Queen's Gambit Chapter 08

Chapter Index

Love in plastic (Berdly)
1
https://pastebin.com/TKjKcqVe
2
https://pastebin.com/dDw2ti92
3
https://pastebin.com/2FRWC9jj
4
https://pastebin.com/vJ67iw7N
5
https://pastebin.com/88fCetw0
6
https://pastebin.com/Dj46NYUK
7
https://pastebin.com/DmandfKg
8
https://pastebin.com/2qAE3pbm
9
https://pastebin.com/YFvjUjeu
10
https://pastebin.com/s3Q8nruN
11
https://pastebin.com/MQeRHGWJ
12
https://pastebin.com/pgcGWuRZ

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Love in Plastic

Chapter 08

Dream a little Dream of him

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"If I could fly like birds on high, then straight to her arms I'd go sailing..." The surprisingly catchy tune of a man singing came out of a radio, accompanied with trumpets, saxophones, a drum set and other instruments. She had to cover her eyes, the light was blinding her too much. Under groans of discomfort, Susie clenched her eyes shut and pushed herself up by her hands.

When she pulled her eyes back open, she realized why the light was too bright. Her eyes had been closed, but she had been looking straight into a bright, strange-looking lamp. She was sitting on the smooth sheets and the soft, even mattress of a king-sized bed. She ran her fingers along the cool surface with its beige, abstract pattern. Then she noticed something. Her skin tone had changed. She wasn't purple any more.

She raised her hands and stared at them. They had taken on the same colour she remembered she had in the dark world. And off her wrists hung the same black leather wristbands with solid, golden spikes. She was in a room, quite a bit bigger than her own. There were night lights to each side of the bed.

In fact, there were lamps on stands in all corners and in key locations around some of the wider comfortable pieces of furniture to sit on in here. Of which there were a lot. The walls were coloured in a soft yellow and drawn-over with a thin brown pattern in the shape of flames that crossed each other in a zig-zag pattern.

She began to shuffle off the bed. The floor was covered in smooth tiles that matched the colour scheme of the walls and a carpet was laid out on top of most of it. There was only one way out of this room short of jumping out of a window. A wide-open door that led into a narrow corridor. A red carpet with vine patterns woven on covered it, and the walls were lined with paintings in golden frames that were carved with a high level of detail.

The paintings all depicted 'waves' or floating 'streams' of people blending into each other while horned creatures stood at the sidelines and burned them or poked or carved away at them with tridents and scythes. "Do you like them?" That came out of nowhere and had even someone like her pull together. A mere metre away to her side, stood a young man.

A caprine creature with a smug expression on his face, a Boss Monster, but his fur was black and his eyes and what little opening there was of his mouth and nose, glowed. A lot like Ralsei. "Is there something wrong? You appear as though you had seen a ghost." He wore a complete snow-white tuxedo and a complete snow-white set of formal attire to match it, down to shoes and gloves. The sleeves of his suit sported light blue cufflinks with white pentagrams engraved on them.

Under his suit jacket, but over his white shirt, hung a light blue tie with a white upside-down cross at the bottom of it. And through a hole cut and woven specifically for that purpose, a top hat was attached to one of his black horns. She just stood there, holding up her elbow in a defensive manner.

Suddenly with a much more timid stance, the stranger took a step back and placed the tips of his fingers on his chest. "Oh goodness, I am terribly sorry. I assumed from your rebellious attire that you weren't so easy to scare."

"What? What?" This man had her from terrified to angry within a moment's notice. "Who are you anyway?"

"I apologize. How very indelicate of me." He kneeled down in front of her, grabbed her hand and sent cold shivers through her skin with a kiss on the back of her hand. She pulled it away immediately and stumbled backwards. "You must be so very confused. Welcome to the second circle of my humble little hotel." She raised her hands and as she expected, she was able to summon the strongly curved scythe she had for an axe, but it dispersed right again in her hands.

"Now now, why the hostility? After all, you're my guest." She backed off further, back into the room with the bed.

She tried to intimidate him by shouting at him and bearing her teeth while she did it. "Where am I? I'm back in the dark world, right? Where's Kris?"

In a slow, smooth motion, the man in the suit took on an overly dramatic thinking pose. "Dark world? Now whatever in the world is that?"

Now, with a few sofas around her that made her feel like she had at least a bit cover, she stopped and remained in place. "Don't play dumb with me! I look like that!" She pointed onto her arm.

He shot her arm a tired glance. "Yes. Are you supposed to look any different?"

"Well...yes!"

Again with the tips on his chest, the caprine man shook his head, the top hat sitting tight on his horn with no sign of being loose. "I feel a little insulted that you insist on something you bring up out of the blue. Why would you not take me at my word? Does this room not look like a hotel room to you?" She calmed down a little and gave the room more of a close look. It was a bit big for a hotel room.

"You are in the 'Suite for the Longing'. A place you wouldn't find yourself if there was no reason. So, if this is not too imposing, ask yourself: How did you get here?" He walked over to the see-through curtains and pulled them aside. Susie couldn't see anything behind them. After that, he pointed to the window and turned back around to her. "Did you climb in through here?"

She shook her head. "Oh heavens. Let's take this slow then, shall we? What is the last thing you remember before coming here? Climbing through any windows? Crawling through any shafts? Turning invisible and sneaking your way through these empty halls?"

He slid his gloved hand along the lean of a very comfortable looking couch that stood in the middle of the room, right in front of Susie. "Please, calm down, relax, lay down. I will humour you as much as I need to." Out of nowhere, a little black cloud formed around his right hand, which then converged into a lengthy, narrow form and took on that of a pair of glasses.

Then the cloud vanished and left behind an actual pair of glasses, which he placed on his face, before making a clipboard with paper and a pen appear the same way and sitting down on a comfy chair that lay at the wall, arranged to allow him to look at the couch he had directed her to.

Susie stood there for a bit, ready to run away or fight him again, intently waiting what he was doing, but he just sat there, staring at her through those glasses. "By the way, apologies for delaying introductions so much. Just where are my manners today? I never even told you my name. If you like to keep it formal, you can call me Doctor Luxon." She continued to stare at him, waiting for something happened.

Nothing happened. So very carefully, she walked over to the couch and sat down on it. "Let's go back to the beginning. The very first conspicuous mention you made were that of a 'Dark World'. What was the reason why you assumed that was where you were?"

"Where else am I supposed to be? Look at me."

"I'm assuming this means you're not supposed to look the way you do?"

"No, my skin's darker and I'm supposed to have brown hair and I don't have these boots and..."

"I understand, different body, different clothing. Just like with my other patient. And the very first conclusion you come to is 'I'm in the dark world'?"

"Why? What are you implying?"

The goat man shrugged. "Well, back to my original question. How did you find yourself in here? Wait. Let's do it the other way round. This 'Dark World', how do you get there as far as you know?"

She found herself stammering. She didn't really know in great detail how she got there. "Well I - well I sort of fell into a closet."

Her host nodded. "All right, a cupboard. And I assume this means the last thing you did before coming here was falling into a cupboard as well."

She had to admit to herself that she was a bit dumbfounded. "No."

"Well? What is the last thing?" It was a little fuzzy. She had to think. Upon looking at him again, he appeared completely calm. "Take your time, just try to remember the last thing you recall from the previous day, latch onto that and retread your steps from there." He wasn't about to get up and attack her. So she began to shift and lie down as he had first asked her to. All while trying to remember. "So school was over, and then me and a classmate were playing card games."

"All right."

"And then it was getting late, so I went home and had dinner, and a shower and I...I..."

"Yes?"

"I went to bed."

"This is the last thing? You went to bed."

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to remember. There had to be more, right? But there wasn't. "Yeah. I just went to bed."

Now with a less stern and once again more mischievous expression, he leaned forward by a bit. "May I suggest an alternate explanation than your 'Dark World'? You're dreaming. This is a dream. Now you are correct in that this is probably not your everyday dream. There has to be a reason why you landed in this particular suite and in this particular circle. People don't find their way here without an issue of particular nature to sort out."

"People?" Susie wasn't quite sure what game this guy was playing. "If this is all my dream, shouldn't it be all about me or something? Who else is there?"

"Well I used to be visited by this tremendously distressed young doe who would talk about her worries about a friend of hers. But a few weeks ago, she came to the conclusion that she was misreading signals and stopped coming altogether. The issue wasn't resolved, but it would seem she has moved on. But enough about her, let's focus on you. You fall asleep, next thing you know, you're here.

To find out why, we need to pinpoint what exactly you were thinking about when you fell asleep. This Dark World must be important if you're willing to take such mental leaps to convince yourself you reached it. It must be at the root of why you're here. Tell me everything you know about it. I want to hear the whole story. From the very beginning. The day that you visited this 'Dark World' for the very first time, how did it begin?"

The moment Susie made the faintest sound, she could hear the clicking of him readying his pen to take notes with it. "So I went to school, but I was late. As usual."

"All right."

"And I didn't really wanted to have any classes. So I kinda made the teacher's chalk disappear."

He began taking notes and loudly announcing what they were. "All right, bad work ethic and kleptomaniac tendencies."

She faced him to snap at him for that one. "Hey!"

"Those are only soft notes to know what patterns to look for. Do go on, anything you tell me stays between the two of us."

She leaned down with her head to the side, so she wasn't staring at the light that hung from the ceiling. "So she sent me to get new chalk. But I had the old chalk still on me and I knew if I kept it on me, they'd search me and find it, so I just ate it to make it disappear for good. But then Kris caught me eating it."

"I assume that is bad."

"I knew that if he told on me, that'd be the end. I'm gone. They'd kick me out of school no problem." She snapped her fingers. "Just like that."

He would just continue to note down and leisurely announce all the notes he took. "Caught in a vulnerable position by - 'Kris' - . For one we have a name now. You mentioned this name three times now, by the way."

"Yeah, yeah. So I - uh - I."

"Yes? Go on."

"I sorta grabbed him and uh." Her voice turned more and more silent, the longer she went on. "I kinda...said I'd kill him."

For a second, she was worried that this would be what escalated this whole interaction into some hostile encounter. Instead, the man in the suit continued to take unflattering notes. "Signs of violent tendencies. Also, quick question, if you were going to such extremes, you must have been pretty sure he was going to tell on you, weren't you?"

"Yeah?"

"Now why would that be?"

She vocalized annoyance with this subject. "Whatever. It doesn't matter." She couldn't help but notice that he was quietly noting something down. From what she could guess, the fact that she didn't want to talk about that exact subject. "I didn't do it, okay? I changed my mind, because his mom was my favourite teacher."

"Playing favourites I see. What distinguishes his mother from the other teachers?"

"She..." She looked away. In fact, for a while, dead silence dropped between them. "There was a time when she was the one that actually tried to get me to do school work. The others just thought of me of the girl that's gone soon anyway."

"Possible abandonment issues."

"So I let him go. And I took him along to get new chalk in the supply closet."

"Aha! That's when you got to the Dark World, right?"

"Yes." She giggled. "When I opened it, the whole hallway turned dark and Kris got all scared. But we went inside. And that's that, basically. The closet was all weird, and then we fell into the Dark World."

"All right. So good so far. Please go on, give me every detail." And so she did. In great detail, she began recounting her entire first journey through the dark world, leaving no event, no thought, nothing that caught her attention unmentioned.

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The jumbled group of six had to repeat the play from before soon upon reaching the end of the tunnel, as the other exit was blocked off by brawlers as well. At least this time, the jester thought a step further and made sure that the automatic rifle the enemy had lying around was swapped out for an umbrella by the time it was picked up. That way, a lot less shooting was necessary. Upon first setting foot upon the inner city, they noticed the difference almost immediately.

The very first buildings they came across were in complete ruins. The roofs were gone, either on the ground on the inside or the loose connectable pieces were strewn across the street. Any remaining chatter of past exploits with Susie died down when they saw the kitchen utensils lying on the floor inside, furniture ripped apart, and its presumed inhabitant in the middle of it, with bullet holes in their lifeless body's chest telling the whole story on what happened to them.

And around only two more street corners, they spotted the possible culprits. Behind a crane with a wrecking ball big enough to crush those buildings like that, with shaking hands and arms, a citizen lay with his back to the pavement. A homeless person judging by his torn and dirty clothes. "Please, have some mercy!" He begged for his life, terrified of the raptor that stood over him with a pistol pressed onto his forehead. "Next we - tomorrow! Just please give me one more day, I'll have the money."

The raptor looked over to his partner, a shark in black leather, with silver spikes looking out of every piece of clothing he wore, who just shrugged. "Bled dry, buddy. Ain't gettin no more cash outta this one. Just clap'im"

The poor man was panicking. He shrieked and begged to be spared, but before he - or Berdly and the others who witnessed this, could say anything, he was put to death with two clear shots. A nod from his partner signaled the raptor that they were being watched. With a tired expression, he faced the approaching strangers. "Whatchu lookin' at, huh?"

As soon as they were close enough, Berdly was the one to speak up. "You already took everything else from that guy, did you have to kill him?"

"Deserved it for breathin' our air. Whole canyon's our turf. What y'all clickers build in it is ours. That a problem?"

"Is that some attempt at street jargon or do you just have a speech defect? What? Is getting one language right asking too much?"

"Wrong answer! You's gettin' cla-" He was drawing his weapon, but between the jester's antics, Kris charging right at him without a word and Berdly having his weapons already drawn, this fight didn't last nearly as long as he seemed to expect. Within mere moments, both were already collapsing onto the street and within another one, the second one was pacified. In fact, this was a trend that began with the previous group on their way out of the tunnel.

When they weren't taken by surprise, outnumbered or surrounded, these brawlers weren't nearly as much of a problem as they seemed when one of them pointed a gun at them for the first time. Now loaded with two carts and one jester's arm worth of unconscious criminals, they paced onward, following the bird's map to the nearest precinct.

Granted, that didn't get rid of the demolition equipment, but at least the two operating it were behind bars, and the bounties gave Kris more money to spare.

When they first arrived at the police station, they immediately noticed another massive difference to the other canyon. A large area from below where they expected the city hall to be, all along the outer end of the canyon to right where they stood, was walled off. Completely. All the way to the ceiling.

And those walls looked a lot more solid than the easily broken apart bricks that made up most of the other buildings here. In fact, they followed this massive wall out of curiosity to see how close it would get them to this canyon's central car park and as a matter of fact, it got them really close. They were careful, but they could see the entrance to the central structure from where the wall was.

There was a broad, six-track road leading straight from one to the other. Pilot and Janice seemed to know what this was, but unwilling to talk about it. All they said when asked about it, was that they weren't going to find any help on the other side of that wall. And when asked about that, they explained why that seemingly useless road was there. Like in the other canyon, the rough layout of the city here was the same on all levels, and at the very top, that road actually did lead somewhere.

The sights of comfortable-looking homes brought to ruin for some brawlers' entertainment never left them. Sure, there were homeless in the outer city. But here, the homeless had bigger problems, seeing as most of them were just corpses that littered the ground and while there probably were a few empty houses here and there in the outer city, but at least they weren't nearly as many as here and they weren't outright destroyed and torn down either.

Even if it was a slow progression, this city was turning into a wasteland.

They took a long detour, the same path roughly as Ralsei did when they were on the way to his door for the first time. And to make everything worse, they spotted another pair of very obvious enemies on the way. This time though, they agreed to not taunt or antagonize them and to just take them by surprise.

Once it was settled, Kris nodded and pointed at the corner, behind which the two suspects were standing and whispered: "Berdly, take aim." He then summoned his sword and charged right at them. Berdly did as suggested. He took out both his guns, rushed around the corner and calmly pointed both at one of the two reptiles. But now, something was different.

Something appeared on his target, the same glowing circle and crosshairs that appeared on the big, three-headed rose creature in the very beginning of their travels here. He waited for the outer circle to reach the inner one, and then pulled the triggers. The recoil that pushed his hands back was much stronger than with regular shots. To escape Kris' swings, not knowing he was not aiming for him, the reptile Berdly targeted, jumped to the side.

And the bullets he had fired, changed course mid-flight, hit him in the chest and pierced right through him. He had to repeat this in his mind to believe it. They changed course mid-flight. In all this time ever since his very first fight, he never really used his weapon that way. Then again, he didn't calmly aim at someone like that either, he always fired away immediately or didn't point his weapons at anyone to begin with.

This one double shot was all that was needed from him, too. The sheer force of the attack had launched its target back and onto the ground. By the time Berdly was done staring at the smoking barrels of his guns, Kris and Ralsei had already pacified both enemies. "What's wrong?" The prince noticed that something was concerning him and Kris followed him.

Berdly looked up from his pistols. "I - I saw a thing. I think these things have homing bullets."

The human nodded. "I saw it, too. You used this on the Roserus, too."

"How?"

"It's your magic attack."

The bird raised an eyebrow. "Now that's nonsense if I ever heard any." He swung his hand, and a fan of orange feathers manifested out of thin air and flew in the directions the pointy ends were aimed at before vanishing. "Those are my magic attacks."

The prince shook his head. "The dark world has its own magic." Berdly just looked over at Kris who presented his sword, with the guard that separated the grip from the blade, shaped like the wings of a bat, dispelled his sword, summoned it again, dispelled it, summoned it again, dispelled it again. Overall, summoning a sword out of nowhere was indeed a pretty magical thing to do, and not something a human should have been capable of. "This could be your magic attack, like Susie's."

"What magic attack does Susie have?"

In-between searching the reptiles for money and ammunition for Ralsei, the prince went on to describe her charging her axe with a purple glow and then swinging it to launch a purple energy wave at the enemy. But when he then got to the part where even Kris could charge her axe with the red glow of his soul, the bird stopped him right there. "Okay now that's just stupid. You're messing with me now."

"No, it's true. Kris, show him!"

The human shook his head. "I don't think I can just do that. It just happened in the heat of the moment somehow."

"Yes. Sure. Heat of the moment. What else?" When they were done looting, they made sure to pace ahead at once. Straight to the car park to head all the way down. They didn't slow down until they had passed quite a bit and were sure they weren't going to run into anyone hostile to them for a while.

"So what do you call it?"

Once they could stop for a moment, the bird faced Ralsei. "Call what?"

"Your magic attack."

"I don't think it needs a name."

Kris raised a finger at him. "Susie called hers the rudebuster. And she's rude. You're smug and you shoot them, so...the smugshot?"

Berdly could only laugh this off in a dismissive way. "We're not calling it the Smugshot."

"Aw, come on, why not." That one comment with the name was all Kris had to contribute. The prince continued to pursue Berdly on this though. "It even fits because all the bad guys here are criminals. So they all have mugshots."

"I said, we're not calling it the Smugshot."

The further down they went, the less people littered the sides of their path and the darker it got outside. The 'moons' didn't shine so bright down here. At the bottom level, it got brighter again, but in a different way. The pale light of the lamps that replaced the nonexistent moon didn't shine through the structure's openings at all. Instead, all light came from the ground level itself. Every square metre but the exit was crowded with people.

For once, plastic monsters and brawlers alike, in an area, and no-one killing anyone. At least they had this impression, until while carefully pressing through the masses of people, they saw the crowd open up ahead. The gap opened further their way and past them into the carpark. And once the opening reached them, they saw why.

Two citizens in scrubs carried a stretcher into the car park and towards an ambulance that stood inside with its back doors open. On the stretcher was a crocodile, covered in blood and big, gaping wounds, with tatters of his black leather shoulderpieces hanging off the edge. Ralsei tipped at one of the gawkers to ask him what was going on. "What happened to him?"

"He challenged the clown. No-one's beaten him until now. Isn't that why you're here?"

"Why of course!" Jandsome very swiftly slid between them and pushed them aside, only to then pull out a few multicoloured juggling balls. "From one clown to another, we are here to ask him for advice." To help distract both the people he traveled with, as well as any other onlookers who might tell too much about the clown, he began juggling them and occasionally adding one ball, once the onlookers had made way for him to move around his arms freely.

If it had depended on the street lights or the large lamps at the ceiling of each floor, the entire bottom floor would have been pitch black. However the area was illuminated by the yellow and red light of plain light bulbs that hung off cables that spanned from street light to street light, making barely visible the many stands and attractions that filled the squares around them.

Here, the layout of how everything was arranged and built was completely different. And in the distance, there was no wall, just a giant, brightly glowing tent.

Broad and tall bears in different colours towered over the crowds of people. They were dressed in plaid shirts and jeans with matching suspenders, held together with the same kind of sewn-on buttons that also made up an eye of one of them here and there.

One of them stopped the overeager jester right where he stood and two others came closer as well. They were so big, they still towered over Jandsome's and Janice's height. "You guys are new here!" He spoke with a deep, grumbling voice, and the other two readied their mallets while he went on. "You're not gonna cause any trouble down here, are you?"

"I'm surprised there is so little trouble down here at all."

The bear that addressed them laughed at Berdly's retort. "We'd like to keep it that way. Welcome to the carnival. We allow anyone to enter here, but keep it civil or we will MAKE you civil." His two friends slammed the upper handles of their hammers onto their right hands. A signal that they were ready to smash them to bits if they heed his warning.

"If you want to do any fighting, you either keep it in the upper levels, or you take it to the circus. The arena can always use new blood." After that, all three of them left them alone again, each returning to his post, spread apart within both squares.

Them backing off made way for Kris and the others seeing the whole carnival, with all its shooting stands, carousels, go-carts, a slow train with tracks leading straight through the visitor's area, and with people of all shapes and sizes wandering through the dark. They had to move very slowly not to bump into the people that passed them in various directions.

They wound up keeping to the left side, as the centre with all the stands dedicated to selling all kinds of curious and not so curious wares, was a lot more difficult to move through. The barely penetrable mass of people was filled not just with bears, citizens and brawlers, but all kinds of people.

Some human, some walking constructs of multi-coloured bars, some large dinosaurs, one was just a golem made of countless tiny creatures that were just a face with arms and legs. Most of which were missing something, like an arm or an eye. Rejects that missed bodyparts. Of course they would wind up forming a circus. Berdly didn't say a word about it, but he recognized them from toys from long, long ago. Toys he tossed into the first of the two toy boxes long before all the others. Of course they were at the bottom level of the inner city. Citizens, brawlers, they were buried under everything that came after them.

And even here, in light of the many people and the intimidating bears, who's threat hung over them the whole time, they only moved forward very slowly. Janice led Pluma by the hand, merely following the others and mostly looking down. "Now, now."

Jandsome tapped in front of her, lowered himself to catch her gaze and then rose back up. "Why so glum? This is a place for amusement. Look here!" He gestured to the others to stop and walked up to a stand. It was a simple stand, with juggling balls like his own lined up to be thrown at tin cans. "Excuse me, good sir." He placed a few paper bills on the counter and the man on the other side quickly understood and made way for him.

With three perfectly aimed shots, he won a plush parrot, which he presented to Janice with a graceful kneel, who passed it right onto the little girl she was leading along. The smell of burnt coal filled the air, and all you could hear over the voices that drowned out almost everything that wasn't nigh-screaming, was the sound of accordions and one piano, up on a stage with a sound system broadcasting his song.

Once past the most crowded area, they went back to the middle, past a little bench set up by two more nurses with a stretcher ready for who might need one next, onto the sandy path that led into the wide open entrance to the tent, with bears standing guard on each side. Kris went ahead and asked one of the bears for the way. "Hello. We'd like to talk to the clown."

The burly man didn't so much as budge and kept his guard up in case anyone around got any funny ideas, but even if he refused to look at the small visitor, he did answer. "Ring's on the left, stairs to the seats on the right. Clown's in the ring." It appeared that all of them were bears of little words. Ahead of them, the tent had a slightly curved wall, giving you only left and right as possibly options for paths to take from there. It was as noisy here as it was outside. And visitors were walking back and forth, but they only went to the right.

From above, the drawn-out notes of a horn and an organ overshadowed the music from outside, and trumpets and drums accompanied them. Most of all this seemed perfectly fitting for a circus. The only thing that made Kris a little uneasy was the fact that right on the path to the left, there was a light. Careful and heavily concerned, he touched it. The last few lights came just before the Roserus, just before heading to the airport where they were sent to crash into the sea, on an island with no escape, and in front of a police station in a city where the police were hunted and forbidden from doing anything short of breathing. Every light was preceded by some deadly danger.

"Uh, Berdly..." Before he could start, the ground shook, under the trampling of many, very strong legs and the sounds of a terrified elephant rushing straight past the other side of the plane that separated this place from the ring. When he walked back to his much less shaken-up classmate, he could have sworn he could hear explosions in the ring. What was happening in there? "...Berdly could you tell me a little more about this 'clown', this all seems a bit dangerous."

Berdly avoided looking at Kris. Not that someone like Kris would take note of this or see it as a sign. "You know, I don't know so much about him either." He had to stick to what the infopage had told him. If he told him anything he knew from Pilot, that would have come with risks of being found out. "All I know is that he's omnipotent and took over this circus."

And that this entire exercise was just stalling for time so either him and Kris could make it to the fountain to seal it, or so Pilot could pull himself together, the latter of which was why he shot a glare at the jester that was watching them on their way further down the path. After getting a few steps closer to where the opening to the ring was, most of the rumble inside stopped. Then, one strong thud was followed up by the crowd above cheering all around.

"There goes another contestant!", a presumed director shouted through a microphone. "Now if the nurses would please see to the poor man's health." Then they got past the plane and saw the interior of the ring. It was a normal cylindrical circus ring as you expected it, except that the dirt was littered with puddles of dried-up blood, some of which presumably came from a ten foot tall shark who had collapsed onto the ground.

He had deep wounds everywhere, one in the shape of a curved cone, straight through his back, as if he had been impaled by a horn and his right arm was twisted backwards in such a way that it was impossible to argue that it wasn't broken. "Once more, the champion goes unmatched, are they big, are they small, are they crazy, do they come solo or in numbers, ladies, gentlemen please, another round of applause for the man of the hour! The one that can do anything! A round of applause for: Jevil the Clown!"

At the mere mention of the name, the human and the prince shrugged together and took a clear step back from the entrance, all while the crowd screamed with newfound strength.

Out of the air far above the actual arena, a man in red swung himself off of the trapezes that hung down and onto the body of his latest victim. He was small. Even smaller than the teenagers and visibly so. He sported a suit that came with flower patterns in all colours of the rainbow, all at once, the main parts of which were red.

His curly hair was styled in a flawless, deep red bulbous haircut and his face was painted over white with black stars over his eyes, red paint around his lips and a dark red clown nose sticking onto the middle of his face. He had much too large shoes, one green, one yellow, and some of his yellow teeth peeked out of his open smile. The only thing that didn't match the bright rainbow that made up the rest of his costume, was the tail, curled up to form his signature 'J'.

"Nope." By the time Berdly had gotten a good look at the clown and noticed that Kris and Ralsei were gone, they were already almost at the exit, so he ran after them and Jandsome knew better than to enter the arena as well.

Only Janice took a step forward. The clown adjusted the miniature sunflower that hung out of his jacket pocket and hopped off his last challenger so the soon arriving nurses could begin to heave the big guy onto something to help carry him out of here. "And before the previous one is even out, we have a new challenge - " The circus director choked for a second when he saw who it was. "Ja-Ja...please give them a minute, ladies and gentlemen."

"GREETINGS, OLD FRIEND." Jevil smiled right at Jandsome, who followed right behind Janice and Pluma. "WHAT LEADS A KINDRED SPIRIT LIKE YOURSELF BACK INTO MY CIRCLES?"

Before the jester could answer, Janice stepped closer once again. "We're looking for Pilot!" She presented a picture of herself and him pulled right from her wallet. "My friend here told me you knew where to find him." The jester took a step back and to the side to make sure neither of the other two were looking and began to shake his head when exchanging looks with the little creature. "Have you ever seen this man?"

Jevil's whole body shook with his uncontrollable snickers. "WHY, MY FRIEND. THE ANSWER LIES WITHIN! I COULD NOT BRING YOU ANY CLOSER TO WHOM YOU SEEK, IF I WANTED TO."

Jandsome could practically feel the hope vanishing from her, just from how her shoulders dropped and the angle of her head dropped ever so slightly. "I understand. You won't help me, will you? This was a mistake." She turned around and began to storm back out of the arena. The nurses were only coming in right now, but everyone could see they would need to request for more help if they wanted to get someone as big as this shark out of here.

She paced back outside and the jester tapped ahead of her and tried to stop her. Once she was out of the arena for certain, he stopped backing off to make way for her. "Now, now. No need to rush things so much." She was seriously distressed, but this didn't help his willingness to come forward either, instead, he grabbed her by the wrist and made sure their eyes met. "Please, one moment of peace."

She stopped moving and struggling and indulged him, even if only for a second. "Let the lightners talk to him. They have a habit of solving things in strange ways. Maybe they can find out more." Now pretty cross, she wrestled herself free of his grip and began to walk back outside to follow the teenagers.

"Kris?" When Kris and Ralsei marched right outside, Berdly ran after them. "Kris come back!" He knew Kris was weird, but his prince friend was marching off with him. "Hey!" He didn't catch up until they were already back outside. "What's gotten into you two?"

"We're not doing this, Berdly." Kris stopped and was facing him straight on. He wasn't being weird absent Kris, this was something different.

"What is wrong with you? Let's just go talk to the guy."

"You said we'll visit a clown. You didn't say we'll visit Jevil."

"So what if that's his name, huh?"

Ralsei poked the sleeve of his jacket with one claw to draw his attention. "You don't understand, we know Jevil from somewhere else."

Kris pointed at him. "Wait, we even told you about that part. Remember the part about the guy who went crazy and started killing people because he thinks everything is a game? The one that has all the symbols for attacks and where us surviving was a miracle? That's him. Jevil is the crazy guy."

"Wait, so you're seriously telling me that's the same Jevil from your story?"

They both nodded very insistently. "If this is the same Ralsei, that's the same Jevil!"

"How? I thought you - wait, look." Berdly had to take a step back and strike out for a bit. "If this Jevil is the same one you know, wouldn't hat mean he's a darkner from the abandoned classroom?"

"Yes?"

"Well if the people you ran into there were all kinds of playing cards, I guess that makes him the joker. But why is he here? How is he here? How is a joker card from the abandoned classroom in a toy box in my room?" The human and the prince could only shrug. None of them had an answer. "Did you bring him here?"

"Nope. Didn't bring anything from that room with me except the horns. You were there anyway."

"Yes, but I thought maybe you...yeah I guess if you did bring him here after all, why deny it? Still, even so how IS he here, exactly?"

"If I may interject." By now, Jandsome and Janice had caught up, and the jester stepped in-between the heated youngsters. "Maybe for the time being, it is best not to focus on how he is here, and more on the fact that he is."

"What are you implying?"

Jandsome stepped back and swung his arms around to present Janice. "The pretty lady right here has already tried her luck to find out the whereabouts of her lost friend, with little to show. But perhaps you lightners have more luck in this regard?"

Berdly faced Kris, with the movable corners of his beak drawn into as much of a frown as was possible for him and snorted through the nostrils in his beak loud enough for Kris to notice. "So?"

The human just wouldn't stop staring at him. "If we're visiting Jevil, we're not doing it just like that. I'm not buying that he isn't turning this into a fight. We have to prepare properly."

"What?" Berdly raised his hands. "What do you suggest?"

He didn't like how a faint smile crept up the human's face. "Well..." Berdly would soon come to regret asking Kris for suggestions, as what Kris had in store for him, was to turn out to be more effort than Berdly was originally willing to agree to.