DiMono
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1181
Registered: 09-13-2003
IP: Logged
|
Re: Hold The Riddle of the Bar (+2)
Beethro Budkin was passing through Tueno one day when he realized, as he often does, that he was hungry. Fortunately, this realization came just as a village appeared on the horizon, so he hurried down the path, cursing his luck that he had already used his last pair of speed potions.
Once in the village, Beethro made a roachline straight to the tavern. It seemed like a nice building, though it looked unfinished, and for some reason most of the village seemed to be gathered around, staring at it. "What's going on?" Beethro asked.
"Hm?" responded the nearest citizen. "Oh, we--there! It moved! Did you see it move?" Beethro looked around, not sure what moved, but the other villagers were nodding in agreement. "It's 79% complete now."
"Hold on," said Beethro. "Do you mean to tell me that everyone is just sitting around watching the progress of this bar?"
"More or less," the citizen agreed. "Well, that's not all we do. Sometimes we poke the bar to see if anything happens. We've been counting; so far we've poked it...hey, you've got a Really Big Sword! Did you get that from poking a bar?"
"No." Beethro put his hand on the sword's hilt, wondering if threatening the villagers was the fastest way to get fed. "Look, I'm really hungry. Even if it's not finished, I'd really, really like to get some food in there. Any chance I can get in?"
"Well..." The villagers' attention had shifted to the newcomer by now, and there was murmuring and shuffling around. Finally someone came forward and held up a worm. "Is this a worm?" she asked.
Beethro stared at her. "Yes."
"You'll swear to that?"
"Yes! How does this..."
A cheer went up, and the citizen Beethro had first spoken to said, "Congratulations! You have attested to the fact that this is bait, and now that you're a 'Bait-attester', you can go in early. But..."
"Oh, Jeebus," said Beethro. "Now what?"
"Well...there's a problem. Come with me." The citizen led Beethro around to the back of the bar and pointed to a shed with a fence around it. "The food's in there, behind that fence."
"Yeah?" growled Beethro. "So what?"
The citizen looked down and shuffled his feet. "Well, we don't really know how to get in there. Our architect put that gate in the fence--"
"This one? Made of glass?"
"Yeah. And it's stuck."
"No problem," said Beethro, and drew his sword. "If it's glass, I can just go over and...Jeebus! Are those oremites on the ground around it?"
The citizen nodded glumly. "It seemed like a good idea at the time. The architect insisted."
Beethro put his sword away and stared at the fence, wondering if it was edible. "Well, look," he said. "If that thing's misaligned, then there's no wonder it got stuck, and we're going to need to tear down the whole thing."
"No good!" the citizen wailed. "I watched the architect build it, using a straightedge and T-square and various other carpentry tools. It's perfectly parallel to the ground. So there's simply no--"
"Brilliant!" shouted Beethro, and the citizen took a step back. "I know exactly how to get into that shed. Come with me!"
Beethro led the citizen into the bar. "Now, you see, Halph," he began.
"My name isn't Halph, it's--"
"Don't care," Beethro said. "You're following me around, I get to call you Halph. Let's start by looking over the rooms in here. There's this one, there're a couple of doors over there. Go open those."
"Going," the citizen whined, and opened them. Meanwhile, Beethro pointed with his sword at the ceiling. "Looks like your architect was careless when he built the roof. For one thing, never use living tar as a building material."
"Yeah," said the citizen. "We've been poking at the corners of it, but that glob's just stuck up there."
Beethro sighed. "Idiots." He thrust his sword into the center of the glob, and a small horde of tar babies poured out. His companion shrieked, but Beethro made quick work of them. "Ha!" he cried. "Now, to the other rooms."
The first room, to Beethro's dismay, was full of food, but a crowd of citizens was eating it as fast as they could. "All right," said Beethro, "now I'm just angry. Angry, hungry, and...something else ending with 'gry'."
"Really ugry?" suggested Beethro's companion.
"Shut up," Beethro explained, and started beating the citizens into submission. One by one they fled the room, clutching half-eaten sandwiches and half-drunken drivescrewers (three parts leafjuice to one part mimic potion). Finally, Beethro was left surveying the wreckage, in which nothing looked edible, which didn't stop the remaining denizen from eating everything he could find. "OK, we're done here."
"What about that guy?" asked the citizen.
"No need," answered Beethro. "He's better than anyone else at eating this stuff. That makes him the gobblin' king, which means he isn't necessary."
"Yeah," the citizen agreed as they made their way to the final room. "He's a real character, that one. I--whoa."
Beethro was almost physically knocked back by the dense fog in the room, which smelled strongly of...something. It reminded him of his days in Smitemaster's College, when he and the other students would sneak behind the wraithwing pens....
"You know," the citizen said, a little dreamily, "I think I've got the munchies too."
"We need a cross-breeze. Halph, go open that door in the back."
The citizen was sitting on the ground, staring at his hands. "Not possible," he muttered.
Beethro groaned and started looking around. "Well, here's the problem," he said, and grabbing a trash can, he started picking up all the cigarette butts lying on the ground. The trail led to a woman leaning against the wall, smoking a half-finished joint. "All right," he said to her. "I've trashed all of the roaches, and I suppose you're the roach queen?"
"No way, man," the woman said, blowing smoke at him. "No kings and queens in here. We're all equal, you know? It's like we're all one, and we're one with the Eighth, which makes us one-eighth. But sometimes I feel like that's too rational, you know? Like, instead of the Eighth, what if the world is really, like, pi?"
"I like pie," Beethro said.
"I lick pie," came the response from the floor behind Beethro, followed by a series of giggles.
"So you can't kill me, man," the stoner continued. "It's like killing yourself, and killing the world, and that's...ow." This last part was said as she sunk to the ground, as a result of Beethro hitting her in the head with the hilt of his sword.
"Whoa," said the citizen, standing up slowly. "If you couldn't kill her, what was that about?"
"Well, there was clearly one last thing to do," Beethro explained. "Conk 'er, tokin'."
"I don't get--" the citizen began, but Beethro was already out the door, and the citizen rushed to follow. "Here I am again!" he declared when he caught up with Beethro, back in front of the shed. "I...hey! What did you do?"
Beethro was already at the shed's entrance; the glass doorway in the fence swung freely behind him. "It was obvious," he said. "If you want to open a level, clear gate, you just have to clean out all the nearby rooms."
____________________________
Deploy the... I think it's a yellow button... it's usually flashing... it makes the engines go... WHOOSH!
|
)
I forgot about the filter system, though. Unfortunately, none of the CaravelNet-based filters work properly for me because I don't have a current subscription.
