Chapter 9 – Aiming for the stars.
“I hope to go that way too: monologuing myself to death. That’s just freakin’ awesome.”
“OH NO, FATHER, NOOOOOO! BOOOOOHOOOOOHOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
“Er….”
“Do YOU have the power?”
“I… don’t think it works quite like that, Ayn.”
“OH FATHER WHY DID IT HAVE TO TURN OUT THIS WAY?! BOOOOOO HOOOOO HOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOHOOOOOO!”
“So, they’re coming from a celestial object? How are they doing that?”
“OH DAD, WHYYYYY?! WAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAA!”
“Thea, please….”
“Um…. ok. I’m not sure how important knowing this name is going to be, though.”
*sniff* “Daaaaahaaaahaaaad! WHYYYYYYYY?!”
“Thea, for the love of everything; put a lid on it.”
“Well, that makes me totally worried that we’ll be completely slaughtered the second we set foot in there.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine. The fact that all NPC people are complete wussies has been established a long time ago.”
“At which place is a castle dungeon considered ‘a place of peace’? You guys are strange.”
“Er… Ayn, I don’t think he was referring to the dungeon. Specifically.”
“Oh, well. Let’s just carefully sneak in here…”
“D’OH!”
“I guess they want us to STIX ‘EM UP!”
“Have you girls been suffering through this nonsense all this time?”
“Yes!”
“Pretty much.”
“Wow.”
“We’re going around the back yard again, aren’t we?”
“Well, of course. That’s always the shortest route anyway, isn’t it?”
“Well… yeah, I guess I can’t argue with that.”
“Ok, so… what kind of dungeons do you think we’ll get this time?”
“I dunno…. wouldn’t it just be a regular dungeon?”
“I guess it’s always a possibility that it’s rock walls and gravel floor.”
“It would be nice if they have that glass floor dungeon thing. That looked really nice.”
“Psh! Fat chance of that.”
“You were saying?”
“Um… well, I… uh….”
“I must admit I’m a bit flabbergasted myself. This isn’t exactly your normal castle dungeon.”
“I agree. Hey, what’s with the smug grin there, Thea?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“What the….”
“Well, that’s… new.”
“Robot chickens? Another Stix creature, and… uh…”
“What does it even do?”
“It attacks us by.. TRYING TO CONFUSE US!”
“WHICH WAY IS UP? WHICH WAY IS DOWN? I DO NOT KNOW!”
“CURSE YOU, FLOPPER!”
“Yes, curse you, flopper. You’re trying to get at me by making me endure bad comedy acts.”
“There sure are a lot of blockades here, though.”
“Lots of computers and stuff. Processing power up the wazoo.”
“God damn it! Dead ends, how long will you impede my progress.”
“You know, you COULD try to take the less obvious routes. I thought you learned that by now.”
“Hey, it’s an old guy.”
“Girls are so rude. Just because they never age, they think they have the right to give us a hard time merely for growing awesome moustaches.”
“Don’t sweat it, Ayn. It’s just moustache envy.” *chuckle*
“Yeah, I thought so. Well, fear not, old man. I vow on this very day to become a man and grow a magnificent moustache. You women can just stew in your immortality, knowing only shame and failure for your inability to do this.”
“You meanie! I’ll cry myself to sleep for days on end now.”
“Hey, Sari?”
“Yes?”
“You’ve had the Topaz all this time, right?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Oh, just trying to figure out the logic of how having a gemstone proves one’s courage and worth. Shouldn’t it have been hidden away in a really dangerous dungeon or something if that was the case?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“Does it really matter? We DO have it, so that means we DON’T have to go traverse yet another dungeon before returning AGAIN.”
“You… have a point.”
“What do we have here? Why, it looks like a… um… a ship? Doesn’t quite look like it’ll float well on the ocean, though, what with it being made out of metal and all.”
“Actually, it IS a ship, but not quite the way you think.”
“How so?”
“Hop in, and I’ll show you.”
“Ok, we’re all in. Now what?”
“Sit down and buckle up.”
“Buckle.. up? What does that even mean?”
“Sit your ass down in those chairs and fasten yourselves with the belts on them.”
“Oh. Well… I guess that it’s easier to say ‘buckle up’, huh?”
“Unless I have to explain everything, yes.”
“Well, we’re ‘buckled up’, so to speak, so… go ahead.”
“Whoa. Getting… dizzy…”
“Does this call for a ‘YEEEE HAW’?!”
“Sure. Knock yourselves out.”
“I just gotta know: How high can you go?”
“I’m so glad you asked.”
“Wow! I can see my house from here.”
“Castle, Ayn.”
“Whatever.”
“So, what are these domes? Are we… a part of some horrible experiment?”
“And where is the desert region of Aridia? Shouldn’t it be somewhere in there?”
“That’s… too big to be a spaceship. Or a satellite, for that matter.”
“Unless someone is hit with a bout of megalomania, of course.”
“Or maybe just a love for technology, you philistines. Don’t knock that thing. It’s… beautiful.”
“So, we basically took a spaceship from a spaceship to a spaceship? That’s… nice.”
“Well, we couldn’t exactly land Satellite into the main craft.”
“Yeah, that’d just be silly.”
“Some people really have a hard-on for glass floors, don’t they?”
“This place is all temple-ish and stony, though. It’s something new. I like it.”
“Hmmm yeah, it is.”
“I wonder if we’ll encounter any enemies in here.”
“Apparently so.”
“There’s even two version of those odd ‘which way will you go’ robots.”
“Yes, it’s a Stickbot and a Polebot.”
“YOU CAN STICK A POLE IN IT!”
“Wow, those are some wide-ass stairs. Probably meant for wide-assed people.”
“Wide or not, these stairs are made for walking. So get walking already.”
“Only a man…
“Or woman!”
“Yes, or woman… whose ass is narrow can walk these stairs. And since I’m such a man…”
“Or woman!”
“Yes, or wo-..wait, I’m not a woman.”
“Tsh! He didn’t fall for it.”
“Oh God, she’s got a plan now. She’s planning on setting me up for something.”
“Whaaaat? More stairs?”
“Two steps forward, one step up. That’s the way of… um, space?”
“Oh, stop with the nonsense. Who do you think you are?”
“I am… THE STAIRMASTER!”
“They say that ‘in space, noone can hear you scream’. I am going to prove them wrong right now.”
“And we have a dungeon.”
“In space.”
“Well, even down in Landen or what have you, we are in space, so it’s kind of a moot point.”
“Yes, but this spaceship isn’t pretending to be a planet. A moon, perhaps, but…”
“Christ, the maintenance in this place is just horrible. There’s shattered floor tiles everywhere. Don’t these people know that broken glass is quite dangerous?”
“They should totally fire the janitor.”
“I don’t think they HAVE a janitor.”
“Or they have a really lazy one.”
“Fatale? Well, I guess that’s an appropriate name for a Karatebot. Even if it’s the kind that got boobies.”
“I know I’ve said this before, but you really are your father’s son.”
“You should totally start doing split kicks like that, though.”
“I WILL NOT!”
“Oh yeah, I’m SO having you do this from now on.”
“MAKING CREEPY SUGGESTIONS IS PROHIBITED!”
“Wren, I swear, if you say ‘well, you know what they say’… I swear by Orakio I will BOOT you down from this path.”
“Well, you… I… uh, wasn’t going to.”
“We’ve got a ForceBand. I wonder if they play Power Metal.”
*blink*
“And you give ME a hard time over my lines.”
“Man, this path is just wide. It’s almost like we’re about to meet someone important.”
“Well, that’s why we came up here, didn’t we?”
“Yes, I know. I’m just saying.”
“Hey, Mieu. It’s another one for the 1000 years club.”
“Yeah, well, unfortunately for him, this is a no-mime club. Tell mr. Pasty Face that his admission form has been rejected.”
“Join you? I had no such plan in mind. The only joining that’ll happen now is the one between you and your ancestors.”
“Oh yeah? Well, who is going to make that happen?”
“You and your… pink balls?”
“You and your man-boobs?”
“I’m SO glad I’m a newer model. That would just be embarrassing.”
“SILENCE! YOU DIE NOW!”
“Or not! Curses!”
“Yeah, yeah. That’s what they all say. And they usually do too.”
“You… weren’t going to include that last part, you dope.”
“But it’s true, isn’t it?”
“But that still doesn’t mean you HAVE to say it.”
“Er… is it alright if I go now? Or are you planning on boring me to death by heckling yourselves.”
“Nonono. Feel free to leave.”
“Thank you.”
“There went a polite villain.”
“Sure did.”
“Oh well, we’ve reached our goal now, so you know what that means, right?”
“Erm… not really. What?”
“Wait, what?”
And so, our friends reach the end of their destiny, and Ayn found out that he really has to live up to his father’s name by once again deciding to pick a queen from his two suitors. This is not going to be an easy choice for many reasons, but, as his father had decreed it, it has to be made so.
“But… but… I’ve barely spent any time with Sari, and Thea is a childhood friend. How do you expect me to decide?”
“That didn’t stop your father.”
“I… did not need to know that.”