CAPTAIN ROMANIA & BULGARIA GIRL

in

The Misunderstood Tinyone

From immemorial times The Empire had expanded to unfathomable boundaries, bringing joy and enlightenment to the world, bestowing on its dominions incalculable gifts such as morning politeness, afternoon evasion, evening black pudding and, above all, an easy to use, gender-neutral, spelling-lax lingua franca.

Even when it erred on the side of authority, it was not without a silver lining. The inspired practice of slavery set the foundations for its noble abolition; ruthless colonialism brought cooked breakfast to the farthest continents and encouraged otherwise slumbering minds to devise, among other things, nonviolent action as a means of resistance.

But with the rise came the comedown. Ill fait and ingratitude nibbled at the pillars of the Imperial edifice and brought it down, shrinking it back to its initial frontiers, within the confines of a few gaunt isles.

The barbarous hoards of invaders followed in the tracks of what was left of the mighty edifice and concocted evil double-edged plans to steal wisdom and knowledge directly from Imperial universities, at the same time poisoning the noble superior race with over-spiced food.

After years of chafe and attrition, a new usurping threat loomed at the city walls, the worst and most ferocious yet.

Romanians. Nobody knew exactly what they were or where they came from. The general impression was that their hometown of Romania, a dark den of primitivism and depravity, was hidden somewhere in the cold Siberian depths, making their history all the more impenetrable.

Nonetheless, from her ivy-coated castle, The Imperial Queenatron alone nurtured the belief that the Empire would once again rise to its former glory, and that any enemy, no matter how vicious, would be overcome.

Together with her trustworthy general, Dr Camereon, and his spouse and servant The Gadfly (both sporting lapels strewn with MMM medals[1] of exponentially ascending orders) they unleashed retaliation.

They took to a daily routine of firing enchanted Mails that stuck to the Romanians’ torsos with enchanted obtrusiveness, followed by spells of the Mirror that made assailants keel over seeing how unattractive they appeared in the Mail.

“I know,” The Queenatron said to her lackeys one day as she was having cooked breakfast and morning tea, “these Romans or whatevs have a background of dictatorship and oppression. They are sensitive to the powers of bureaucracy and haven’t mastered the age-old crafts of the written complaint and street picket. We shall therefore drown them in paperwork.

“How about if we make it impossible for them to infest and destroy the place without an accession card? And condition the obtaining thereof to that of a long list of written proofs.”

“I know,” The Gadfly darted enthusiastically, “let’s do what our long tradition of crests and heraldic science has taught us best: nothing like a good colour code. Blue cards. And yellow cards. That’s sure to throw them off.”

“Indeed...” The Queenatron said, “they’ll perish on waiting lists. We’ll treat them worse than asylum seekers.”

“But Your Majesty,” Dr Camereon objected, producing the official complexion grid, “most Romanians are almost white. Surely...”

“No sureties,” The Queenatron snapped. “See there, in the Park of St James, third willow by the duck pen, at the push of a button the trunk opens up making way for the Romanianator. The death ray will rid us of any verminous discomfort.”

“HOLD ON JUST A MINUTE!” bellowed a deep manly voice with an accent reminiscent of nursing home staff. “Not if I have a say in this!”

The windows shattered, original Constables cracked and came off the walls, The Queenatron’s untouched nice biscuit desert flew off the tea table.

“Alas,” Dr Camereon observed, “it’s Captain Romania! I thought I’d gotten rid of you!”

Before he could say more both him and The Gadfly were blasted into tiny pieces of felt and tweed.

The next shot blew the tea out of The Queenatron’s hand, but before Captain Romania could aim again she activated her emergency mug, took a sip out of it and sidestepped out of the Captain’s aim.

“I was expecting you,” she said. “I know why you and your stinking lot are here, Captain Romania! You want to replace the secular holy depository of Queenatron power, the Cumberland banger, with your greasy tinyone[2]! You, dirty, filthy nation that devours the horses that we race! Get your mind off it, it won’t happen. I can tell you that much.

“BANGER POWER! BUBBLE AND SQUEAK, YOU CAN’T BE THAT QUICK!”

And he wasn’t. The Queenatron disarmed Captain Romania of his beer bottle, and with a second blow she pinned him down to the ground, his hands too busy keeping the tinyone safe.

“And now,” The Queenatron said pointing her sausage at his meatball, “for the coup de grace. You see, Captain Romania, in your provincial, prejudiced mind you probably thought me a defenceless old dear, just got off her mobility buggy... but then again, you wouldn’t know what that is.

“That’s not the point. The truth is I am more than any Queenatron or Kingatron in the world. I am the embodiment of a glorious, victorious spirit that has survived from time immemorial. I was there when Will Wallace was crawling away in the mud!

“And now you, Captain Romania, who are no Breaveheart, will share the fate with your meagre tinyone.”

“NOT SO FAST!”

A woman’s voice?

“Bulgaria Girl!” The Queenatron exclaimed. “How did I forget about you?”

“Bulgaria Girl,” Captain Romania sighed, “trusty neighbour and friend, how glad to see you! You shouldn’t have, really.”

RHAT-AT-AT-AT-TAH!

Bulgaria Girl, no time for frivolities, was already firing her Cornichon[3] Hypergun at The Queenatron.

A vicious battled ensued, The Queenatron, now in lack of generals, calling on the help of other Royal robotrons, such as her cover-up spouse, The Duke in Drag, fluttering his skirt up and down the scene of the battle, and the young friend of whales, the Princeotron with the Ultimate Power of Will, who had to compensate for the absence of his brother who was still asleep, inebriated, in the toilet.

The stout plump powers of tinyone and cornichon united saw The Queenatron’s efforts rendered fruitless, and her helpers blown to smithereens. She tried to gobble down the sausage, but Bulgaria Girl caught sight of her attempts in time. When The Royal Cumberland Banger was charred into smoking nothingness, the battle had been decided.

Holding hands, Captain Romania and Bulgaria Girl pointed their power beams at the old hag’s heart. She didn’t flinch, as if she was already dead.

The result was strange. The Queenatron’s body cracked into plates and fell to the ground like an old shell. What was left in its place baffled Captain Romania and Bulgaria Girl beyond measure.

Before them stood a bony, short individual, shorter even than the composite Queenatron had been, swarthy and dark-eyed. His hair was hidden under a magnificent sapphire-strewn turban, and his chest embellished with a fully blown red rose that intertwined its sweet fragrance with a low-key scent of jasmine and a touch of curry leaves.

“Who the hell are you?” asked Captain Romania trying to keep as Romanianly polite as possible.

“Are you Bulgarian?” Bulgaria girl asked squinting at the man’s complexion.

“I suppose it was coming to this,” the stranger replied. “Remember when I told you about the victorious spirit passed down from shell to shell? Well, I wasn’t lying. What I forgot to tell you is that it was replaced a couple years ago. By me.”

“I see,” said captain Romania, “you spirit of Modern Empire or something.”

“Let’s just say,” the spirit answered, “that I was friends with a certain Mountbatten at a certain right time, and made out what his right price was. I’m sure you know, Captain Romania, that one can bribe one’s way in just as well as one’s way out. Hence, you’re now speaking to this able anima in front of you.”

“Anima schmanima,” Bulgaria Girl said, “you weren’t able-archer enough to obliterate our united Eastern might. But now you shall die.”

“I didn’t want to obliterate anyone, that’s the thing. All I wanted was to scare you off. You see, for what now seems like forever I have been building a food industry that opened up the Empire to new notions such as taste, smell and flavour. The monopoly I established at the shade of The Queenatron’s xenophobic image will no doubt be put in great danger if you suddenly take the stage over with your garlicky-dilly delights.

“I know the Empire folk have no discernment. Pork, horse, starfish... They’ll go for anything new like hyenas, especially if it’s anything to do with filling their pouches.

“As we’re standing now however, I’m left with nothing but to admit my defeat. Remember just this: those who conquer will be conquered. And those who conquer the conquerors will in their turn...”

“Let’s not be so dramatic, shall we?” Bulgaria Girl interrupted. “We want to conquer no one. Be reasonable, Mister Spice, there’s only so many pickled gherkins you can eat.”

“Yes,” added Captain Romania, “and that’s if you’re hung-over. How hung-over... ok, granted, perhaps from that point of view Bulgaria Girl will be successful with her gimmick, but still... there’s so many undiscovered species ground into a single tinyone that it’ll be impossible to sell them legally. Even so, we like to keep or tinyones for ourselves, for our festivities and barbecues. In the meantime, my people will gladly deliver your spicy food for little more than minimum wage. How’s that, Mr Spice?”

“Really? Well... I suppose it doesn’t sound bad. If you’re sure that’s what you want, I propose a toast.”

“Hurrah!” said Captain Romania and Bulgaria Girl.

And all night they drank, ate and made merry, all the while hammering at The Queenatron Shell to put the appearance of the old bag back together, no horses or king’s men involved, so Mr Spice, or Betterhat Crickitt as he liked to call himself, could carry on ruling the remains of a very inclusive Empire.

[1] Mighty Merciless Maggie medals – instituted in memory of a certain Maggie who had been a mighty merciless woman, even by The Queenatron’s own standards.

[2] A brief history of the Romanian tinyone: Lost in the dawn of times is the day when a Romanian chef, his job marked by the all-pervading scarceness of Siberian flatlands, ran out of intestine casing for his in-house sausages, and pressured by kind death threats from his beer-infused customers, decided to mould ground meat into sausage shapes and stick the surrogates on the grill as they were. The result was the invention of a quasi-cylindrical greasy, cloddy meatball with the aspect and consistency of dubious, already digested muck, nonetheless so appealing to the palate through its mixed flavour of pork, lamb, beef and other unidentified meats, spiced with spices unknown and compulsory garlic, that it claimed supremacy in Romanian cuisine. The unbridled mince shrivelling freely over the sizzling coal fire, the new generation of meatballs, while elongated, ended up short and plump, tinier than the tiniest sausage, and were quickly dubbed tiny ones by consumers. In Romanian, tinyone is one word.

Best enjoyed with beer, mustard and semi-stale bread, the tinyone has given Romanians their magical power and polyvalent prowess. Many foreign pilgrims, once accustomed to the Romanian tinyone, have forgotten the Holy Grails they sought, and stayed on forever, munching their life away, tinyone after tinyone. Despite the patriarchal, misogynistic stereotype, it was not beautiful women but the tinyone that took a comfortable top spot in contributing to Romania’s immigrational boom.

[3] Cornichon – a type of gherkin. Bulgarians are renowned for their tradition of cultivating the said fruit, especially for the purpose of vinegar & dill pickling.  The end product is known as Bulgarian Gherkin in Romania. Bulgarians just call them Gherkins.

Bulgaria is just another town in Benoît Sokal’s video game Syberia.