Chose Your Own Mongrel Adventure

[Mongrel]

Page 1

"Bananas." mumbled Mongrel. "These prices are bananas."

"On what in particular?" queried the bear.

Mongrel tilted his head toward the largest fruit bin "On these bananas! They already raised the price two months ago! And now again?"

The bear nodded glumly, he knew only too well how the cost of groceries had shot up; 500 kilos of bear took a lot of feeding up, especially in early spring.

Mongrel sighed "Come on, we've got enough, let's get out of here."

"Alright then." said the bear, quietly tipping a 24-pack of glazed donuts into his cart.

As usual, the dowdy lady at the register took no notice of the bear. Nor did anyone else for that matter, after all, bears don't talk - well known fact - so that obviously couldn't be a bear.

"Aw god dammit, not again." grumbled the bear, as his debit card failed to tap, luckily it worked on the second try. Mongrel was waiting, his pack already loaded up, but he waved off the bear's hurry "Eh, no rush. Rest of the day's not going anywhere just yet."

The air outside was crisp and cool, but not icy. The crusted piles of brown grime which had once been snow weren't yet gone, distantly resembling some ancient archipelago in the Great Parking Lot Sea. The sun, high in the sky, would no doubt wipe out any traces of the islands and all their long history, but for now the inhabitants fought and loved and lived and died without any inklings of a future marked by no more than an oily brine stain under a car.

The bear thoughtfully ate a cigarette, gazing up at the few wisps of cloud. "You want one?" he asked Mongrel out of politeness, Mongrel shook his head no as usual.

They loaded up the trunk of the bear's car, with Mongrel tossing his pack into the back seat, between the two cub seats; they'll be growing out of those real soon, mused Mongrel.

"Hey, so actually I got a late shift tonight" interrupted the bear "you need a lift anywhere else before I skedaddle? I wanna catch a nap before the kids wake up, but I've got a bit of time still."

Mongrel thought about it. He didn't want to impose, but after all, he still had a mystery to solve, and Ontario Place wasn't gonna get any less smelly, on the other hand it wasn't about to get any less abandoned either. Probably. But Mongrel was feeling the long night before too, and felt like he could really use a break, or at least a bite to eat. He could sort something out at home and take a couple hours off to yell at video games.

The bear broke in, "If you're hungry, I can drop you at work - I gotta go past it on my way home from here anyway. It's after 2, but they'll still give ya the lunch special if they see me." Work for the bear was (what else?) as a bouncer at The Elektrik 6ix, Toronto's self-proclaimed "2nd best gay bar (& grill) in town!", and the mojitos there were legendary.
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If Mongrel should continue investigating at the abandoned amusement park, turn to page 7

If Mongrel should go home and yell at video games, turn to page 19

If Mongrel should go to the bar, turn to page 23

[Mongrel]

Discussion in the thread should be fine, BTW. Polls will run for 3 days (seems like an ok amount of time?).

[atog]

Adventures with a talking bear have been long established as richer, deeper, and better than adventures without a talking bear, but I wanna see where this goes

[Caithness]

I'm feeling hungry so I voted for lunch

[Büge]

Best go see Ontario Place before Doug Ford has it torn down to make room for more condos.

[Mongrel]

Best go see Ontario Place before Doug Ford has it torn down to make room for more condos.

Yeah, for the record, Toronto really does have an honest-to-god abandoned amusement park right now (though the permanent buildings are mostly pavilions as the fairway stuff is only seasonal... the story may or may not reflect this, who knows).

[Upthorn]

There are lots of interesting or important things I could be doing with my life, but I basically always choose stay home play games. Why should this adventure be any different?

[Mothra]

Go to the car wash and tell the guy "Lemme have it"

[Silversong]

Glad I read the comments before voting. I never would've guessed "Ontario Place" was an amusement park. What a generic, terrible name, no wonder it got abandoned.

[Mongrel]

It was really cool for a long time though. They had a Legoland!

[Mongrel]

Also a tie! With two hours to goooooo! Don't tear the pages kids, or we won't be going back to the book fair next time!

[Mongrel]

Tonight is Jackbox so this might not be up until later tonight or tomorrow, but for the time being I will say Page 19, in classic CYOA style, was just gonna be an early THE END page where I die of an aneurysm yelling at idiots online.

Like there are definitely going to be a couple of those along the way or it just won't be a proper CYOA, and maybe you guys hit one and maybe you don't, but I'm only doing that if I genuinely feel like "yeah, this would go badly", you know, like if I find myself staring a poll and thinking "You guys really want me to... go home and yell at video games? Really? What exactly are you expecting here?" So just FYI, there will definitely be the occasional genuine BAD END choices.

I wasn't JUST gonna make it a gotcha off the very first question though, because that would have been pretty shitty, even if it IS true to CYOA! I did manage to come up with something as a backup-workaround that wasn't just "haha you chose wrong now go back and pick one of the two REAL choices." But I'm gonna keep that bit to myself that in case I need it later. :D

For the time being let's just say you all just snuck a quick peek at Page 19 while flipping to your real choice. Which, of course, is another CYOA tradition.

[Silversong]

The gods gave us four fingers and a thumb to keep the book open and hold four pages in a CYOA

[Mongrel]

Sorrrryyyyyy week kinda busy.

Also, I totally did that too, of course. You gimme a book you think I'm not gonna read the whole thing?!

[Silversong]

"Mongrel stood in the parking lot and thought and thought, and did not post."

[Mongrel]

Not just here, I've barely been posting anywhere for that matter.

Nothing horrible, simply the last couple weeks have been absolutely non-stop. Spring or something, I guess.

[Grath]

It turns out the true Mongrel-not-posting was the friends we made along the way.

[beatbandito]

The only way to get Mongrel to stop posting is to want him to.