Bo Bedson part 3

Now I feel there are some things in that sentence that will confuse readers so I shall explain just what happened at that moment.



Outside of the tree as Bucktooth Dave was untying the little bear there were in fact other squirrels emerging at the base of the tree. These squirrels are rather more intelligent than the squirrels you have met so far and, need I say it, quite technologically advanced.



This is the Squirrel Army of Stumpy who was mentioned before. Stumpy by name and Stumpy by nature having lost his tail to a crow many years back (poor thing’s still quite sensitive about it so please never mention it) but I really must insist that the full story be left till another time. All you need to know is that at the point where Bo’s paw connected with Bucktooth’s face, an incendiary device was sent flying into the very spot, adding to the force and thus throwing Bucktooth back, but also sending Bo flying out of the tree.



What an odd sensation falling for a bear is, you can feel the rippling on your fur and the wind snapping in your face, but with the lack of a set of lungs and a stomach you can’t have the wind knocked out of you or your stomach doing flips, so its actually almost pleasurable. Thankfully there was a large bunch of leaves at the bottom of the tree and so Bo landed quite safely without having to learn of the horrible pain that comes with falling.



“Gah! Motherfecker!” exclaimed Bo has he picked himself up off of the ground. The adrenaline was going through his little bear body and it was actually giving him quite a dizzying high. Yes I’m aware some of you are going to object to a bear getting high but lets face it, its biology what are you going to do?



After a moment to collect himself again Bo took a look at his surroundings and was surprised to see the fence that the squirrels had carried him over was actually only a little while away!



“My owner!” he yelled with joy, which quickly turned into a yell of fear as the area around him began to be bombarded with acorns and bombs, no seriously we’re talking heavy artillery.



“Yikes!” Bo yelled as he charged forwards, heading for the fence as fast as his little legs could carry him, feeling himself wobble and waddle uncertainly as he had to quickly get used to the art of running (never mind walking) in a very short space of time.



A few near misses, and a few close shaves and Bo found himself flat up against up against the wall, desperately looking for some kind of hole that he could squeeze into to get to the other side.



But no luck! The fence was rather well done and so there we no actual gaps to speak of!

“You know,” said a drawling voice above him, “You could always try going through that little bush over there.”



Bo looked up and saw a massive ball of….grey. There was something lounging on top of the fence, surprising considering the size of the thing that it could lounge anywhere with a surface area so thin.



“What?” stammered Bo as he looked up what he would later find out was a cat.



“Over there is a bush you can get through to get to the other side of the fence,” the cat pointed with a paw over to the other side, “After that I can help you get into the house but I really don’t want to get my paws too dirty, obsessive compulsive you see.”



Bo didn’t know what an ‘obsessive whatever’ was but he knew good advice and a chance of help when he heard it and he ran as fast as he could to where the bush was and after a quick scurry he was out onto the other side and looking directly into two very yellow eyes.



“Hello little bear, Ashlea’s been missing you, my name’s Oly,” and with that Oly picked up Bo in his mouth and carried him further into the garden leaving Bo to think one thing.



“Ashlea,” he thought, “My owner’s name is Ashlea…pretty.” And with that happy thought he allowed himself to be carted nearer and nearer the doors. So close. But suddenly so far when two armies worth of squirrels came charging over the fence, fighting bitterly with each other.



“Oh fuh tha luv of Pe’e” mouthed Oly over the poor bear in his mouth and hurriedly threw Bo on top of a table and disappeared into a little corner.



Bo heard little scraping sounds and the sound of someone trying to squeeze into something that was much too small for them before Oly came bursting through the corner again. But this time looking rather more menacing with knives poking out of several little pockets in an armoured jacket. He even had a mask on presumably, thought Bo, to ward off gases and stuff.



Note: Actually Oly just had the mask because he made him look like a ninja, or so he thought.



“I’m sorry little bear,” said Oly, “But I’m going to have to deal with this first and then I promise that I’ll talk you upstairs to Ashlea.” And with that Oly jumped into the fray, tooth, claw and knife flashing in the sun.



Bo could only look on helplessly before looking upwards to Ashlea’s window, “I’m coming Ashlea,” he said, “I promise I’ll be there soon.” And with that he looked back down on the battlefield with rising apprehension.



Unfortunately he was about to get pulled into it himself.



Bo Bedson was in a bit of a predicament, and that is putting it rather lightly. He had been abused in a warehouse and he had suffered horrific injuries in a shop before being saved by his multicoloured haired girl owner called Ashlea. But just when Bo was quite content wit how things were he’d been snatched away the Squiggles, a nasty bunch of squirrels that delighted in tormenting Ashlea’s family.



Through some rather painful means that I’d rather not go into again Bo found he had the ability to talk and to move freely and thus escaped from the capture of the Squiggles, however then found himself again embroiled in a squiggle war which, with the addition of the fat cat called Oly, had now turned into a cross species war.



After a few minutes of watching the violent action play down below Bo became increasingly glad that the large ct had thought to put him up here in the first place out of the way of all the carnage. Clearly though the cat could take care of himself, as he ducked and waved with surprisingly agility, considering his size, wielding a wooden kitchen spoon and a carving knife with the expertise of a ninja.



Note: Please don’t tell him that I said that otherwise he won’t get that smug look off of his face for months.



Bo had to be honest though, it wasn’t very much of a fir fight. The newcomer squiggles were painfully more advanced than his captors, which didn’t much bother him unduly and with the help of Oly it was quite obvious that the yokel vermin had bitten off quite more than their disastrously ugly teeth could chew.



‘Still,’ he said to himself quietly, ‘I really am glad I’m not down there slugging it out with the rest of them.’



Which was, of course, exactly when a voice squeaked behind him, a voice that Bo unfortunately knew quiet well as the squiggle that had ‘given’ him the ‘gift’ of movement.



Note: His name is Stinky. By nature and name. Blergh.



‘Well if it ain’t my old playmate from the cells. I see you can walk and talk happy enuff, eh?’ The slimy squiggle had a sinister grin on his face, and the sharp pointy stick in his hand had, if possible, become even pointer since Bo’s last encounter with it.



‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Bo, something akin to anger bubbling up in his fluffy chest, ‘you’re real brave aren’t you being here all alone away from everything down there.’



‘Hey now sonny’ growled the squiggle in a very non-impressive squeaky way, ‘I’ve been doing me some major damage down there!’



Note: The most damage he had actually done was to bump one of the trained squiggles with the end of his stick as he was running away to get onto the safety of the table himself. He was hoping the confusion of the day wouldn’t lead to inconvenient questions.



‘Yeah, sure, whatever you say you limp noodle,’ retorted Bo, widening his little bear legs into a steadier stance, which is impressive for a bear with rounded off paws on a flat surface I can tell you that now.

‘Limp noodle! I’LL HAVE YOU!’ squeaked the squiggle and he charged at Bo, yelling for all he was worth.



Note: This wasn’t worth a lot really.



Unfortunately for the squiggle and fortunately for the little bear, Bo had become rather adept at using his limbs in the past few hours and could move quite quickly and so just before the squiggle was able to pierce his soft fur he sidestepped and bashed Stinky heavily on the back of the head sending the foul vermin flying off the side of the table.



‘Ha! You deserved that you little bas-WHOOPS!’ the ‘whoops’ there was because Bo had become a little exuberant in his little celebration and had ended up putting himself off balance, causing him to go tumbling down with the squiggle himself and to endure the punch of the hard floor yet again.



‘Not as bad as the tree I suppose,’ said Bo thoughtfully, before picking himself up off of the now thoroughly concussed squiggle. Of course then he barely had a second before he’d picked up Stinky’s sharp stick and was forced to fend off the squiggles that had suddenly converged on him.



‘Get back you flea ridden reprobates!’ with his surprising IQ Bo thought that this was rather a high insult, but of course the intelligence of the squiggles was not so great and all they actually picked up from the whole thing was ‘flea’. But that was before Bo swung the little stick for all he was worth, clocking each of the group of squiggles on the noggin.



‘Have to get to the fat cat,’ said Bo to himself, and with that thought in mind he set off as fast as he could towards the grey fighting machine, sneaking in between the gaps in the fighting and thwacking any squiggle that got into his path.



‘Hey there little bear,’ shouted Oly over his shoulder as Bo arrived at his side, at the moment he was fighting off ten of the demented little beasts with his wooden spoon, ‘I’m sorry you had to get dragged into all of this but it was a matter of pride. There’s only so much you can tolerate the chanting of Roly Poly Oly in one day.’



‘Couldn’t agree with you more,’ said Bo before hitting a squiggle firmly between the eyes with his sharp stick.



‘Of course it looks like you can take care of yourself but stick by me and this’ll be over before you know it and then I can take you to Ashlea,’ promised Oly swinging his spoon and sending five of the squiggles flying in various directions.



A little flutter went through Bo at the sound of the name and with that promise in mind he started hitting the squiggles all the harder, remembering that of course they were the ones who had taken him away from his multicoloured haired girl in the first place.



Elsewhere in the garden the new squiggles were clearly gaining more and more ground over the yokel rodents, driving them further and further into the centre of the garden with the help of Oly and the little bear.



But even though Bo technically didn’t have any muscles to get exhausted, the mental exhaustion of remembering how to lift a stick up and down and swinging this way and that was starting to grate on his already very tired bear mind and he was starting to think that even Oly was showing signs of slowing down…that was when the thunderous boom came.



Well, I say thunderous boom, I mean that it was a thunderous boom for all those who were involved in the affair in the garden and who were all less than thirty centimetres tall. For you and me, it would just sound more like a very small pop somewhere in the distance.



Everything stopped dead and everyone, or rather everything, looked over into the direction of the new noise.



At first Bo was sure that he was losing his mind because surely he couldn’t be seeing what he was seeing now. It looked like little machines were making their way up the top of the fence and down the side of the fence with the help of little sucker pods that were on the bottom of the wheels.



When they finally alighted onto the garden floor it was clear that the little things were actually tanks. Each one was fitted with a barrel at the end, with a mean looking squiggle at the end of it with joysticks at the ready.



‘What the feck is that?’ quivered Bo, now looking at his pitifully small stick.



‘That little bear,’ said Oly, before scooping Bo up hurriedly into a pouch in his jacket, ‘Is our cue to leave.’ And with that Oly swooped out of the garden and into some nearby bushes along with the bewildered bear. The yokel squiggles were so scared of the new devilry that they barely noticed the absence of the fat cat.



After a quick scurry and a few subdued oaths about his weight, Oly managed to squeeze him and Bo into a little safe haven within the bush where they could easily observe all the action.



‘About time that Stumpy arrived,’ sniffed Oly, flicking some dirt off of his paw with a look of disdain, ‘It’s going to take ages to clean all of this up.’



‘Why do they call him Stumpy?’ asked Bo, though from what he’d seen of squiggles he thought he could roughly guess the answer to it.



‘It’s because he lost his tail a few years back, got a lot of stick with it from the other squiggles in the early days,’ explained Oly, his eyes trained on the events unfolding, ‘But just you try smart mouthing a squiggle that can dissect an acorn into fifty pieces with a safety pin. And all in under ten seconds too.’



Bo Bedson looked on the sights in front of him with a new found admiration for this mysterious Stumpy character. The tanks were rolling on now and they were getting closer and closer to the paralysed group of miserable squiggles before stopping a metre short of the group itself. Bo saw an obvious problem with this.



‘Have they broken down?’ asked Bo, having no knowledge of tanks at all, ‘Surely they can’t do much damage from way over there.’



‘Just watch little bear,’ said Oly in a satisfied way, ‘those things can do plenty of damage from there.’



There was a squeak of command from one of the tanks and Bo nearly jumped out of his skin when the barrels lit with the explosion of their missiles. Small black spheres shot out of each of the tunnels before hovering for a second in mid-air. Then with a crack the spheres broke up into countless mini-spheres, pelting the unsuspecting group below.



‘I can see he managed to develop the cluster bombs in time then,’ noted Oly, but these words were lost on Bo. He was now, suitably, very terrified of whoever this Stumpy fellow was and wasn’t sure whether he wanted to meet him at all. Ever.



After a few seconds it was all finished and all the way throughout the garden squiggles were lying in varying states of unconsciousness. Bo even saw, with a lot of satisfaction, that Bucktooth Dave was flung out on the grass with his arse in the air, quite undignified for a top squiggle you’ll agree.



‘I’d say that it was safe to come out now,’ said Oly and, before Bo could protest against this, he was taking them both out of the safety of the bush and entering the garden in full view of the tanks.



‘Nice of you to help Oly,’ boomed an amplified and squeaky voice. You wouldn’t have heard it yourself, what with the planes going on overhead but I assure you it happened.



‘Well I could hardly let the squiggles run around on my family’s turf now could I?’ Oly sat down and Bo cautiously took a look outside of his safe pocket and looked at the character that was now standing with a small megaphone in his paw.



He was about six inches tall, with bright grey fur almost verging on white and keen eyes that picked out Bo even from all the way over from where the tanks were lined up. Bo did everything to stop the giggle that threatened to pounce up from the fact that the squiggle was actually wearing a long black cloak to cover up the fact that he was missing his tail.



‘See you’ve got yourself another furry friend there,’ noted Stumpy, nodding at Bo who, in turn, nodded back.



‘Yeah he belongs to Ashlea,’ said Oly casually, completely at ease in the company of the armed squiggles.



‘Ah well fair enough then we won’t keep you, we’re just going to mop up this rabble and get them out of everyone’s way.’ Stumpy waved his paw in a military way at each of the tanks in turn and they set about converging on the mass of incapacitated rodents.



‘Cheers, I’ve got to get this one back in the house,’ said Oly, and with that he waved and made his way back towards the house.



‘Finally,’ thought Bo, ‘I’m coming back to Ashlea after this nightmare.’



Oly walked closer and closer to the house, but before he got to the double doors he turned and instead went around to the side of the house instead.



‘What are you doing Oly?’ asked Bo in a little squeak, worried that the cat was now going to leave him somewhere else.



‘It’s alright little bear,’ Oly reassured him, ‘We just have to go in via a slightly different route that I had to make after I got locked out one time.’ And with that Oly stood up on his hind paws and tapped several of the bricks in the wall. With a hiss a button presented itself in the drain pipe, which Oly then pressed with his tail.



With another hiss a door opened up into a dark little box and Oly jumped straight in with the little bear before the door closed again behind them.



Cool, was the only thought that Bo could think of at that precise moment, and I don’t think there are many people out there who would disagree with him either.



But something about their current situation seemed to have Oly irritated, ‘Oh just great, just bloody great. Ozzy just would have had to have been let out just when we need to make a smooth entrance.’



Something in Bo curdled slightly, he remembered Ozzy well enough, or rather he remembered the over excited panting and the wet nose that had been pressed up against the bag all that time ago.



‘Hang on tight bear,’ said Oly, ‘this is going to take some fancy footwork.’ And with that Oly catapulted out of the cupboard, because that is of course where the door led to in the kitchen, and bombed it into the living room, employing a nifty tuck and roll to avoid the giant and playful paws of Ozzy as they came crashing down. Oly smacked him on the nose with his tail for good measure.



‘Not over yet,’ grunted Oly to himself and with shocking speed he jumped up onto the sofa to avoid the waiting eyes of Tilly and snuck through the door with barely a thud. Not good enough though because he still had to put on a little extra spurt of speed before Tilly could cut him off at the stairs.



‘There we go,’ said Oly triumphantly, ‘now all there is to do is to get you back in Ashlea’s room and hide you somewhere.’



Bo’s mind track faltered from the lovely images he was having of having his hair ruffled again, ‘What?’ he asked quietly, ‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE GOING TO HIDE ME?!’ he asked…rather more loudly.



‘Listen,’ said Oly calmly, ‘What is Ashlea going to think if you magically appear right where she left you after all this time of you being missing?’



Bo was about to protest when he actually thought it through…unfortunately it looked like Oly was right.



‘We have to make it look like you just got lost somewhere in the room and that she’s found you and everything’s fine.’ And with that Oly scampered up the stairs and into Ashlea’s room. Bo found the familiar scents of the perfume quite comforting after all he’d been through and you can’t blame him for that at all.



Oly looked around for a little while, trying to see where the best place was to put the little bear where someone could have imagined he would have fallen if he were to have actually gone off the bed.



‘Ah…there we go,’ and with a flash Oly had jumped up onto the bed, taken the little bear out of his pocket with his mouth and flung him down the end of the bed.



‘Thanks,’ said a muffled Bo. He couldn’t help but be grateful…but then he couldn’t entirely keep the sarcastic tone out of his voice as the guitar bag grated against his mouth as he slipped further and further down.



‘Yeah, I know it’s uncomfortable but trust me, it’ll be worth it when she finds you,’ said Oly and with that he whisked himself away to get his jacket back into his hiding place before the owners came back and saw him geared up as he was.



‘Well,’ thought Bo, as his eyes got darker with sleep and also with the lack of light at the bottom of the bed, ‘I guess there’s nothing else for it but to hope Ashlea doesn’t give up on me and finds me eventually.’ And with that the little bear went to sleep dreaming of the day that her hands would pull him out of his little hole and fluff his hair and love him forever.



Let’s hope she does find him in the end, because there’s a certain dragon that needs help finding his mummy. But that’s another story.