Chapter 21: Returning from the point of no return.
“I’m tired of doing stuff I’m used to. I want to be swep.. uh, I mean thrown off my feet. Soon.”
“Do you remember when I swept you off your feet, Selan?”
“I remember that. I immediately followed it up with a swift staff strike to your abdomen as I flipped back to my feet, and then we locked weapons for a while. It was so romantic.”
“Uh…. OK? And here I thought I was weird.”
“Oh, snap, son. You just got told.”
“It’s almost like picking on the mentally challenged.”
“I told you the douche would receive his just desserts.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But as the King of this place, I certainly can BAIL you out of the castle.”
“Um… that’s not quite how it works, but…”
“How about we just throw him off one of the towers into the moat?”
“I think even the crocodiles would find him unappetizing. Also…”
“Yeah, come to think of it, this castle doesn’t really look worse off than any of the other castles we’ve been visiting.”
“So, is Prince Douche rolling in gold or something? Why did they even let him into the castle if they were just going to blow him off anyway?”
“It was probably a neat test on their part; yank the crank of the asshole and get him to bleed.”
“Yes, thank you for that great mental image, honey.”
“Well… for mostly being a waste of time to begin with, yeah. Hanz und Franz coulda dealt with that on their own.”
“Save for the Sinistral incident, sure.”
“Yeah, I guess there’s that.”
“At any rate, we’re done here, aren’t we? Time to move on, yes?”
“Um… or maybe not?”
“Well, gee, I wonder who that could be.”
“We’re going there, aren’t we?”
“Fo sho.”
“Yes, thank you, Captain Obvious.”
“Science says explaining a joke or a humorous comment completely obliterates its entertainment value. Especially if your listeners already know the answer.”
“Well, excuuuuuuse me.”
“In a flash.”
“Or at least that’s what I hope they are saying. I’d hate to see a town being destroyed WITH a flash. A whole city, collapsing at the sight of The Magnificent Wang.”
“I think ‘The Amazing Wang’ has a nicer ring to it.”
“Why would a flasher need a name with a nicer ring to it?”
“Everyone could use that.”
“Yep, this place looks good and trashed, alright.”
“It must have taken one hell of a beating.”
“Our man in gold sure swings a big stick.”
“Yep. Totally squashed like a fly. Crushed like a bug under a wheel. Flattened like a fly to a fly swatter….”
“Somehow, it really irks me when you put it like that.”
“Well, when you’re going to just show up and do little to nothing, that’s what you get.”
“And wouldn’t that follow an interesting pattern. But no, I shall not be overcome again.”
“Or overdone.”
“So… this is what the Sinistrals do in their spare time? Go around wrecking cities?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“So, basically, we got a bunch of evil overlords with the mental capacity of school bullies. That’s just swell.”
“Well, that’s odd, because not five minutes ago, you told me it sucked.”
“No, I told you it’s not enough.
“You mean like… a force of some kind?”
“Sure, if you don’t mind getting sued.”
“Oh, come on. It can’t be THAT specific.”
“Are you a bettin’ man, Mr. Scientist?”
“Well, of course it’s a sword. What else would it be?”
“Dual blade? Having two sword blades on one hilt just strikes me as a really bad idea.”
“It’s not a LITERAL dual blade, Maxim.You really need to learn how to think more abstract.”
“Well, that’s an… odd answer.”
“Not to mention a pompous one.”
“We can’t all be looking for love, Mr. Smooth. Some of us need to keep up the hero part of the hero’s journey.”
“BOOOOOO-RIIIING!”
“Guh! What the…”
“Guy, this is a funeral service. Do you think you could select a different way of being completely disrespectful?”
“I’m just saying eternal peace sounds boring. If I die, I want to end up in a place where I can enjoy eternal women, wine and punch.”
“Dunno about the wine part, but if you like, I can provide you with a punch from a woman. Would that help?”
“Sorry, but I’m not into the tsundere, much less the yandere.”
“But before that, I guess we have to look into some of the other towns in this continent and see what’s up.”
“Yep. No leads and all that.”
“And no ladies either. That’s the part that sucks the most.”
“And what am I? Chopped jelly?”
“No, not really. But you’re already married, so you’re off limits.”
“Well, maybe you’ll find SOME woman out there who might be able to find your complete lack of understanding for limits and boundaries acceptable.”
“Or just common sense altogether.”
“I dunno, Maxim. Wanna play ‘twenty questions’?”
“I already asked you one. The one that counts.”
“Your true self?”
“GAH! Did I think too loudly?”
“Well… yeah. Everyone seems to do that in this world.”
“So, what do you mean by your ‘true self’?”
“Um… nothing.”
“Are you a crossgender by any chance?”
“Nothing quite so complicated, no.”
“Well, he was a raging asshole, so that’s just all kinds of appropriate.”
“The levels of which I don’t care are unprecedented. And I’m a scientist.”
“No, not until Hans gets a few more stones.”
“Yeah, he’s gotta drop ’em pretty fast.”
“It’s nice to see that your priorities are still in the right place, though.”
“You just can’t defeat a good cake. And believe me; I’ve done studies on that. The experiments were…. highly entertaining.”
“Looks like we’ll be fighting the Current.”
“……”
“That was… just brilliant. You win, sir.”
“I love these people. They’re so baaaaad.”
“Well, they could all use a power-glove to the mid section if you ask me.”
“Power glove?”
“A little something I was working on. And man, was it bad. As prophecied, I guess.”
“Where did you learn about that? You interested in science?”
“I subscribe to ‘how to get out of turning into a housewife monthly’.”
“I… see. That’s… I have no words.”
“Well, my only other option was Cosmopolitan, a magazine written for women by fear-mongering lunatics.”
“!!!!!”
“Wow. He really is without words.”
“We should run an experiment on that.”
“Science, the battle of semantics.”
“She has a point, though; diving means sinking without taking in water. Regardless of what way you do; vehicles or lungs don’t work very well when full of water.”
“Not that you have to be a scientist to know that.”
“So… did we drop by this place just to get into an argument?”
“No, we weren’t. It’s just that the place was full of assholes.”
“It was just one kid saying someone built a sinking boat.”
“I will not let anyone mock science in my presence.”
“Then how would you know about the village?”
“Also, wanna take bets on whether said mountain is only known as the mountain of no return because it’s got some marginally difficult enemies on it? The kind that’s no threat to us, but probably will be for the people who never went beyond the city limits?”
“To return, one must first go somewhere. With that in mind, everyone here is an ‘of no return’ kind of a person.”
“Well, aren’t we getting all deep and stuff?”
“You can’t plant flowers in oil? THIS IS ALL NEWS TO ME!”
“I’m not sure the SMELL of oil should work like that, though.”
“Well, you know… where there’s a tire.”
“Um… that’s supposed to be fire.”
“I think that’s supposed to be about smoke, not oil.”
“Are you saying oil can’t be set on fire?”
“No, I… guh, you’re acting like this is an internet argument.”
“Internet?”
“Yes, it was something I was working on. I thought it would be useful, but now I’m not so sure anymore.”
“Yes. I came.”
“……”
“And that’s all that needs to be said in this case.”
“I’d say you both are equally deficient in greeting courtesy.”
“Well, at least they’re the Kings of Getting To The Point.”
“Gotta rule at something, I guess.”
“Yes, the one, made from a whole tree.”
“Also, if you were done with the submarine design a long time ago, what HAVE you been doing up until now?”
“Well, that shut him up.”
“And there he go again.”
“He got PLANS, yo.”
“Well, except right, but who’s paying attention to that.”
“But even so, there’s just no way she should be able to get past all these people, right?”
“Yes, they were stolen by the girl you had just cut off. The one that, in your words, had nowhere to go.”
“Which is exactly the position you’re finding yourself in right now.”
“Well, that goes without saying.”
“Elf racism?”
“If pointing out that elves have pointy ears, yes.”
“Did you have a point?”
“No. Then again, I’m not an elf.”
“That’s a shame. I like bad girls.”
“Do you like children too, you pervert?”
“EW. No, not like that.”
“Speaking of children, what are you doing here?”
“She went to the Mountain of No Return… again?”
“Yeah, that doesn’t contradict its name at all.”
“Well, nobody is going to come from afar to challenge the Mountain of Safe Return.”
“Well, it’s not like anyone is coming over here even as it is. Maybe they need to rename the mountain to the Mountain of You’re Screwed.”
“Or the Mountain of Certain Peril.”
“Well, we’re going to show them all, aren’t we? We’re going to go to the Mountain of No Return, and we’re going to damn well return from it as well.”
“Damn straight. And then we’re going home and build or OWN Mountain of No Return. Without an exit.”
“Um… paths doesn’t quite work like that.”
“I know. I was just kidding. I just didn’t want to do the ‘Blackjack and hookers’ joke again. It’s getting kind of old.”
“And so, we face another flower to be plucked, and this one’s got fangs.”
“We’ve fought a lot of greenery on our route, haven’t we?”
“Not that I’ve been around the block myself — I’ve been too busy being a scientist and inventor — but is the plantlife really this aggressive all over?”
“Occasionally, I guess. Not sure how much of it Maxim fought before he met me.”
“Actually, not as much. In my part of the word, we mostly faced animals and… other, more unspecific types of life, like the jellies.”
“Apparently, I should venture outside more.”
“Yes, you should.”
“Come to think of it, the mountains in this world are oddly standard-based. It’s like they only come in three sizes: small, medium and large.”
“And they’re all vaguely round-ish too.”
“VALLEY OF THE HEXAGONAL!”
“Warts of the land.”
“Do you think we can make this jump?”
“We can’t jump, remember?”
“I know. Oh, how easy it would have been if we could.”
“Then the dungens would just be more complicated.”
“Such a pessimist.”
“Well, we can’t really jump unless the arrows allow for it, so…”
“Alright, you loverboys. Why don’t you just stand off to the side and make kissy-faces for a while. The way you’re pushing us back when we try to pass your field of vision is kind of impeding our progress.”
“And so, a whole subgenre of fujoshi bait was born.”
“Oh, man. We gotta arrange for a whole orgie this time.”
“….OK, even I have to admit this is getting kind of hot.”
“I think we’ve got all bases covered now.”
“YES, DEFINITELY FEELING IT NOW!”
“So… lots of plantlife in here.”
“I suppose it’s the kind that doesn’t need much sunlight. I guess I should take some with me for when I return to my lab.”
“I take it you’ve tried having something green down there?”
“Heh heh. ‘Down there’, she says.”
“…….”
“Uh…. yes, I’ve… tried growing some stuff… down there. In my lab, I mean.”
“That’s it! I’m going to start referring to my willie as ‘the lab’. That way, I can invite the ladies to do some… experiments in my lab.”
“If you can’t go to ‘the lab’, I guess….”
“Idiot!”
“That is neither a wheel or an eel.”
“It’s not even THAT round. Or long.”
“That’s what she said.”
“…..”
“The Ents are kind of mad, though.”
“How do tree rabies work, anyway?”
“I guess we should apply our own brand of anger management, stat.”
“Well, thank God they built this bridge. With our lack of jumping abilities, this would have been a hard cross.”
“Even if we COULD jump, this would have been a bit of a stretch.”
“You’ve never seen Selan in action, have you?”
“Oh, quiet, you.”
“Seriously, you helped them build this bridge, didn’t you? Jump the gap, punch a few poles into the ground and then tie up the rope you brought. That’s how it went, isn’t it?”
“I plead the fifth.”
“So many things getting in the way of the love of the dragonhead stone pillars. It makes me a bit weepy.”
“You’re a sensitive man, my dear. You are the best.”
“I… don’t know if they’re serious or not.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“Didn’t we already find a sword made of water?”
“No, I think that was a ring.”
“We’ve found so many odd things made of normally unwearable stuff, like elements, it’s hard to keep track of it all.”
“With this, we can stop forest fire. Then finally we’d be able to shut that damn bear up.”
“There she is.”
“I guess everything went according to plan?”
“But whose plan? That’s the thing that will keep ME up at night.”
“Gargoyles? Oh, no, what will Disney say?”
“I don’t think we have to worry too much about that.”
“Yeesh. Give something a personality, and suddenly murdering them becomes much more difficult.”
“Makes me long for the days of indiscriminate killings.”
“Um… yes, we did, Mr. Just Too Late.”
“And you are?”
“You didn’t know? Weren’t even the people in your city talking about it? How could you not know?”
“It’s not MY lab. I’m following all the legal standards of material disposal and recyclings.”
“Well, aside from all the ships you sink, but eh….”
“I knew it! YOU ARE THE ENEMY OF PLANTS EVERYWHERE!”
“Well, a lot of them ARE actively trying to kill us.”
“Good!”
“Milka!”
“Wow! I know you’re not like that, Lexis, but that sounded like a textbook example of an invitation from Uncle Bad Touch.”
“And it’s all over flowers too, one of the most frequently used euphemisms for… well….”
*euphemisms, you say?*
“My list of ‘euphemisms for the vagina’ is a little out of date.”
“You could say it’s a little behind.”
“Guh!”
“You’re trying to throw yourselves on the euphemism bandwagon, aren’t you?”
“Everything to distance ourselves from your dirty mouth, you pervert.”
*all hail the King and let’s get back on track…*
“She went for it? Kind of gullible for such a clever kid, ain’t she?”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Anyway, let’s return before something else shows up.”
New mission in hand, and new friends met, our heroes ponder their next step beyond the impending flower garden project.
“D’oh!”
“Too late.”
“Sometimes, I feel like we’ve been lead by the nose this entire time. And with the rhythm of a nine-to-five job at that.”