Once upon time there lived a hero. In fact there were a lot of heroes running around, mucking up tales like this one, parading around in their bright red uniforms and showing everyone how wonderful they were. I mean, there's always a hero, isn't there? Kind of pointless to have fairy tales without heroes. And sometimes there are more than one, and that just confuses things no end.

I'm not even going to go into anti-heroes. Nuh-uh.

So back to this hero. Not that he looked much the part of a hero. He filled out a suit pretty nicely on occasion, but he and his poor, long-suffering mother (a mother who ironed his shorts for him, the sainted dear), had fallen on hard times, and he really felt more comfortable in jeans and a tshirt anyway. In fact, they'd fallen on such hard times, our hero (We'll call him Ray) had to sell his bed and camp out on the cold, hard ground just to keep his mother and himself fed. (No wonder they call it hard times. And not even a badge for the effort.)

But after a very short time, the money from the bed sale had come to an end. It wasn't nearly as much as Ray would have gotten had he offered himself *in* the bed, but heroes don't do that sort of thing. Very often, at least, and this poor-schtick had been going on waaay too long.

So Ray decided to hoof it into town without telling his mother (He didn't want to worry her, and besides, she was looking at ironing his *tshirt* for heaven's sake) and sell the last thing of value he had. His clothes.

The inhabitants of the nearby town had gathered and prepared an auction for him, to ensure the highest resale value for his clothes, and many people had come from miles around to attend the auction and the fair that had started. The Mayor had prepared a speech for the occasion, and excitement mounted among the inhabitants.

Even the criminal element was involved, and cat fights had broken out among the bidders who awaited the black market auction of Ray's body parts following the loss of his clothes. There were already several casualties from a fight over the delectability of Ray's ass, and some still claimed, despite their broken bones, that he had none. Fortunately, the village elders kept it on the auction rolls - he had to sit on something, after all.

And so Ray set out for town, hoping to find a decent reseller of old clothes, all unknowing of the fete and the fate that the villagers were preparing for him. Along the road, he met a peddler, heading to the village to sell an assortment of potions. When he saw Ray, his eyes lit up.

No, not literally. Glowing eyes were the exclusive property of celestial and infernal beings at that time. The FX elves were still working on the blue Dune eyes.

So Ian (for that was the peddler's name), stopped Ray and asked him his business in town. (He already knew, but he wanted it from the horse's mouth, so to speak, and it was a great way of striking up a conversation.) Ian and Ray struck up their conversation, and batted it around much like a wolf does with a powdered donut, and eventually Ian offered Ray something for his clothes.

It wasn't money, for Ian said that he'd traded all his money to the Lube Fairy in exchange for something much more valuable than money: The Magic Pudding. Ian claimed that the Magic Pudding would bring him to his true love, and that he'd trade it to Ray for Ray's clothes. Ian didn't need to find his true love - he was already shacked up with a guy named Jack. Ray was suspicious, but Ian seemed vaguely trustworthy in a Canadian sort of way, and he traded Ian his clothes and his kick-em-in-the-head boots for the Magic Pudding.

Ian left him on the side of the road with his grey boxer-briefs, the jar of Magic Pudding, and a few beans some guy with a cow had passed him with his money in the last town back. Ray tossed the beans in the dirt and headed home to his mother. He made it about halfway back before he realized he'd seen Ian before - on the news, up for trial for perjury.

Ray cursed his gullibility, and turned and ran after the peddler. But when he got back to where he'd met the peddler, all he found was a giant beanstalk. Not one to pass up the chance for adventure (and rather sheepish about running around in his underwear with nothing to show for it but some rather dubious looking Magic Pudding), he started climbing up the beanstalk.

He climbed and climbed and climbed, and eventually got to the top of the beanstalk, and found himself in front of a large Consulate. He wasn't quite sure what it was doing way up in the clouds, but he might as well find out, and wandered in.

He'd just gotten past the front entry when he heard a booming voice call out: "Fee! Fie! Fo! Fum! I smell the blood of..." The voice changed abruptly. "Oh hello there. Welcome to Canada." A very tall blond man in a bright red uniform walked into the hallway. "My, aren't we in a state of undress. You must be American."

"Um... yeah."

"Well, goodness. We can't have you running around like that. What if the Inspector saw you?" And so the Mountie hustled him off into a side room and started stripping off his uniform. Ray saw the perfect opportunity to try the Magic Pudding, and soon had Ren stripped all the way and had his heroic way with him.

Ren had really only expected to give Ray his clothes, but was quite happy with the bonus that Ray was offering, and quite happily bent over the nearest desk and took it like the manly Mountie he was. Ray, generous guy that he was, gave it to him quite a few times, thanks to the powers of the Magic Pudding.

After about the 6th or 7th time, (they lost track after the couch had broken underneath them) they heard someone coming down the hall. Ren hurried Ray into his uniform, and out the door before Inspector Moffat could find him in dereliction of duty.

And so Ray found himself at the bottom of the beanstalk in a bright red hero-like uniform with a half-empty jar of Magic Pudding. Rather bemused, and a little sore, he headed home.

His mother greeted him with great delight, and took the uniform from him, and got right to altering (it was a wee bit large) and ironing with great glee. Ray left her to it, rather glad that he hadn't had to explain, and decided to see what else he could find up the beanstalk.

He returned to the consulate, and had just stepped into the doors when Ren appeared and pulled him into a side room. They had an enthusiastic reunion, and then Ren asked Ray if he could save him from the tyrannical reign of the Inspector. Ray was rather easily convinced, and so Ren led him to the back room to pack up his luggage.

They found quite a few things stored in the back room, including a glass coffin that, when they uncovered it, revealed a man in the same red uniform asleep within. Ray was curious about it, and Ren explained that the coffin was left over from another fairy tale, and Serge Red's cousin fell asleep in it during the wedding reception and he hadn't woken up since. Nothing so sordid as a poisoned trout, just a little leftover curse and the matter of a large stick up Ben's ass.

Ray just took out the jar that held the remainder of the Magic Pudding and smiled. Ren blinked a few times before he caught on, and then leaped to help wrestle Ben out of the case and remove the stick from Ben's ass. They decided that while they were down there, they'd enjoy themselves, and so Ben woke up in the middle of having a lot of fun. Once they were done, (meaning they'd had so much fun they'd passed unconscious a few times), they came to at the sound of someone coming down the hallway: "And then they said, 'Oh, it's just the Canadian.' And I knew then that I had them!"

So they whispered amongst themselves, and groped each other for good measure, then snuck out the back door of the Consulate and down the beanstalk.

They moved into Ray's house with his mother, who was overjoyed at the prospect of keeping the three men in primly pressed uniforms, and lived happily ever after.

And the Inspector and the beanstalk? Well, the Inspector never really noticed the departure of his staff. He tripped over the beanstalk one day and fell down and got an owie. The dead-kind of owie. And the beanstalk's still there, last I heard.

The End

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