We got the next two chapters of the epic Dengler and Butts miniseries hot off the chat! Chapter 4 comes to us from Tim J.:
MEANWHILE AT THE MOONBASE
A phone rings. A gloved hand picks it up.
“Moonbase. Go ahead.”
There was a delay as the voice was encrypted, sent, and then decrypted on the other end.
“One of our runners may have been compromised. We’ll have to assume they have the map.”
“Do we know who was following them?”
“It appears they are two detectives, Dengler and Butts.”
There is swearing. The gloved man curses Dengler and Butts and their mothers and their mothers’ mothers.
“Tell the other runners to watch their backs. The Roscoe Project cannot afford to be delayed. Make sure that does not happen.”
“By your command.”
“Moonbase out.” He hung up the phone and and resumed his litany of curses. He couldn’t afford to take chances. He picked up the phone again and pressed the red button, and spoke the exact phrase he had rehearsed.
“The creepy dolls need new stuffing.”
—
Chapter 5 is from Trisha Lynn:
THE BEGINNING OF A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP
As Butts caught his ragged breath, he looked over at Dengler, whose hair was barely mussed and his hands barely shaking. Butts thought back to when it all began, when he was first introduced to the golden-haired rookie and was told that this newly minted detective was his new partner.
~~FLASHBACK NOISES~~
“New partner?! I don’t need a new partner!” Butts yelled at his captain. In the cramped office, Junior Grade Detective Steve Dengler had the guts to look stone-faced as the more hardened and grizzled Lt. Steve Butts pounded the desk with his meaty fist.
“Like bus you do!” roared the captain back in his face. “Ever since Det. Pitts went down in the line, your work has gotten sloppy. You need some shaking up. And Det. Dengler’s just the man to do it.”
Butts’s jaw clenched as he remembered the shameful incident which gave him his bars just as it brought down his former partner. From that moment on, he swore to aveng—er, that is bring to justice the hateful Themiston cartel which deprived him of one of the few men he’d grown to trust. How was this… shiny-faced rookie going to live up to his kind of standards?~~FLASHFORWARD NOISES~~
“You ready, Butts?” Dengler passed a hand over his brow, surreptitiously checking the number of rounds left in his gun.
“Always, Dengler. Always.”
We’re all looking forward to Part 6 and beyond!
And so it has been decided, the rookie is Dengler. There is no longer any doubt about it.
[HatGirl says]
GOOD WORK EVERYONE. 😀
Joshua: I think it’d be cool if a new person each wrote a chapter.
TRISHA: I don’t know if I necessarily agree with that. It would be cool, but that doesn’t mean it’d be better. I think that we should all submit them for as long as we want and let them decide what sounds like the coolest chapter. To me, that’s what would be cool. It will still be made from a whole bunch of people working together, and I for one like this whole idea too much to stop writing for it.
TRISHA: Also, I loved your chapter. It was amazing. My favorite so far. I tried to take a couple of ideas from it for my chapter 6 submission. Really was awesome. I have no clue what Themiston is, so I just assumed they were the terrorists.
I think the rookie title should swap in every chapter.
TRISHA: I very much loved that you used Russ. T’was a very nice touch.
Tim: My friend and I have made some jokes about switching rookies each time, but that would lead to such inconsistent character design. Still, It could be funny. If the next chapter sets such a trend then I’ll be happy to go along with it.
People need to stop commenting right after I stop refreshing this page. Its seriously annoying.
Joshua: I was really more joking, but I think that you are right: if it were executed masterfully it would be hilarious.
Then again, I skirted the rookie issue entirely, so I don’t have a leg to stand on.
Tim: Coward, you should have picked a rookie like the rest of us, even if it made absolutely no sense within the chapter you wrote! Which was hilarious!
Joshua: I hereby retcon my chapter to make Butts the rookie (I flipped a coin to be fair).
Tim: Graaaahhhh! Inconsistency!!! Oh well, at least you didn’t take the coward’s way out. To be fair, my chapter 4 had Butts be the rookie too.
Joshua: We can take the Marvel way out, and split it into alternate universes. Then Rookie Butts and Rookie Dengler can meet and close the rift that brought them together and save all of existence.
Tim: I like your style, but it would take so much more narrative control than we will ever have Tim. Maybe someday someone will get the chance to write such a story about two unfortunately named detectives. Then my life would be complete.
Joshua: “Themiston” came from “Themistown” which I was thinking could be the name of the town where Dengler and Butts work, but then I remembered this took place in Victoria. So, I changed it from being a town to being a surname. Themis is, of course, a reference to Themis Media, the group which publishes The Escapist.
Tim: I love it when meta-fic refers to real-life events and people, which is why I included a reference to Russ Pitts, whose job the real Steve Butts has now.
Round robin-style is how I work best when it comes to fan-fiction, and that’s a style we cultivated on the CFAN-related boards back in the day.
Trisha: Well, that makes sense now. I thought it was some kind of fictional fantasy/sci-fi race. I too like the idea of round-robin in a more controlled environment. It is in fact the only way you can get me to draw anything, by taking turns adding on little bits to a drawing. But in this less organized way we’re doing things, I doubt it will wind up working out that way.
[…] I have on the back burner; however, I am very proud of the flashback chapter I contributed to the “Dengler & Butts” fanfic which by itself raised $100 and as part of the entire story raised $1,000 for the Child’s […]
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