Chapter 14: At least Alys’s life isn’t at stake anymore.
“And we are back at… wait, second planet? Compared to what?”
“Parma, I presume.”
“But Parma isn’t around anymore. So wouldn’t Motavia be the new number one?”
“Balderdash. There is only… uh… one number one. And that’s me.”
“Yes, Raja. You are a rock. You are a mountain.”
“You are a whole goddamned planet.”
“Well, anyway, my point being since I am THE number one, that means Dezolis is, and has always been, PLANET number one.”
“Of course.”
“And we are back. So… now that we’re here, what should we do?”
“I would like to drop by Zema. Maybe I could find some of Seed’s old memory units in the ruins.”
“As long as the parties never end, I don’t care where we go.”
“Somewhere with some high technology. I need to upgrade and recharge.”
“We should totally drop by the College to make fun of Hahn.”
“The joke’s on you, then, because we’re going to Aiedo and pick up quests in the Hunter’s Guild. And you’re all coming along.”
“Oh, you…”
“Missing students. And… Fissure of Fear? Are we fighting a huge monster who farts fear gas?”
“And kidnaps students to take revenge for those years in college when everyone made fun of him for smelling like ass-gas?”
“What? No! I mean… Eww.”
“Oh, really. Are you sure they’re not on Dezolis? Or Kuran?”
“Piata. It sounds more like an Italian restaurant or something.”
“Italian?”
“Yeah. Some place I read about on the internet. It’s on a place called ‘Earth’.”
“Are you done now?”
“….yes.”
“Anyway, let’s go for a pizza in Piazza de Piata.”
“I’m blaming you for all of this, Rika.”
“OK, fine. Sorry for asking him to come along.”
“Oho. A cult, you say? Enthusiastic devotee, you say? Now, I’ve NEVER seen anything like that.”
“I think I would have preferred the fear-gas farting monster than having to return to that place, but then, that would’ve been just one guild quest, wouldn’t it?”
“I couldn’t help but notice you trailed off on that last sentence there. Is that repressed jealousy I hear?”
“Oh, so it’s the reputation you’re worried about. You’re a good man. And you can’t really keep a good man down, even when you want to, so that you can punch him in the face until he starts crying.”
“We could always try, though.”
“Boot in the balls too?”
“Sure, why not? Maybe then he’ll appreciate the trouble he’s putting US through.”
“Alright, one emo hellhole city coming up. I hope you have the anti-wank barriers at the ready. And Wren, set your phasers to ‘whine’.”
“Uh… OK.”
“Oh, Ziiiioooooo…”
“Hey, look who’s still around.”
“I miss you so much. I need your big…”
“AAAAAAH!”
“…hands…”
*whew*
“…all over my body.”
“AAAAAARGH!”
“You do? Well, that makes our mission ridiculously easy. If we leave right now through the powers of Ryuka, and…”
“You’re what? Well, excuuuuuse me, princess. What would you like? Caviar on rye? Huh?”
“Of course, she just HAD to fall over and make ME the villain here.”
“Eh, she willingly became Zio’s stooge. She had it coming.”
“Well, that’s… uh… good to know. Anyway, let’s find something to give her so that we can save the reputation of that asshole at the dorm. Then she’s free to join whichever cult drops by next. Maybe we can take her with us back to Dezolis, and she can join Tyler’s Love Colony. I’m sure the old guy would appreciate that.”
“We should give her that wooden carving. That ought to perk her up.”
“Fun as it would be to watch her fail to ‘get it’, I think we should go for the cheap option this time.”
“Oh man, I’m glad we didn’t buy that wooden thing, because if Dr. Weirdo here had started talking about eating those, I would probably never be able to visit this place with a straight face ever again.”
“And the term ‘nutritional value’ takes on a whole new meaning.”
“And she asked what happened. Well, we gave you something nutritious, my dear.”
“And she starts crying again. Good going, Rune.”
“Let’s just take her back now and salvage whatever we can out of this.”
“Oh, sure. We’ll only impart the full details to… THE INTERGALACTIC INTERNET SITES! MOUHAHAHAHA!”
“And now HE’S begun crying.”
“Eh, ask me if I care.”
“Alright, half done. Now for the… uh, what was it again? Crack of Doom?”
“No, Fissure of Fear. Although I guess we could call it the Asscrack of Doom.”
“That was actually kind of amusing. Who are you, and what did you do with Raja?”
“Did we ever stop taking it easy?”
“Well… no, but we can still make it official.”
“And we do that by shacking up.”
“Who said she changed? She might’ve always been an easily led sheep all her life for all you know.”
“You got me there. Also, she did come from the college, a place that thought it was a good idea to grow fleshy lumps with delusions of world conquest in their cellar, and then leave the cleanup to Alys, the one person on this planet with the shortest amount of patience for crap like this.”
“Ah, Monsen. The place filled with people who couldn’t even get off their own asses and fix the earthquake problem themselves. And now they want us to go down into a crack and bring a kid back. I’m sure nothing could go wrong with that.”
“Want to take bets on whether we have to take this mission because the kid in question is a huge idiot?”
“…nah. That’s a lose-lose situation if there ever was one.”
“I wonder how many of these guild quests we need to take because people are idiots.”
“Well, let’s see… we saved an idiot ranch owner, an idiot kid’s dog and an idiot teenager. And now we’re about to go looking for a kid. Yeah, odds are not in our favor here, methinks.”
“Oh, of course. That’s why you had word sent to the guild, which is actuall pretty far away from here, and waited for somene to want to take on this job, right?”
“…you know, instead of… oh, gathering all the residents of the village and GOING DOWN THAT DAMN HOLE! It’s just your kid, after all. No need to actually DO anything.”
“I remember this town. When old man Dorin and I passed by on my way to the Ladea Tower, they tried nagging us into going somewhere to stop some earthquakes or something, wherein I told them in no uncertain terms to stop being useless and go fix their problems themselves. I wonder if they actually did that, or if they found some other suckers to do their work for them.”
*cough*
“And now we are in a hole.”
“Yes. We’re all A-HOLES NOW OH HA HA HA.”
“…….”
“What?”
“He probably went to Dallas.”
“…….”
“What?!”
“Are we going to have to spend our entire time in this place listening to your jokes?”
“Uh….”
“Junior? Of what?”
“Yeah, I get the idea we’re about to find out.”
“Well, at least we know where we’re supposed to go when we’re done here.”
“These caves are so completely arbitrary? They almost make all this spelunking business worth it.”
“Well, what did you expect, you BIG SQUARE?!”
“Funny you should say that…”
*in that other world*
“Did we drop into someone’s Minecraft world by mistake? Or is this honestly supposed to be a cave?”
“Hell if I know, but I DO like this color sceme.”
*back to the… well, SANDED area…*
“No, I don’t think they have much to say.”
“…….”
“…you know, because they don’t talk.”
“…….”
“…um… because they’re shoes.”
“…….”
“Er…. ‘tell us’? Get it? ‘I wonder if they’ll tell us‘…”
“YES, WE GET IT! THANK YOU FOR EXPLAINING!”
“Oh, they just HAD to throw in a choice at the end, and we chose the dead end. Because… yeah.”
“And behind doorway 2 we fiiiiiind….?”
“A slug. Lovely.”
“No, it sure couldn’t.”
“…..”
“That better not have been a repeat joke.”
“It sure was.”
“Yeah, because that joke was so nice, you had to do it twice, huh?”
“You guys have no sense of humor.”
“Um… no, it’s not. In fact, it’s just sitting there. It won’t even attack us, even though I’m standing right here beside it, within tentacle reach.”
“Yes, it will. We need to stab it to death right now.”
“Rika, it’s doing nothing. I don’t think Seed ever taught you to be THAT murderous.”
“But it’s ickyyyyyy….”
“Well, that’s as good a reason as any.”
“It’s not a ‘jr.’, I’ll give it that.”
“Didn’t we encounter something similar before this?”
“Yes, we fought these two blue slugs that kind of slammed themselves into each other to form the 1+1=BIG1 formation.”
“And we won.”
“Whoop-de-doo.”
“Well, something tells me that this quest has been available for a while. Makes me wonder if they actually left the kid here to fend for himself for… maybe weeks on end.”
“Uh… no, it’s barely twenty feet down.”
“Oh, poopie. I wanted to dig my way through this planet to get out on the other side.”
“You what?! Why would you do that?”
“I dunno. I just wanted to.”
“You stupid little… did you think about anyone other than yourself when you started doing this? Did you ever sit down and consider the fact that you live in a town full of complete pussies who run crying to their mamas once something goes wrong… which, come to think of it, is an ideal you don’t seem to subscribe to a whole lot.”
“…..”
“Well, now I don’t know whether to chastize you or praise you. Anyway…”
“Anyway, this is far too much work, so I’ll just go home now.”
“Sure. Just give us a second to gather our items and experience, and we’ll come with you.”
“….um, or just head home on your own. Man, this kid’s got ten times more BALLS than all of you put together. It’s just a shame he’s kind of dumb, though. Then again, he’s a kid, so he’s at least partially allowed to be.”
“Yeah, sure. Because we all know that the best kids are always the ones with obsessive-compulsively protective parents.”
“On one side, he’s kind of dumb. On the other side, he’s far more courageous than all of you put together.”
“Hey, kid.”
“Yeah?”
“You should definitely turn to the life of an adventurer. Don’t worry about your parents. Just tell them you’re heading out before you go.”
“Thank goodness my foot. I want to make a suggestion: We never ever take assignments from Monsen ever again. Their jobs are jokes and they’re a bunch of weenies. Yes, we had to fight something, but it’s just… their attitudes about it.”
“Sorry, but we can’t do that.”
“Oh, fine! Then let’s at least make their mission trainee-only.”
“Now, what else can we do. Hmmm, how about we go visit Demi? I’m sure we can spare a little time oh ha ha.”
“If she heard you say that, she’d hyper-jam your ears until they burst like little blood geysers.”
“But she don’t, so I can.”
“Make sure to hold on to that hat of yours, Raja, because if it falls down here, it’s lost.”
“Don’t worry. I taped it to my head.”
“I… I’ve got no comment on that.”
“But doesn’t tape stick rather poorly to hair?”
“Wouldn’t know. Don’t have any.”
“Well, that’s just peachy green.”
“What?”
“KEEN! PEACHY KEEN!”
“NaFoi? Sounds like a fire spell that was turned down. ‘You want that Foi or not?’ ‘Nah.’ ”
Alas, even sidetracks must eventually come to an end, and as our heroes reach the inner sanctum of Demi — not an euphemism, by the way — they find themselves in front of a familiar face… behind a whole lot of computer monitors.
“It sure is.”
“…….”
“…….”
“So… is that it?”
“Yep.”
“You guys came all the way down here just for that?”
“We sure did.”
“Um… guys, I love you and all that, but don’t you have something more important to do?”
“I’ve got a couple of jokes I could tell you.”
“NO!”
“I’ll… uh, just second that.”