Otaku Wish Fulfillment Theater #12 "Hey, Wait A... What Just Happened?" Started by Scott Shimmel This little bit by NeoVid __________________________________ LAST TIME... oh heck, just reread the previous episode. -_- Evil Lord Rutt was at an impasse. 'OK, this chibi is getting waaaay too in-jokey for new Improers... and hell, old Improers, and I don't like that... but I made myself into the main bad guy. I believe there's a conflict of interest there...' he mused. Xelloss finally arrived from Himitsu Tower, Sword of Duality in hand. "ElSatan, I have brought the Swor-" "Keep it, Xell-dude," Rutt said, getting up from his La-Z-Boy of Evil. Xelloss would have blinked if he hadn't had his eyes closed most of the time. "What?" "I'm quitting. This job just isn't fun any more." That took the crossover character by surprise. "Just like that? You're leaving?" Xelloss went to the balcony. "Hey, guess what." he said to the army of unnamed minions outside. "WHAT?" "The Kind Of Evil One is quitting." "AWRIGHT!!!" In a flash, the other main bad guys arrived in Elf Lover Rutt's room. "So, what does this mean for us?" Rags asked. Extremely Lowquality Rutt finished tying his junk up in a handkerchief on a stick, and said, "I don't care. One of you can be the new baddie. Fight over it, or something." Exiting to the Left Rutt walked out, slamming the doors behind him. "Well, this is an opportunity," Lady Brick laughed. "Yeah, it is," NeoVid sneered, as he got his favorite high-tech weapon (a pillar of stone) out of his pocket, swung it like a baseball bat, and knocked the other baddies out the window. "Ahem," someone behind him ahemed. NeoVid looked back to see Xelloss pointing at Yonjuuni, who hadn't been in range. NV's club crumbled from the force he had used it with, and he shrugged at the other evil type person. "How 'bout we go kill the good guys, and who ever gets less of them will have to be second-in-command?" "Works for me," Yonjuuni said. -_- The All Terrain Dan stopped in Himitsu Tower's driveway... um, of Evil™, and the intrepid (assuming 'intrepid' means something good) adventurers piled out, as Dan returned to his non-mechanical form. Dan looked the tower over, shading his eyes (it should have gotten dark by the time they arrived, but since this wasn't a major cinematic sequence, it had to be day). "Well, here we are. The next Seal's right in there, and all we have to do is find it. Then a bunch of enemies appeared, blocking the way to the tower. "And now, we will CRUSH you," NeoVid stated, as he and Yonjuuni and a small number of anachronistically armed minions faced down the somewhat intrepid heroes, like these kinds of bad guys usually do. "Oh, and we're taking that Demota guy. He's one of our goons. Hand him over." They handed. "Thank you. Now, useless and brainless minions™ , waste 'em..." The useless and brainless minions™, being the goons a boss sent out to soften up the good guys, turned out to be incapable of doing any real damage, and were stomped into the dirt in 12.4 seconds. NeoVid sighed. "Man, I wish the plot didn't require us to do things like that. Oh hell, we're two of the major boss characters, we have at least a 20% chance of being able to 'game over' this bunch." Yonjuuni thought back to his previous defeat. "Um... yeah..." "AND I brought the Really Big Guns this time," NeoVid (the guy in charge of making sure the weapons never worked right, remember) said, getting out his RLG (Relatively Large Gun™), which sparked ominously. "What should I do?" Yonjuuni asked. "I didn't get a script this episode." "Heh, uh, well, the writer for this episode doesn't know how to write you, since he's seen you post on the Impro board like once, and doesn't know what you're like." NeoVid tried not to look straight at Yonjuuni. "WHAT? If he doesn't know how to write me, how am I supposed to do any damage..." It turned out to be a moot point, since when they had been expositing, Scott had been using the time to think of something unbelievably nasty. "MASSIVELY OVERBLOWN SICKENINGLY POWERFUL WAI WAI BEAM!!! ...Aww, I was trying not to say 'wai!'" In about half the time it took the baddies to say "darn it," the thiry-yard wide blast of energy crashed into them, launching them into low orbit with a Team Rocket-like *ping*. Sailing through the air, NeoVid crossed his arms and said, "Figures. Whenever the good guys are in a fight at the beginning of an episode, it turns out to just be a minor plot point, instead of a real battle." Back where the fight had gone on, a box appeared in the air, labeled "Aquired Third-class Sword." The box disappeared, leaving behind said unimpressive weapon. Dan picked it up. "Third-class... must be for Steve." "Yay." He swung it experimentally. "At least it has an edge. Then again, so does a butterknife..." It turned into Nerf in his hand. "*sigh*" "Well, anyway," Dan said again, "all we have to do is find the Seal-" Lunatic Pandora-like, Himitsu Tower rose out of the ground, then, unLunatic Pandora-like, zipped off into the distance at ultraspeed. "....DOH!!" The adventurers said. -_- After several hours of ATD riding straight in the direction the Tower had gone, the featureless landscape showed something... "Another town," Steve said. "THANK GOD!" Dan replied, reverting back to normal, falling over unconscious and throwing his passengers every which way. Steve, who had been walking thanks to his paranoia about the way Dan had been shaking, went on. "I guess we'll have to talk to everyone in it to find out where we're supposed to go next. Well, let's find the guy who stands right at the entrance and says the name of the place..." "That looks like one," Kate said, pointing at someone sitting on a bench next to the town gate. "But he's not standing..." Damien observed. Glancing at the group, the man on the bench did a double-take and got up. "Sorry, wasn't paying attention there." He cleared his throat. "This is the town of..." He looked nervous for a second, then carefully sneaked a look at the writing on his hand. "...Vidstudenté. Sorry, the writer only came up with the name a second ago." "Er..." Ard began, before deciding she'd rather not clear that up. "...Do you know who we're suppos-" "And I'm not being paid to say anything else," the gatekeeper told them. -_- "So, failed miserably, did you?" Xelloss asked NeoVid, in Smug Mode, as usual. The hopeful New Main Baddie™ twitched. "Minor setback. I was just making them think they were safe for the rest of the episode. They're going to be walking right into the big trap I set for them..." "Oh, you mean the dragon? I think it's a good idea." NeoVid stared at him. "How'd you know about THAT?" An infuriating smile was the answer. "Sore wa, himitsu de-" NeoVid threw Xelloss through a stone wall. "I know your tricks! You're acting like you know what I'm planning so I'll get confused and do what you want! Well, I'm using the dragon, and you're not stopping me!" -_- Just like Steve had guessed, the group had had to fall back on the old standby for when RPG characters were clueless about where to go: talking to all the random people they could. 17 pointless, repetitive conversations later, they learned something that seemed useful. Probably. "There's one thing you could try," the latest random bystander began. "There's a seer who lives in the desert, down by El Rut. We don't know where he came from... it seems he knows everything about mankind." "Hmm," Dan hmmed, "so how far is it to the Rut?" Random Bystander looked at him. "It's El Rut, not the rut. Annnyway, it's out to the northwest. You can walk there in no time." Kate thought for a minute. "Is there anything else we should do before going there?" "El Rut is to the northwest." "...OK." 'Jeez, I feel like I'm in Suikoden 1 sometimes...' -_- Dan having partly recovered, the group unenthusiasically started on their way northwest. "That town was pointless..." Steve complained. "Now we're on a fetch quest in a fetch quest." "I know," Ard answered. "Are we going to have to find one of these seers in every other episode?" -_- "Considering they killed the Pokémon Master, they probably will," Xelloss said, still smiling despite all the bandages. NeoVid managed a creditable Evil Guy Smile™. "They just had to make things harder on themselves. Now they're stuck with having to go find people to tell them where they're supposed to go, instead of having a convenient plot device to do it. And I can buy off those people. Heh. It's working!" Xell squinted more than usual. "So you honestly believe this will work? Well. We'll see. Then again, it's the best thing I've heard from the brilliant array of evil people we have here. When the first episode said the main bad guy was an androgyne, I was hoping it was the Black Wyvern." "I know it's more evil than I am. Quit rubbing it in. Now, let's stop breaking the Fourth Wall before I have to make you do another MiSTing." Xelloss paled slightly as he thought back to the horrors of Pokémon Self-Insertion fics. "Of course, sir." "Where was I... oh yeah..." NeoVid went back to a Classic Evil Dude™ tone. "It won't be long before they walk into the next part of my trap! Eh heh heh heh heh heh..." Xelloss held up a card that read "3.5." "A slightly evil laugh, but not enough to stike fear into people's hearts or anything." NeoVid, done with the Generic Evil Bastard™ing for the day, sat back down. "I'm not really evil, I'm just a psychotic maniac. I'm not about to actually kill off the protags or anything. That's what I'm in the Fate Game for." He leaned back. "Hmmm... I'm done playing Emperor Barbarosa today... I want some nacho pretzels... mmm... cholesterol..." -_- Ard looked over the edge of a 700 foot wide, mist-filled canyon. "This is El Rut? The name made me think it would be five feet across." "We can't see the bottom. Maybe it's shallow." Kate tossed a convenient rock (which did not say "Hey, put the Rock down!" because that would have been too damn silly) into the canyon. Seven minutes later, Scott said, "Given up on that yet?" Kate hung her head. "Yes." "I know how we could cross," Dan told them. "...How?" Illyria asked in a bishonenly aloof way. Dan pointed to the right. "We could try that bridge over there." After glancing at the little wooden bridge they had completely overlooked, the rest of the group narrowly avoided facefaulting off the cliff. As they started to cross, the faint sound of a rock hitting a head drifted out of the mist, followed by an "OW! Can't someone try to have mystical visions without people tossing junk into his canyon anymore?" The group stopped in their tracks. "...Wasn't the seer supposed to live on the other side of the canyon, not in the canyon?" Ard asked. Steve thought about it. "According to what we were told... where he's supposed to be... wasn't made clear at all." "Figures. Now how are we going to get down there?" Dan pointed. "We could try the stairs carved into the cliff on that side." Everyone decided that smacking him would be more fun than facefaulting again. -_- Skipping ahead a few hours... -_- "How many stairs can there be?!" Dan panted, thanks to having been walking down this particular set since before the sun went down. "Hey, it took a rock ten minutes to hit the ground," Scott reminded him. "I don't know what you were expecting, but a loooong walk is probably just the start." Amazingly, there was no Ominous Thunder™ after she said that. "And do you think it's any better in these damn heels? At least I'm too cute to sweat." Ard smacked her forehead (Sign Language for 'Duh!') and asked, "Damien, could you fly us the rest of the way?" Damien looked down. Waaaaay down. "Uh.... flying? I really don't want to test that out with that long a fall. Sorry." Dan sighed. "I can't believe I made it this far... if it wasn't for that lemonade stand back there... ...Speaking of that, does anyone see a restroom around here?" -_- Another uncountable stretch of time later, Kate took one last downward step, and fell over forward. The reason for that was she had stepped down, while the ground was flat. Staring at the ground in incomprehension, she said to herself, "Flat? Not stairs? Mind... cannot... accept..." "GROUND! Real ground!" Dan said, resisting the impulse to kiss the dirt. "Hey!" the quavery voice from the doorway at the bottom of the stairs said. "I don't live down here because I LIKE noise, you know!" "That's the seer, right?" Scott asked. The voice came back. "Well, duh. I can see you're looking for answers... right? I hope?" "The first thing I want an answer for: Do you have a restroom in there?" -_- After the group had settled inside the seer's tastefully furnished, well-lit cave and tried to regain some feeling in their legs, the seer decided not to waste time. "So you want me to tell you how to get back to your own world, right?" he asked, keeping his face shadowed, just like "Be A Prophet For Fun and Profit" had said to do. "Yeah. How'd you know?" He waved his hands in an arcane-looking pattern that he had learned from playing paddleball. "What else? I'm psychic! WhhHHHOOOoooo..." The group sweatdropped. "Oh. Right. Can you tell us how to get back?" Ard asked. "Weeeell... I can't really tell you myself..." "I knew it," Steve said, his Designated Cynic role coming back. The seer's smile probably would have *ping*ed if he had had more teeth left. "I do know who would know... You could get some answers out of the interdimensional dragon." The Impro adventurers looked at each other. "Great. We have to fight a dragon." Dan shrugged. "Hey, we're in a fantasy RPG world. It had to happen." "Hey, I'm trying to talk here..." the seer reminded them. "ANYway, the first thing you'll have to do is find it. It lives in the mountains, not far from here. You can get there in no time." Ignoring the group reaction they had to hearing "You'll get there in no time" again, he went on, "Be careful, though. There are plenty of big monsters around. Watch out for the Roc." "The People's Champion?" Dan asked, confused. "I think he means the the bird," Illyria monotoned. "That's right," the seer said, "and don't copy gags from other Impros, OK?" He got an odd expression, and looked at Damien more closely. "Wait, I don't think you'll have to worry about it... I had heard the Roc might have turned into a Phoenix a while ago... Well, there aren't that many things to worry about in those mountains. There're rumors of a Wyvern, but hardly anyone ever sees it... if it's there at all, it just lurks." "So how are we going to find the dragon?" Kate wondered. The seer thought for a minute. "I think there's only one good trail through those mountains." 'Just like in every RPG...' Steve thought. "Just follow it, and you'll find your dragon," the seer finished. "I can live with that," Dan told him. "But I've got to get... oh, about six weeks of sleep before I can get anywhere without falling over." There was general agreement from the others. "Oh, that's no problem," the seer said to them all. "You can rest up here." "Great. I think I'll take that offer now." "All right..." the seer said. Everything faded out, then faded back in again. "That's it? What a ripoff! ...But I'm not tired any more," Dan said with some surprise. "That's good," the seer replied, "you'd better get on your way back up to the desert." The realization of what that meant slowly sank in. "Back... up... the stairs." Ard resisted an impulse to cry. "OK, if you're going to be like that about it, you can use the elevator," the seer said, clicking a handy button. A curtain pulled aside, revealing a completely ordinary service elevator. Seeing the looks on the group's faces, he explained, "Hey, you don't think the pizza guys are going to walk all the way down here, do you? Well, don't let me keep you any longer. You've got a long quest ahead of you. Have A Nice Day." -_- You could have seen the cool stuff that happened on the next leg of their travels... but I couldn't think of any. Wait, I mean there wasn't anything interesting on the way. Yeah, that's it. -_- The adventurers had reached a deadend in the mountains, having followed the path to where it ended at a cave opening, with a faint sound of snoring coming from inside. Being an RPG world, since they couldn't go any farther, they decided this must be where they were supposed to end up. They had been deadended in more than one sense ever since they got there. "I'm not going in there," Scott said. "Hey, I don't even have any real powers, except tranforming things I could do damage with into Nerf," Steve said. "I'm not getting anywhere near a dragon if I don't have to. Dan, you have armor, and you say you're leader. You should go." "Can't make me. Nyah nyah." Steve sighed. "Illyr-" He stopped in midword as Illyria glared at him in a way that could have melted rock. "Um, okay then... Kate?" No answer. He looked around. "...Kate?" "I think she got sick of waiting and used her Mad Wind Ninja Skillz to see what was in there without being noticed..." Scott exposited. The snoring sound abruptly stopped. "...Except it didn't work." The group would have manned battlestations if this was a science fiction story. As it was, they got their various mystic weapons ready, and hoped they'd find a way out of using them. "As soon as she comes back out, be ready to..." "Be ready to what?" Kate asked, coming out of the cave in full NinjaLook. "Well, uh, see..." Dan started, "we really thought you'd be in trouble... or something." "I didn't find anything dangerous in there. Just this guy." A large stocky guy with black eyes (not 'hit in the face' black but 'same color as outer space' black) and a shirt with "BROKE" written on it made his wobbly way out of the cave. By the look of him, he had either just awakened, or hadn't had any sleep for a week. By the way he was yawning, it was safe to say it was the former. "Great," Steve said, disappointment in his voice. "Now we're going to be stuck with another side quest, I just know it." He took a deep breath to go into Rant Mode. "Just once I'd like someone to say 'You'll have to find the dragon,' then we go off and find it in a couple of hours, and-" The guy from the cave interrupted. "That's me," he said, rubbing his eyes. "I'm Skribulous, D'fat Dragon Scribe." The shockwave from the simultaneous facefaults came this close to splitting the mountain open. Skrib opened his eyes to find himself staring at a very large sword which was inches from his face. What had caused everyone else to facefault had sent Illyria into Homicide Mode instead. "You know where the Seal of Maguffin is." "Well, yeah, bu-" Skrib ducked a slash. "This really isn't-" He dodged another one. "OK, fine. If that's how it goes..." Since I can't remember ever hearing what Skrib's tranformation looks like, I'll just say that it ended with him becoming a very, VERY large colorfully-scaled dragon. The group looked up... well, more like [up] at him. "See? This is why I don't like fighting," Ard stated. "The universe hates me." Scott's transformation phrase was proving to be the most appropriate one in magical girl history. As Dan Powerposed, Illyria's trenchcoat started to go plaid. Before Kate and Ardweden even got to change, Skrib struck, cobra-quick. *CHOMP* *CRACK* Skribulous reared back, and huge tears rolled down the dragon's face, due to half of his teeth breaking on Dan's armor. Dan, recovering from the slight shock of looking down a dragon's throat for a moment, picked up one of the splintered ends, and poked his chestplate with it a few times. Not a mark. "Wow. What kind of plastic is this? Rift really did get something right..." Steve, for once, was smiling. He finally had a chance to copy the powers of something dangerous. "Dragon transformation!" Nothing happened. Skrib looked at him askance. "Won't work. I'm a dragon who can turn into a human, not the other way around." "Darn. I thought I'd get to do something useful." He found a big rock to hide behind, right next to Damien. As Illyria got ready to make his move (nothing's closer to being a dragon's natural enemy than a guy with a big sword), Ard spoke up. "Can Kate and I sit this one out? I'm not sure if we can do much against a six hundred-foot dragon." That got a big draconic shrug. "Fine with me," Skribulous replied. Not surprisingly, inspiration struck the rest of the group after hearing that. "Can I wait it out too?" Steve asked. "I can't really do much, either." "Sure. I would've liked it better if you had just asked instead of starting a fight, you know." Scott protested. "Hey, none of us wanted to fight..." "..." the resident bishonen stated. "Oh, right. Illyria did. ...How about if you just fight h-" He was silenced with a glare. "Okaaay... Is that offer to ask about the Seal of Maguffin without fighting still good?" "The Seal?" Skrib went back to his human form with a still-undefined bit of special effects. "I know I had one of those around somewhere... let me go look." As he went back to his cave, the group tried to get out of brain-lock. "That's all we had to do?" Scott wondered. "Ask nicely? I mean, all the other RPG quests I've seen seem a lot more complicated." "Maybe they just make things harder on themselves because they think that it has to be tough..." Ard suggested. The Improers considered that. "...NAH." Skrib came back out, shrugging. "Too bad you showed up when you did. I gave it to that Demota guy because the plot required it a while ago. I thought I had another one..." The group blinkblinked. "The one Xelloss got was *this* one? We were that close? And we went through all this for nothing?" Dan said. "...Will I look like a wuss if I cry now?" Skrib had one more thing to say. "Well, the Seals getting harder to find makes sense. After all, if you keep finding them at this rate, you'll have to get stuck with another task afterward to keep the series going. The keepers of the other Seals are probably going to be a lot harder to reason with than the ones you met already." Ignoring the looks of fear, he ended with, "Well, that's it for my cameo appearance. Buh-bye." He went back to dragon form and got ready to fly off. The group looked back at the mountain trail. Way back at the desert. Waaaaay back at the teeny, faint black line that was El Rut at this distance. And the other itty bitty speck that was Himitsu Tower. "WAIT! Can you PLEASE fly us there?" -_- Xelloss smiled. And smiled. (And the author was sued for ripping a line from Slayers Starboard.) "So, it appears that the only one of the bad guys to not fail miserably was... me, so I'm the new main bad guy! What a shock!" His innocent act was sort of marred by the Sword of Duality he was holding proudly, as the Unnamed Legions of Nasty Stuff bowed down to him. The other Named, Important Baddies looked at his back, trying to decide where they should try to stick in a knife first. _________________________________ NeoVid's author's notes™: Thank you, Fox, for re-canceling D&D before I could tape an episode. Grr. Me will crush. Yknow, I really shoulda saved these RPG cliches for the Fate Game, even though they were from Suikoden... anyway, I ended up being taken by surprise by how much I wrote... I was only planning to give one or two ideas to ElRutt. Then when I sent it to him, he said, "Dude, this is an entire part on its own. Sign up." Wow. I was worried even more than usual about getting this done... no extensions any more, right before my part... but boy, I lucked out with how easy a time I had. Is this the All-Time Earliest Impro Part? Anyway, ElRutt wanted to be written out, because this series is getting to in-crowdy. Well, at least I managed not to make this an incredibly wanky, self-gratifying episode by making myself the new main bad guy (not that I'm insulting the people who want to do that...). Didn't get prereaders, so I deserve all the blame at neovid@hotmail.com -NeoVid the Homicidal Maniac _________________________ "Wait a minute... Skribulous, can't you travel between dimensions?" "Sorry, you're not allowed to think of plot points like that." "Aww."