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Archie comic readers on the forum may be aware of the character of Tommy Turtle, Romy Chacon's answer to Monkey Khan (ie. character who nobody else wants or uses, but who has to pop up on the flimsiest of premises when their creator is writing).

He seemed to perform a worthy sacrifice in his first appearance, but has since revealed himself to have more lives than the proverbrial cat, and to be able to come ambling out of certain death situations by the most flukish of mischances and deus ex machina.

This reminded me of a game that myself and some other people with too much time on their hands used to play on my undergraduate university's bulletin boards.

The game was called "Kill the dog". Someone would start a scenario whereby the eponymous nameless canine was minding its own business one day, when it'd suddenly find itself in a certain-death situation.

The next poster would come up with a way that it escaped the siruation that could be as weird as you like: dumb luck, villain spontaneously combusts, alien abduction, superpowered fleas, nanobots, falling into a haystack after falling out of a 'plane at 15,000 feet...

You get the idea.

But the next poster would also put something into that scenario that would line up the next sticky situation.

For instance, the dog falls out of the 'plane from 15,000 feet and lands in a haystack, but as he's dusting himself off, it seems that the bull whose lunch that haystack was doesn't like dinner guests, and is starting to charge...

It's then up to the next poster to get the dog out of the situation with the bull, but in a way that'll set up the next scenario.

You see? Lots of melodrama and general silliness, and not necessarily as easy as it looks. wink

So, if anyone's interested, let's play...

*drumroll*

KILL THE TURTLE!

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. smile

Once upon a time, Tommy Turtle was walking through the Great Forest when - oh no! - he tripped over a treestump and plunged head first into a raging river...

...The meteorite plunged directly towards where Tommy was standing, but as luck should have it, it burned up just barely sufficiently enough that it was little more than a pebble when it struck the soil between his feet. But that pebble moving at projectile speed was just enough to set off a massive earthquake. Tommy ran for his life as the ground split and tore open behind him, but he wasn't fast enough. Tommy plunged headfirst into the roaring crevice!

But soon, a wind current picked up and blew Tommy off of the eagle's back. He was no longer headed toward the nest, but he WAS headed toward the ground!

...But Tommy just then remembered that Rotor had installed a jet pack into his shell just the other day! Oh, that wacky walrus! So Tommy fired the rockets and freed himself from the quicksand, and was just flying home when the built-in jet pack suddenly ran out of fuel! OH NOES! He plummeted like a rock through the air, and then landed in the biggest, stickiest spider web ever. He was totally stuck, and the spider had awoken to find its latest victim waiting. The huge, multi-eyed, fangly-faced, very hairy and quite ugly arachnid slowly creeped across its web towards the wetting-himself-with-fright turtle...

Luckily, it screeched to a halt. The driver seemed so concerned that Tommy must've had a shock that he offered to drive him to wherever he wanted to go.

But as Tommy climbed in, he failed to notice the "Jeb's Famous Homemade Turtle Soup" logos down the side of the lorry!