Beethro Begins - zex20913
I
Beethro was afraid. His Seventeenth birthday was quickly approaching, and he had no idea what he was going to be. He hadn’t applied anywhere, and the only thing he had been offered was the position of guidance counselor for an entry school. He was surprised that he had received that offer because he hated kids and couldn’t decide for himself what he wanted to do, let alone advise others. (Sadly, Beethra Bodkin never got her position at the Guidance Counselors Guild, as Beethro threw the letter out after little deliberation.) He was afraid that he would be assigned a job that he hated, and he knew that he would if he didn’t come up with one soon. Very soon. Within nine hours soon.
Lying awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering what on Eighth he could do, Beethro was getting angry.
“It’s not like I had my whole life to decide this” he said to Nobody In Particular, a little nip of a fish that he got as his last birthday pet. Most of his pets only lasted about three weeks before they got tired of Beethro and died, but Nobody In Particular was strong, though Beethro thought he might not have been the brightest fish in his school. Neither in color nor in intelligence. Nobody In Particular was prone to swimming into the walls of his tank.
Then again, Beethro wasn’t the brightest of the lot either. In fact, he may have been the least intelligent student in his graduating class. But at least he was graduating, mainly because he was the best Bruiser that Pithlitville Tertiary had ever seen, and his marks just coincidentally happened to be slightly above what they ought to be.
Beethro would have liked to be a professional Bruiser, playing Halfball for the rest of his days, but the Desert Sandsmashers had two awesome Bruiser brothers from Parnip, and no other team was willing to cross the Great Southern Desert to scout Beethro. So that wasn’t an option, and it was the only thing he was really good at.
Well, there was also Shapes and Patterns class. He didn’t like the Shapes part so much, but he excelled at Patterns. That was actually part of why he was such a great Bruiser as well, because he just knew exactly where every member of the other team was going to go at any given time. Sometimes, it felt like he could make them go right where he wanted them to be, and then POW another point for the Pithlitville Puma. But he hadn’t heard of any job that would let him put this ability to work.
He stayed up most of the night.
After a night of restless sleep, Beethro’s mother woke him up.
“Happy Seventeenth birthday, Beethro!” Her mood was far too jovial, so he threw a plush tar baby at her. He missed, due to his inability to function just after waking up, but had he hit her it would not have hurt her physically.
“Leave me alone. I don’t want to go to the fair.”
“Beethro Budkin! Don’t you dare throw things at me.”
“Wha? Oh. Sorry mom.”
“Well, it’s your birthday, so I can forgive you. I don’t know if Tarman can forgive you though.”
“It’s a toy.”
“It’s your toy. You’ve had Tarman since you were three. Do you remember the time-“
“Mom, I’ve heard this a thousand times. We went to the museum, mysteries of the deep, I couldn’t take my eyes off of it, and you got it for me. I know.”
Now, Beethro’s mom was the type of woman who would cry at anything, but wouldn’t let anyone see it. Except for when Beethro’s father died. That was the only time Beethro had seen her cry, and that was well over ten years ago. But her eyes were getting watery, so Beethro felt guilty about not letting her tell the story.
“Aw, mom…you can tell your story.”
“It’s not that. It’s that *sniff* my son is going to get a job today. A real job, earning greckles. And then he’s going to leave home.”
“You didn’t act like this with Vonnifa, mom.”
“I don’t like her. And I did cry, I just didn’t let you see me crying.”
“Oh.”
“Well,” she swiped and stifled some more tears “you really need to get to school. It’s getting late.”
“Alright. I guess I’ll wear my lucky yellow shirt.”
II
“Hrrrmmm…hrrrmmm…Berto Badkin, you said?”
“Beethro Budkin.”
Beethro was getting rather frustrated with the Guidance Counselor. She couldn’t get his name right for the life of her. He began to wonder why she was accepted into the Guidance Counselors Guild in the first place, and how she fared at meetings (“Hello Headmaster Guidance Counselor Heffnan” “That’s Joffnin.” “Hrrrmmm…Jefftin”)
“Beetro Burdkin you said? Hrrrmmm, I don’t see that name here.” She was rifling through her filing cabinet like she had rifled through for the previous student who was turning seventeen. “Hrrrmmm…I do have a Beethro Budkin, but that’s not you.”
“That is me!”
“Hmph! Why didn’t you say so? We could have saved all that time.”
Needless to say, Beethro didn’t really like his school, because his school didn’t really like him (or technically, any of the students) aside from his capacity as a Bruiser.
“Oh! You’re our best Bruiser.”
“Yes ma’am.” Beethro the Bruiser. That’s all that he thought he could ever be, and nobody was going to allow that to happen.
“Hrrrmmm, according to your file…” (Beethro hated that phrase) “you are last in your graduating class, and it is your Seventeenth birthday. Hrrrmmm! It is your Seventeenth birthday! Receptionist Hodges!”
A portly woman wandered into the room several seconds later. Yes, it was Receptionist Hodges, the Receptionist to the Guidance Counselor, as she had been for over thirty-two years.
“Yes, Guidance Counselor Jennings?”
“This boy is 17 today.”
“Congratulations, boy. I’ll be back with your cupcake.”
She left the room, and left Beethro wondering why nobody ever gave him a cupcake for any of his other birthdays.
“Now, since it is your Seventeenth birthday, what have you decided on for your career?”
The dreaded moment was finally upon him. About to become a working member of society and he didn’t have a clue what he wanted to do for a job. He ran through the list of all of the “career opportunity sessions” that he had skipped for either Halfball practice or because he thought they were stupid and he’d know what to do on his own. He ran through what jobs he knew of. He ran through the alphabet and the months, because he was slightly distracted. He ran through his head, and came up with-
“Here’s your cupcake.”
Receptionist Hodges! She had come back during his moment of need to give him a brief respite before he had to find an answer to the question. An answer other than that he didn’t know what he wanted to do, because then he would be assigned a job, and he did not want to become a member of the Sanitation Guild.
“Thank you, Receptionist Hodges.”
“You’re welcome, boy.”
“Might I say you’re looking very wonderful today?”
“You might say that, but I’m already married.”
Receptionist Hodges left him when he needed her the most. And the cupcake was really stale. Stale as if it were supposed to be given to him on his sixteenth birthday. At least there wasn’t mold.
“Hrrrmmm…what do you want to be?”
Glob.
“I don’t know.”
There. He had said it. He didn’t know what he wanted to be, and he was going to be a member of the Sanitation Guild for the rest of his-
“Hrrrmmm, that’s an ordinary dilemma. What are you good at?”
“Um…I’m a Bruiser.”
“Hrrrmmm…so you are strong…anything else?”
“I liked Patterns.”
“Anything else?”
“Uh…I like barbeque.”
“Hrrrmmm…cooking, Patterns, and strength. You know, we had somebody about 15 years ago with those same characteristics…he wanted to be a member of the Sanitation Guild
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
“But we convinced him that he should be a Delver.”
OOOOOOOOOO-“A Delver?”
“Delver, Dunger, Smiter, they go by many names nowadays. They clean out dungeons and basements from nasty creatures.”
A Delver. Sounded interesting enough.
“Hrrrmmm…now, you’ll be away from people for the most part.”
He didn’t like people anyway.
“I’ll do it!”
Guidance Counselor Jennings quickly scribed DELVER on his file in capital letters and very large font, and signed her name in the necessary position even quicker. (Normally, she would take time making her signature, nearly caressing every loop, line and point, but with Delvers she was sure to do it in case they changed their minds. She was extremely glad that Beethro had not asked about the perils of the position.)
“Good! You are now a Delver, as of this day, your Seventeenth birthday, as decreed by the Royal King of Pithlitville.”
If only he knew what he was getting into.
“Congratulations, Berto, you have entered the most dangerous career that we know of.”
“What? Dangerous?”
“Hrrrmmm…now, where’s that name?”
She began to dig through a massive stack of papers with people’s names and positions on them. Beethro would have none of it.
“Wait just one minute, I never signed up for any danger.”
“Yes, you did. Just a little bit ago, you said ‘I’ll do it.’”
“I didn’t know it was dangerous!”
“Hrrrmmm…too late now. It’s on your permanent record.”
“But-
“Ah! Here it is. Gunthro Budkin. He’s still alive! And a Delver. Well, a Delver Teacher. He’ll be able to tell you what you need to know to survive. Good luck!”
She handed him a slip of paper with an address. Fortunately, Beethro could read-what was he doing reading the address?! Delving was a fatal position! And quite possibly stinky too. He hadn’t even considered that. How on Eighth was he going to find a nice wife to settle down with? What if he died while Delving? What did a Delver even do? Cleaning out dungeons and basements from nasty creatures…what sort of nasty creatures could there be? NO! Stop this thinking string right now!
“Why are you still here, hrrrmmm?”
“Uh…”
“You need to go speak with Gunthro. Well go!”
Beethro hesitated some more. He really ought to give Delving a shot. Maybe he’d be good at it, after all, somebody with the same characteristics was made to be a Delver fifteen years ago. They wouldn’t just send anybody down…would they?
Beethro decided to let that go unanswered, as he walked out of Guidance Counselor Jennings’ office, and into the halls of the school, but then towards Gunthro Budkin’s address. He realized that there was a very odd coincidence that they shared the same surname, but then realized that Budkin is a very popular name as well. Onward, and forward, to go downward. Beethro was resigned to his fate.
III
The place looked very rundown. Like nobody would choose to live there unless the Cleaning Services Guild came about once an hour for the next 53 years. And even then they might not be able to get the outside done. There was dried blood everywhere, some of it green, and there were bodies of dead creatures, that appeared to be nasty, strewn about the lawn like fatal lawn gnomes of fate. (As he thought this, Beethro had a strong feeling of Vega-Du, which is like Deja-vu, only not quite. It’s when something resembles the same structure, or precise location, but is comprised of completely different things, and only occurs during the first time it is seen.)
He really didn’t want to touch the door. Not only was he having third and fourth thoughts about becoming a Delver, it was covered in what appeared to be internal organs of one of the nasty creatures. But greckles were a-calling, and greed is sometimes a big drive of ambition, so he picked up what looked to be a safe nasty (it was a roach queen, those don’t hurt.) and knocked it against the door.
He got a little bit more than he bargained for, because the queen exploded upon contact, and Beethro was now dripping with roach goo. Delicious. This had to be the best day of his life, ever. Luckily, his lucky yellow shirt was shimmery, and the material used to make it just happened to be slippery as well, so the roach innards slid off of the shirt. It still smelled really, really bad.
“Gah! That smells really, really bad!”
“IT’S MY DOORBELL! SOMEBODY’S AT MY DOOR!”
Somebody insane was living in that house. Only an insane person would live in that house. Beethro heard footsteps racing for the door, the unlocking of several locks, then several more, and finally, the door opened a crack.
“What do you want?”
“Uh…I’m here to speak with Gunthro Budkin about becoming a Delver.”
“A what?”
“A Delver. Dunger? Smiter?”
“A SMITER?!?!?!! WHERE IS THE SMITER!?”
“Um…I want to become a Smiter, and Pithlitville Tertiary sent me here.”
“Well, that’s a cockroach of a different color!”
Beethro looked down, and behind him, expecting who knows what, perhaps a fuschia colored cockroach with eyes on it’s antennae, but alas saw nothing, and never even guessed that it was idiomatic.
The man that Beethro assumed was Gunthro, who he now called Crazy Gunthro in his head, closed the door, slid open one more lock, and then opened the door wide for Beethro.
“THIS! Is my home. Do you like it?”
“It’s…very…unusual.”
“Ah! It’s stinky! Get used to it, wannabe Smiter.”
Beethro felt like he would need a denoseing to get the smell out. He was glad that he didn’t have any lunch, because Crazy Gunthro would have seen what he had. Then again, it might have made for some better decorations in the place.
“Here.”
Crazy Gunthro tossed a stick Beethro’s way. A stick? As Crazy Gunthro headed down the hallway towards some stairs, he said over his shoulder:
“That stick will teach you how to slay monsters.”
“Then why do I need you?”
Crazy Gunthro paused, turned to look at Beethro, then came towards him. Beethro stood his ground, because he’d always been taught that crazy people can’t see you if you don’t move. He was wrong, but stationary people bored crazy people, so the same effect was served.
“HA! I LIKE you, kid. I hope you survive a week.”
A week! This was getting more dangerous every time somebody talked to him about it.
“FOLLOW!”
Crazy Gunthro went down the stairs. Beethro had nothing better to do, so he went down behind him. At the bottom, Beethro saw that the floor was tiled, and while there were many nasties, it smelled a lot better than above. And the roof was high! He must have dozed off as he walked down the stairs…or forgotten how to count…or daydreamt…or gagged heavily from the odor of the first floor (the horror, the horror.)
“TRAINING MODE!”
Gunthro was moving the nasties around. Apparently, the Taxidermy Corps Guild had been busy for a while. There must have been over one hundred stuffed roaches, let alone roach queens, wraithwings, or Evil Eyes.
“We are very fortunate to live in a world where hitting a nasty with a sword, or bashing it into a door, will cause it to explode. I got all of these from smiting with that stick there. You may still see some markings on their skulls and such. Or irises. That’s where you stick an Evil Eye. Anyway! It’s time to train you. STEP ONE! They move when you move. Nobody knows quite why, if it’s a little game they play, or if they’re just stupid as all get-out. But that’s what happens. STEP TWO! Kill EVERYTHING! That is the goal of the Smiter. Now. Ask me what step three is.”
“What’s step three?”
“THERE IS NO STEP THREE! Some people say it’s survive, some say be efficient, but if you follow STEP ONE and TWO, those will naturally follow. Now. ROACHES ATTACK!”
Crazy Gunthro got behind a roach, and started pushing it. These weren’t ordinary cockroaches, as they were each about two feet long, and had sharp, pointy teeth. Fortunately, death made them docile as kittens. Beethro didn’t know what a kitten was, but some idioms had gotten through to him, and he understood what that one actually meant. Beethro poked the roach with his stick, and Crazy Gunthro celebrated.”
“That normally takes two weeks!”
For the next couple of hours, Crazy Gunthro showed him various patterns and movements of the roach, and how to trick them into going where you wanted them to go. It was like a deadly game of Halfball, but with a stick and stuffed roaches instead of a halfball and people. Crazy Gunthro then brought out roach queens (“Bad mama!”), Evil Eyes (“These normally appear on level 5.”), wraithwings (“They’re cowards, but they can fly!”) and a goblin (“Let your sword be your guide.”).
The time flew by, and by the end of the training session, Beethro had almost forgotten about the smell. Almost. He was fearing returning through the front door. Both of them were sweating heavily. Gunthro from moving the nasties, and Beethro from moving around, swinging the stick, and most of all acquiring knowledge. Thinking is hard work!
“WOW! You’re REALLY good at this. Wait here.”
Beethro, having nowhere else to go, did. Gunthro returned shortly thereafter.
“I want you to have this.”
From behind his back, Gunthro pulled out a fairly large sword. It looked to be between four and five feet long, and sharp enough to skewer two wraithwings at once. It wasn’t quite long enough, but he could make anything explode with that.
“For me?”
“No, for the guy behind you who’s been watching this whole time.”
Beethro turned around and saw nobody.
“THERE’S NOBODY THERE. THE SWORD IS FOR YOU!”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“You must know that real basements and dungeons will be a lot deadlier. And there may be more enemies than you can shake a stick at.”
“Well, I have a sword to shake, so I should be okay.”
“…HA! I STILL LIKE YOU, KID. I want to be there with you for your first dungeon or basement. I won’t get in your way, I’ll just give you advice.”
Beethro agreed, although he didn’t see why he’d need any. He’d defeated the roaches with ease! Everything was fitting together perfectly. And actually, they looked like they had some good meat on them. He was sure that he could find some good spices, if he ever wanted to cook them, instead of making them explode, to make some great meals from roachmeat.
IV
Beethro and Gunthro were walking in the public triangle, trying to see if anybody was in need of a Smiter. It was a very dirty profession, and no noble woman would ever be seen marrying a lowly Delver, but it was a necessary position. It was too bad that everybody either didn’t need smiting, or Beethro was deemed too inexperienced to do it. The only person willing to give him a job was Ahmed. Ahmed had some trouble with snakes, and he just needed somebody to get rid of them.
“So, you’ll give me 500 greckles to kill some snakes?”
“There may be some roaches too. I can’t be sure. It’s nasty down there.”
“My man, you have got yourself a DEAL!” Gunthro was still crazy. “Now, I’m going to be hanging back for a while. Call if you need support.”
Beethro wouldn’t need support. He could do this all by himself. He was a big person now. He climbed down Ahmed’s stairs.
The sound! Beethro hadn’t heard anything like it before. A gigantic skittering…and lots of it. There was also slithering and hissing and what sounded like the occasional blink. That must have been coming from level 5…Beethro took a step forward, thanking the architect for allowing decent light fixations in the place when THERE. His first roach. It was looking at him with those menacing beady eyes, and sharp pointy teeth. It was about four feet long and looked like it could bite off an arm and swallow without chewing.
And Beethro froze. The roach kept coming towards him. All of his training vanished, and Beethro was face-to-face with death itself. Ready to bite off his limbs. It continued to advance.
When it was two steps away, it stopped. Why on Eighth would death stop? Then Beethro looked, and saw that his sword was in the way. He laughed. A sword could stop a roach?! This would be easier than he thought. He stepped forward, driving the sword onto the nasty, and POW! The roach exploded everywhere. It slid right off his yellow shirt, which was both lucky for him and for the shirt, else it’d have been ruined and he’d be out of a lucky shirt. He boldly strode the borders of the room, looking for more critters. He saw none. But wait…didn’t Ahmed say there were snakes? And wasn’t there hissing? As Beethro got nearer to what seemed to be a dark curtain, the hissing got louder. He stepped through the curtain-
And was face to face with a red serpent. This he had not seen with Gunthro. Worse yet, his sword was directly on the beast, and it hadn’t exploded. Beethro ran back through the curtains. He was rushing for the stairs, when Gunthro yelled
“STEP TWO! DON’T FORGET STEP TWO!”
Oh yeah. Kill EVERYTHING. Great.
“How do you kill snakes?!”
“SHRINK THEM!”
That was certainly odd advice. But, Beethro wanted to be a good Delver now, so he went back to the curtain. He stepped through again, but this time farther from the serpent, to see if he could find a pattern. He ran from it for a bit, and then noticed that the serpent would only turn at ninety degree angles. Shapes had helped him after all! But if the sword couldn’t do it…
Maybe if he could get it to stop moving, he could find a way to kill it. The monster would at least be incapacitated…unable to move. And lucky Beethro, he quickly spotted three walls that would be perfect for trapping the serpent. He had figured out the movement, for the most part, and was herding the snake towards the blocks. Almost there…almost there…then he realized that he was trapped. There was a snake in front of him, and he couldn’t move towards it, and he was blocked on both sides and behind.
“DIAGONALS!”
Gunthro’s advice rained down from the sky like manna. Beethro had forgotten entirely about diagonal stepping. He stepped to his left and back, and the serpent fell for it! It was in the blocks, so it wasn’t…it WAS moving. It was shrinking! This must have been what Crazy Gunthro meant.
After finding this, and some interesting things that he had to do with both roaches and serpents, Beethro emerged 500 greckles richer, and a lot wiser.
When he got home, his mother wondered what the stench was.
“It’s the smell of a good job. I’m going to be filthy rich.