crystal takes place on another world and the UrSkek has taken so long to get here, maybe he ran across somebody on his travels...