The Crane Game
AN: I thank Rich Burlew for pretty much everything. I also thank Suzanne Collins for her characters that I am borrowing for a bit. Anyway, behold! The start of RPG jokes, which will persist for a long time!
Clove snorted. "Nice entrance."
"Shut up," Cato shot back. He didn't need this from her. Or anyone else, for that matter, but especially not from that little murderous nut.
"I'm with Clove here, that really was a letdown." That one was Katniss. It was like they all had some sort of conspiracy to annoy him as much as possible. That had to be it.
"I swear, there are goblins in here!" he shouted as he looked into the antechamber. He had to salvage something from this... lack of goblins behind the door. He was probably losing Clove's attention already.
On second thought, he probably never had that to begin with.
"I cannot fathom your collective haste in this regard," Madge offered. "Goblins dwell underground; it is unreasonable for Sir Redblade to have suggested otherwise, yes, but we can hardly blame him for lacking this knowledge." Redblade. Cato had come from a long line of warriors, all named after the sword he carried on his perilous journey. The eponymous red blade took its tint from battle—from dust. The enchanted sword took in the dust of raging battles, and wherever there was such rage, the sword would reverse all its own wear. It never bore so much as a scratch.
Smartass he thought. And before she opened her mouth to speak a second time, Cato cut her off, "Thank you for disparaging my intellect. Now let's look for stairs down."
"Maybe avoid big fancy doors this time," Clove added.
"You just shut up."
"You tell Clove that, but not anyone even remotely helping you," Katniss says flatly. He pretended to ignore that. There was no use discussing Cato's biases about who could talk, and when they could talk, or anything else, because they all had pieces of paper saying that they had to obey his orders until this Heavensbane was gone.
If he let Madge speak— and when she spoke, somewhere in the world, a hurricane would hit or someone would suffocate from all the air she breathed in or out— that was his choice, whether it be because she was arguing on his behalf, or because he felt differently about her than everyone else, or because he liked to hear the sound of her voice, or because he feared arcane retribution should he deny her such freedom. And the truth was, it was a combination of those.
Peeta was singing "Search, search, search, search for the stairs down into the dungeon" when she looked over and saw an indentation in the wall of the atrium. A true test of her perceptive prowess, the stairs were ingeniously hidden by planks connecting two walls, with bent iron nails sticking out of them and splinters of wood scattered on the floor beneath the planks. Masterwork. A true work of structural brilliance.
The stairs were also hidden with a sign hanging above the doorway. Cato groaned and smashed the feeble barricade apart. The party descended the stairs.
Cato got the first look at the next barricade. A single wooden board, of substantially lower quality than the gigantic doors into the castle antechamber blocked his group from entering. "There," he commented. "Not nearly as fancy as the first, so there must be goblins now."
"Break it down, Cato!" Peeta encouraged. What an idiot... What else was Cato even going to do, anyway? Disassemble it and bring it back to town for a quick profit? All things considered, that actually might not have been a bad idea. But there were more important things going on.
A swift kick and the flimsy board was shattered; the goblins in the underground room preparing their ambush were themselves caught off guard by this stunning display of force. In their surprise, Katniss shot one twice in the chest, and loosed a third arrow to another monster's head. Cato and Marvel ran up in front, both best suited for the heavy melee fighting with the seven goblins in the room. So two skilled fighters left themselves open to a partial surround, an advantage which their foes sought immediately to exploit. Madge cast an enchantment onto one attacker, sending it into a magical sleep. And for as long as this battle was to last, even such brief inaction would be fatal. More immediately fatal were Clove's daggers, sank into the vitals of the one goblin coming around behind the front line fighters. With a squeal, he fell and died, clearing the two armored warriors' backs. The arrow-wounded goblins approached cautiously, letting their healthier allies charge into Cato and Marvel first. A hopeless situation for them, really, as Cato stabbed through one's entire body with his great sword, and cut another in half at the waist. In a word, it was a bloodbath, and the last combatant entered the fray, charging at Marvel, savagely swinging his axe, and swept aside by a simple flick of the stout war-priest's shield. Marvel stuck his spear into his assailant's head, piercing the skull and shattering the jaw, not quite clean, but not quite grotesque as the splattering of organs Cato caused.
The wounded goblins fled, and they would perish from blood loss later, while Cato decapitated the sleeper. He turned to face the party, and he admitted, "All told, a much better performance than last time."
"We're improving!" Peeta cheered.
And then a strange energy passed through them, the effects of which invisible and intangible wave manifested themselves in some of the adventurers more clearly than in others. Most evidently, Peeta suddenly wore a light chain armor.
"Wha's 'appenin'?" Marvel asked. "Peeta, ye dinnae buy tha' in town, did ye?"
"No. He didn't," Clove angrily answered in the blonde's place. "And last I remember, these," she juggled her daggers, "were a size larger a moment ago."
Madge thought for a moment, and offered her keen insight. "The Gods are probably restructuring the universe again. I read that this sort of update has happened on at least three instances in the past, albeit with more dramatic alterations across those previous iterations than we observe here. I, for one, think that it's about time something was done to further improve wizardry."
"..." Clove balked. "So, what you're saying is, it's too late to switch to short swords?"
"They had 1d6 damage and the same critical threat range, and would have 1d4 damage small, weigh pretty much the same, and barely cost more. Why didn't get a pair of those in the first place?" Cato asked. "We're sure as hell not turning back."
Finally. She didn't respond...
Cato looked at the two corridors out of the room. If it was going to be a labyrinth, he decided it'd be best to split up and search both parts simultaneously. Both would have to be guarded only half as much, and they wouldn't clear the corridors any slower by separating, if his predictions to the groups was remotely accurate.
Katniss preempted his obvious announcement, "Madge is with me."
Marvel walked to Cato's side. Because who else was Cato going to pick first?
"Uh..." Katniss hesitated. "I'm gonna go with..." She put her hand over her mouth, thinking hard about this. To be sure, Clove was very aggressive. Of course, this also meant that Clove was very aggressive. Who would have guessed?
On the other hand, Peeta was pretty much useless. She finally decided, "Clove," and the three girls entered the first corridor.
One last pick. Out of one person. And Cato stood in the doorway to the second corridor, having a tough time choosing. "One choose one." It was a problem of probabilities for ages to come. There was one way to choose one element out of a set of one elements.
"Cato, are ye gonna-?"
"I'm thinking." Just one way to choose one out of one. Cato had to consider this carefully, because he really didn't want to pick the wrong person to join him.
Peeta was raising his hand, like a kid in school at recess, trying to get chosen for a team in kickball or something...
"I got these boots of speed a while back," Katniss was telling Madge. "They were powerful, you must know how important running speed was in my old profession."
"I do."
Katniss was stunned. Only two words? What happened to Madge in the past few minutes?
"You were expecting me to continue?" Madge wondered. "Yes, I am well aware of the alacrity of foot necessary to maintain optimal efficacy in the art of burglary. Shall I say even more?" She furrowed her brows.
With a sigh, Katniss professed, "No, but you had me worried there. Anyway, powerful effect, but the boots were lime green."
"A grave conundrum you faced," Madge passively assented. And when she thought over it more rationally, she asked, "What exactly would the problem with that be?"
"Stealth was also important."
"Speaking of stealth," Clove interrupted, "I think I just failed a spot check."
"I don't see anything."
"Exactly. You must have failed it too. Hey, Madge, don't you have alertness?"
"Hmm? The bonus from the raven familiar? Oh, no, I apologize, I forged my arcane bond with a token. As an elf, though, I have racial bonuses that amount to the feat." Madge took a look around with her improved elven senses. "How unfortunate. I too, can see nothing."
So maybe they were imagining things. Maybe there really was nothing there. After all, there's just no way to spot something that doesn't actually exist. Illusions require the failure of a different set of skills than simple visual or aural perception. Illusions require a strength of will to disbelieve, and it was the girls' perception challenged. So maybe there was nothing.
Or maybe there was a team of ninjas, who, annoyed, proclaimed, "We're right here. In front of you. We're ready to attack at any moment now."
To which Clove merely responded, "I think I just failed a listen check. Did anyone else hear anything?"
No. Nobody heard it...
"Jump, jump, jump," Peeta was singing. "Jump over the pit." What absurd song inspired this even more absurd song? Surely, it was a mystery for the whole universe.
Cato was the last over. "Alright, Peeta, why are you singing?"
"I told you, I'm a bard. I can use my bardic music to inspire competence at skill checks."
Cato shrugged and approached an ogre blocking the way. The brute was not so much a security guard as a toll collector, and he demanded a hundred gold to pass. He whispered to Marvel, "You okay with lying to him?"
"Aye," he answered. "Jus' dun' kill 'im 'less ye absolutely need ta."
"What constitutes absolute necessity, just out of curiosity?"
"If'n he attacks ye first, go ahead."
Ah. Cato cleared his throat, and began, "We, uh... we paid in advance."
The ogre grumbled. "So complicated... you really paid?"
"Yeah," he kept on lying. He heard a sound beneath this talking, and raised his voice over it. "Totally, we even tipped you to forget us. In hindsight, that may have been a bad idea. Sorry I didn't think that through, but I swear it's me." Only after he was done, did he realize it was Peeta.
"Bluff, bluff, bluff, bluff the stupid ogre" it went.
As they ran from the infuriated ogre, Cato shouted, "What made you think that would work?!"
No doubt, it was the same thing that made Cato think Peeta was thinking...
AN: I understand that a lot of people seem to like seeing relationships. Romantic ones in particular. No promises, but I think Cato/Madge is under-represented, and look forward to making something of it.