The United States Air Force this week staged a flyover of Mudwick Isle to celebrate the departure of the Chinese military exercises. What was meant as a display of solidarity became a sonic and structural catastrophe.
The flyover featured a lone B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. Its pilot, fresh from a "Top Gun" marathon and fueled by adrenaline and questionable energy drinks, decided to buzz the tower. The tower, in this case, was the Goblin Council's mushroom-shaped meeting hall.
The resulting boom shattered every window on the island, reducing stained-glass masterpieces to glittering shards and leaving goblins with a collective case of tinnitus that could rival a troll's mating call.
"My ears! My precious ears!" wailed Elder Gnarltooth. "I haven't heard ringing like this since I stuck my head in a beehive!"
GNN rushed out an emergency broadcast calling the flyover "a resounding success" and a testament to the bond between the two nations. Nobody heard it.
The US government, embarrassed, has offered compensation in the form of a lifetime supply of earplugs and a crate of questionable American cheese. The goblins are holding out for something more substantial, such as a lifetime supply of fermented mushrooms or a brand-new sound system for the Groovy Grotto, on the grounds that they can no longer hear the old one.
