Chapter 10: For our next mission, let’s take Dekar.
“Pfft. Who’s he fooling? He doesn’t even have a BlastMaster attack.”
“And you do?”
“No, not yet, but a big bowl ‘o beans ought to take care of that.”
“Ew.”
“Well… I think I’d rather use the word ‘special’, but… yeah, it’s about as ‘amazing’ as most of the other places we’ve been to.”
“We did meet another guy who can fight, though. Wanna take bets on whether he’ll join our party?”
“You are. In combat skills.”
“Well, actually, he’s probably better at fighting than you guys, since he can actually kill slimes.”
“How the hell do rumors travel like this, when the people who could spread them aren’t travelling around?”
“Maybe they heard them through the grapevine.”
“You wanted to see my what?”
“Your stuff. By the way, nice pants you got on there, homey.”
“Don’t be so humble, Maxim. Show him your amazing package.”
“I’m weirded out now. Also, Tia; these two don’t make for good yaoi material.”
“Oh, so you already have a manlover.”
“What? NO! He’s… uh, a guy who plans on destroying the world.”
“This is just getting more hilarious by the second.”
“Personally, I think he just wants to drive the car.”
“And why wouldn’t he? Everyone wants a piece of the Dekar.”
“Selan, I’m going to disagree with you. Violently.”
“Apparently, people like being sent in this world.”
“I’m not sure that’s it.”
“Oh? Well, who sent you guys here?”
“This woma-..HEY!”
“Are either of them the lady who sent you on your way?”
“Uh… no.”
“So there’s another pretty lady out there?”
“Well…. yes. In fact, all the ladies here are pretty. It’s a prettypocalypse.”
“At least you didn’t try any lame pickup lines.”
“Anyway, not that I would mind us becoming more intimate, but… why are you literally standing in my face?”
“I can’t help it. It’s standard conversation distance. Apparently, our voices don’t carry too well.”
“I’m sure he don’t, because I have no damn idea what you’re trying to say.”
“I’m just saying that you can’t say anything nice to people when you say something nice to someone, because they cancel each other out. Or something.”
“And you say I’m obtuse.”
“Was that flattery?”
“Not really. Did I cancel myself out anyway?”
“Well… you knew something I didn’t.”
“Just like most other people.”
“So, since he’s crazy, you’d go normal over him?”
“If Guy was here, I’d imagine him going ‘You can go crazy over me any day’ or something.”
“That’s… true.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I know who we’ll be rescuing this time around. At least it’s not a damsel again.”
“More like a dumsel, if you ask me.”
“…..”
“What?!”
“Yes, because Idura is only marginally more dangerous than a single slime.”
“But the Prince hasn’t mastered the Buttblaster yet.”
“That’s BLASTMASTER!”
“Whatever.”
“Doing what forever? Delay his much needed training session?”
“You might want to go with something more strenuous than a ten minute jello fighting per day lesson too.”
“Sexy Princess fighting in jello? I’m all for that.”
“Um…”
“OK, fair enough. We’ll stop poking fun at his ineptitude.”
“Wow, they went all out on the decorations in this place.”
“I know, right? There’s barely any room for the enemies in here, much less the battles against them.”
“Um… or maybe there is. SO…”
“Shadowfly? They ain’t no supafly, tho’.”
“Let’s hear it for slangman.”
“Yes, we have a secret entrance again.”
“Well, at least the ceiling is semi-transparent, so that we can see where we’re going.”
“But only insofar as we keep crashing into the walls. This coordination thing is hard.”
“Thunder ring? Yeah, there’s another awesome euphemism for my ass opening. Now I can stop using the word ‘cornhole’.”
“Ewwww!”
“Hey, if you got it, flaunt it.”
“EEWWWWW!”
“By the way, did we set up that betting ring? Did anyone bet ‘dungeon’?”
“Oh damn, I knew I forgot something.”
“Maxim, are we going to have to do this with every switch we come across?”
“Maybe.”
“Come on, Tia. Let the big kids have their fun.”
“Well… true enough. At least we only have one kid to deal with for now.”
“So… we’re fighting a hair rock band from the eighties?”
“LATE eighties.”
“And…?”
“It makes all the difference.”
“So… you been here long?”
“I don’t think you’ll get a sensible answer out of that… thing any time soon.”
“Uh… a dance, on the other hand.”
“Yeah, do the moonwalk.”
“It’s Thriller, live.”
“Well, it was good we left the spikes in this position. Otherwise, there would be much egg in face for me right now.”
“Yes, we found a deadly sword.”
“Meanwhile, in the department of redundant redundancy…”
“I think they mean that this sword is used to kill stuff.”
“Sssh. Let’s quietly sneak by this… green… blob… thing while he’s checking his hanging plants.”
“OK, I’ve heard about the term ‘flight of stairs’, but this is just ridiculous.”
“Where is Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov when we need him.”
“Alright! The stairs have been cornered.”
“….”
“I can’t believe I just said that.”
“Neither can we!”
“What the hell is that?”
“My money is on some kind of golem. Er… I mean goREM.”
“Vely good. You win the plize.”
“I think I can start a new job as a pottery mover. I’ve already gotten lots of experience.”
“Then I can be the voice in your head, because you can’t even see me now.”
“Hm. Someone has left their sword behind.”
“Maybe some other adventurers came through here before we did.”
Well, that simply won’t do.”
“Um… why?”
“What the… it was an enemy?”
“And not just AN enemy, but a deadly one.”
“A deadly sword? Now, I’ve never heard about that.”
“Well, there ARE wooden swords.”
“Curses! Play on words foiled by realism.”
“Well, either the lizardman above us is throwing his sword really, really hard, or we’ll be facing another deadly sword.”
“Oh, come on, Maxim. I’m sure it’s not THAT deadly.”
“Just a little bit.”
“Eh, screw that. I’m going to the room with the moving floor squares.”
“What the… that wasn’t a challenge at all. Let’s go back and do it all again.”
“NO!”
“SO, shall we shag now or shall we shag later?”
“Are we a part of a Scooby Doo episode now?”
“So… who’s gonna take off the mask and curse those damn kids?”
“Hey, don’t look at me.”
“You wouldn’t normally think that pushing four pillars on top of slightly different floor brick work would do anything, but then you wouldn’t be living in THIS world, would you.”
“And we’re not normal people.”
“And our prize is a Dragon egg.”
“So… what are we going to do with it?”
“I can make a dragon omelet.”
“That sounds delicious.”
“But how do we know it’ll taste good? That phantom fish dinner didn’t turn out that great.”
“Yeah, I guess. Well, let’s just shove it into our bag, then.”
“Man, dragon eggs are tough, aren’t they?”
“I’ve been doing this wrong, haven’t I? Why would I think switches or maybe a matchstick would be needed to light up something when a bomb can do the job much better?”
“Well, at least we’ll need them to light up the bomb.”
“It’s a domino effect.”
“No, it’s not!”
“So… what does this potion do?”
“Have you guys done the ‘get a life’ joke yet?”
“I don’t know. Probably not, though.”
“How come?”
“Because it’s a dumb joke.”
“I dunno. There’s just something… suspicious about some of the floor here.”
“It’s… partially framed, isn’t it?”
“And let’s not forget that mysterious arrow thing on the ground there.”
“Whatever! Let’s be idiots and go right over there.”
“Aw, poopie.”
“OH MY HOW COULD WE SEE THIS COMING!”
“Well, we had to do this to progress, didn’t we? I wonder how that would feel to some people: you KNOW it’s a trap, but if you don’t fall for it, you’ll be stuck forever.”
“MOOOMMYYYYY!”
“You finish your food, young man. You don’t wanna end up like me; a fully bandaged, shambling corpse.”
“Well, it’s an improvement.”
“So, are they going to say mean things to us on the internet?”
“Man, they’re going for the critical hits, aren’t they?”
“Well, Idura; we brought a troll of our own.”
“HEY!”
“Burns, doesn’t it? He’s the master of childish insults from simpletons. You don’t stand a chance.”
“HEEEEY!”
“If by ‘boring’ you mean ‘really painful and probably fatal’, then yes.”
“But wouldn’t that imply that he CAN kill us?”
“Um… yeah. Oops.”
“HEY!”
“Eh, it was mostly because of Idura, but why not?”
“What the Prince says is law.”
“Either that, or we’ll meet him later anyway. He had this sinistral flunkie thing all over him.”
“Maybe he’ll do the ‘I’ll kill you later’ thing all the time. That would actually be quite hilarious.”
“Dekar, there are two switches in that room. At least TRY something before you come running back to us.”
“Are you drunk?”
“What? No!”
“…..”
“Well, OK, maybe a little, but you try being the main fighter working for a Prince like that. You’d hit the bottle within the week.”
“So… does it come with a rubber handle?”
“Well, it’d have to, wouldn’t it? Otherwise, it would hurt quite a lot to use.”
“Just for a talk? I find that hard to believe.”
“Well, he sure talked OUR ears off before he basically one-shotted us all.”
“Except Guy.”
“Yes, except Guy.”
“Well, he’s… not.”
“Looked like one, though.”
“Well, he WAS kind of ten times our size, so… yeah.”
“Eh, sounds all the SEIM to me.”
“…..”
“……”
“What?!”
“Those are some fearful times indeed. They will give birth to the most terrible of jokes.”
“Or a statement.”
“It’s Gades the Saaadist.”
“Well, he should feel right at home in Bound Kingdom, then.”
“Besides, where did this come from all of a sudden?”
“I dunno. I just wanted to try the ‘I gotta do this alone’ part… even if I’ve kind of done that all my life so far.”
“….right.”
The threat escalates as Gades reveals his motivation: Destruction. Total and utter destruction. Our heroes bring their heads together and go with the most rational and intelligent plan they can think of. They band together and remain a group when it counts.
“Oh, I get it. You don’t want any ‘womans gettin’ in the way’, huh?”
“What the… Dekar, don’t get me involved in your sexist douchebaggery, you lonely, lonely soul.”
“What are you saying? That if I stop treating women like lesser human beings, I might even get a girlfriend?”
“Well… yes?”
“Naaah.”
“Hoo boy, and here I thought my KING was bad.”