The Duel and the Burning School

Fighting Words Laois, Scoil Bhríde, Portlaoise, 5th Class 20th November 2025

Chapter 4
Meanwhile, in Portlaoise, Bobby the Baboon (who is also a witch) suddenly materialised and began to cause chaos!

 Bobby could smell a weird smell of berries mixed together with hot dogs. It turned out that Alex Higgins the Fire Ant was under his minivan. Alex saw Bobby the baboon and was frightened; he tried to get out from under the car and Bobby tried to step on him.

Alex quickly scrambled up his shoulder and bit Bobby on the neck. Bobby was trying to use his hands to hit him, but he couldn’t because he was also holding the steering wheel.

Bobby swerved and crashed into the fountain in the Laois Shopping Centre and landed in the water. Alex was still on Bobby when he crashed the minivan and he went flying through the air. He landed on a gumball machine that was a Miracle berry dispenser. He crawled into the gumball machine, ate one of the berries and became enormous. Alex’s greatest fear was humans, but now they were afraid of him because of his size!

The Marvel theme music was playing loudly on the speakers and it inspired Alex to fight Bobby. Alex shot fire out of his mouth, because he is a magical fire ant. The Miracle berries enhanced his power, so he sat Bobby the Baboon on fire. To escape, Bobby jumped into the fountain, he turned the water obsidian and threw it into Alex’s mouth to stop the fire that was billowing out.

Before Bobby died in the flames, he transformed into a cat and had eight more lives. He changed into a black Siamese cat with one pinky purple eye and one reddish orange one. Meanwhile, Alex the Fire Ant thought that Bobby was dead and there was just a cat there. The cat ran away, and Alex shrinks down into his normal size because the berry power ran out.

Once back to his normal size, Alex was afraid of humans again. He tried to get more of the berries but there were children using the dispenser. They thought the berries were cool and wanted to try one.  Alex was still holding onto one of the berries when one of the children got into the car, to go to the Sliabh Blooms with their family. Because Alex was afraid of humans, he tried to hide in a hole in the berry. However, the child saw him, and he was flicked off with a Tesco Club Card.

Alex found himself alone in the Slieve Blooms. He was terrified - cold and lonely - using the Tesco Club Card to keep warm. Fortunately, he found a miracle berry bush in the Slieve Blooms. He ate one and took one for the road. The berry caused Alex to grow to 20 feet tall - taller than a two-storey house. At this point, his greatest wish is to reunite with his friend, Ruan Gallagher, who lived on top of a cloud that hovers above the Rock of Dunamase.

Alex decided to run to the Rock. When he arrived, he tripped on a magic golden berry tree at the graveyard at the Rock of Dunamase. He took one of the golden berries and shrunk back to normal size. He saw a trampoline in a child’s backyard and also spotted a paper airplane on the ground. He climbed on the plane and a gust of wind sent towards the trampoline. He bounced very high and landed on the cloud, where he found his friend Ruan. Alex was delighted to see his friend. Ruan made him welcome and, and as is a hot dog seller, he gave Alex vegan hotdogs.

Meanwhile, Bobby reappeared and resumed his fight with Alex. Bobby had changed into a water ant and fired water but, before the water hits Alex, Ruan blocked the water with his hand. The high-pressure water put a hole through Ruan’s hand, but he was able to heal it using hotdog juice.

While this battle was taking place, Ruan saw smoke from the top of his cloud. Earlier on, Bobby had broken into the school. He was hungry after his earlier fight with Alex and had tried to make some toast and set the kitchen on fire. Ruan and Alex abandoned their fight with Bobby and raced to the school on board the cloud. Alex ate the spare berry and turned huge again, and was able to carry all the pupils from the burning school

Bobby, meanwhile, had seen the error of his ways and decided to do good. As a water ant, he was able to use his water powers to put out the fire. Meanwhile, however, Bulldozer the rhino who was terrified of humans, stole Bobby’s powers and set the school on fire again using Bobby the Witch’s magic wand!

Fortunately, Roksana Lewandowska, who was working at Tesco, gave everyone free fire extinguishers and the rest of fifth class (Enija Blumberga, Elizaveta Bubovics , Maja Furutin , Sharon Lakatosova, Jasmine McCormack, Lexie Quinn, Liliana Rennu, Daniele Taralyte, Leah Margaret Whelan, Danial Bockaiov, Robert Andrei Boroeanu, Cillian Delaney, Maksim Krasko, Roy Kristinojs, Sameer-Ali Lawlor, Aleksander Lyshak and Daniel Voros) used the extinguishers to put out the fire.  Their teachers, Ms Bergin and Ms Scully, also helped put out the fire. Fifth Class then got to skip school for three years!

And so everything finished up happily ever after…