QUASIPAN, THE NIGH LORD

Part 1: From On Nigh

An hour past noon on the rolling Meerkat Plains of Ooo, site of countless inter-rodent skirmishes and five or so outright inter-rodent wars, each spanning whole minutes. Today, however, it was peaceful, but only because the presence of these two valiant journeyers-forth put a stop to a dangerous and quite icky instigator, the unseemly Baron Ick—who had incited chaos between the various rodent tribes in order to bottle their coveted, exceedingly fragrant sweat.

"'Ælfgifu'?" Finn poked the thankful little vole in the belly. "Haha! No way that's your name, dude."

"It is!" peeped up the small rodent resembling a mouse but with a stouter body, a shorter, hairy tail, a slightly rounder head, smaller ears and eyes, and differently formed molars. "Except you need to roll your tongue more on that fg sound."

"Finn, you didn't even think 'voles' could be the name of a real species until just today," said Jake.

"Before today I'd never rescued a colony of these cuties from Baron Ick."

"Stand aside, Finn. He's probably hurting a bit after you tossed him into the mouth of that ick maniac, and I know way more about magical anatomy than you do."

"Hey! You just want to poke little Ælfgifu yourself!"

Jake sprouted three additional hands, index fingers poised at the ready. "Yeah, you're right," he admitted gleefully.

"Not too hard on my flooshma gland," Ælfgifu cautioned, but it was too late. And a stray poke provoked a veritable avalanche of flooshma to spew out of the vole's mouth.

"Ewwwwwww."

"Hold on Jake, this 'flooshma' actually smells pretty okay."

"Hey, you're not wrong. I guess it's more than just the rodents' sweat that's so great."

Finn sniffed the ooze covering Jake's pelt. "Is that... roses?"

"No!" Ælfgifu moaned, clutching the spot where Jake must have prodded his flooshma gland.

"Man, leave the odor sleuthing around here to the dog."

Suddenly, a voice boomed from on high. "Nay, it is not the smell of roses, CRETIN!"

Down crashed a figure of some awe. A white bobtail cat around half Finn's size, seated at the helm of a personal UFO command module now hovering a meter above the windswept grass.

"Ah fg," cried Ælfgifu. "That makes three interlopers on the plains this hour!"

"WRONG!" shouted the imperious alien cat. "There was a fourth interloper this hour, in the form of an itinerant ladybug passing through your hallowed battleground, totally unnoticed except for me, QUASIPAN THE NIGH LORD!"

"Well, actually if you count Jake then it's five interlopers," said Finn.

The floating spaceship cat ignored this. "Anyway, cretin, the smell of the flooshma this cat emits is a combination of the chemicals quintoxoyottadrin and ichthyolipilin, with just a DASH of roses!"

A pause.

"This cat's flooshma?" Jake stared.

"It's... not a cat?" Quasipan stammered.

"Uhhh..." Jake didn't know what to say, but after a moment he tried a consoling tack. "What's the matter, Quasipan? Do you need help with anything? We are the helping kind of adventurers, you know."

Quasipan snapped. "Silence, piteous hound dog! Of course, I know, and I never require ANY assistance. I but seek another creature of the feline persuasion to grant my gift."

"Your gift?" asked Finn. "I want a gift."

"Pffft," hissed Quasipan, making a show of his holding back a mighty peal of derisive laughter. "A brain-whacked boy like you, Fred the Human, can barely fathom the sheer depth of this power I possess, the power of APPOXIMATE WORLD KNOWLEDGE. Only another cat may share my soaring wisdom."

"So you're lonely," said Jake.

"Yes, well, the last cat to whom I granted a fraction of my unbelievably vast store of knowledge may have resented it. But that is only because that cat was demonic to begin with, and maybe partially because I ripped out part of its very being and soul to complete the transaction."

"Oh, I met that cat," Finn recalled. "He was actually really dumb. Like, monster dumb."

"You think you can stand against me, human!?" Quasipan snarled. "That cat only sacrificed a small part of its body. I removed my *entire tail,* and in so doing earned my slightly overpowering mien! Cower slightly before my moderate magnificence!"

A wave of psychic pressure assaulted their senses; Finn's brains felt like they were getting air blown into them, and his every other thought was foisted upon him: "Ælfgifu is a cat, Ælfgifu is a cat..."

"Yeesh, not another psychic being," shouted Jake, clutching his head and whimpering. "Just last week we had to rein in-"

Quasipan finished the sentence for him. "...rein in 'Moliad!'"

"Close enough."

Hypnotized, Ælfgifu squeaked: "I am a cat."

"No fair, that's a tiny mind you're manipulating!" said Finn.

"Hey!" The vole's hair pricked at the offense.

Gritting his pearly whites, Finn fished his trusty sword out of his backpack and charged at Quasipan. "Hee-yaaaaah!"

Quasipan was forced to let up his mental barrage of "Ælfgifu is a cat" messages, but he easily dodged each of Finn's strikes.

"You can't hit me, I can predict ALL of your moveme-"

Finn delivered a roundhouse kick straight into the side of the cat's UFO seat, destroying its gravitational rudder and sending the device to cold earth. When Quasipan crawled out of the "wreckage," such that it was, he was not pleased.

"FOOLS!" he wheezed. "Now you've really raked my nape!"

Quasipan hacked up a magic furball that contained within it a pocket universe, wherein he controlled all the parameters.

"Uwooooooooah!" Jake wrapped around Finn as they got sucked into the gross wet hairball, but there were no trees to grasp onto in these Meerkat Plains.

"Your breath smells, Quasipaaaaaaaaaaaann..."

"Now you two are in a world where I do know everything!" Quasipan cackled before stepping into his own hairball.

Ewww.