Welcome to Chapter 3 of "Can I Push Your Button". You may not now it, and I may not be able to prove it, but I started this chapter about 10 hours after I posted my revised version of Chapter 1, so please try to appreciate my hard work. I'm not sure how long this particular chapter will be; so don't be surprised if you can't scroll down very far on this page. This chapter will take off right after where I left off in Chapter 2, with Raine riding up to the top of the Tower of Salvation in the Elevator of Salvation (as I will be calling occasionally it from now on). Then, this chapter will explain what Lloyd and the others did while waiting for the elevator to come back down. I think the rest of the story will be told in this particular format, and I WANT YOU TO TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK OF IT IN YOUR REVIEWS, so R&R!
I don't own Tales of Symphonia, its respective characters, or the Tower of Salvation.
ONWARD!
As the Professor watched the doors close in front of her, she thought to herself, "Uh-oh, I forgot: I'm afraid of heights!" Her mind did not exactly dwell on this subject for long, as she noticed the interior was slightly abnormal, and she squealed in delight, "Yippee! Stuff I can RESEARCH!" She proceeded to run about studying the graffiti on the walls, measuring all the detentions of the interior: she hadn't had so much fun in such a small space sense her time in The Womb.
Now Raine can go on for hours when it comes to RESEARCH, and while in 'RESEARCH mode', her stomach shrinks so she doesn't go hungry, she forgets how to sleep, and breathing becomes optional. Her internal clock also stops keeping track of time; and before she knew it, she was at the top floor.
DING!
Raine was quickly snapped out of her trance as she recalled why she was where she was. "Oh! Now I recall why I am where I am!" the half-elf piped stupidly, "I'm here because we didn't know what was on the top floor, and sense we figured it might be something really bad; we figured I was the most expendable member of the group." She spoke the last part in a more realizing tone. "Which means I'm... first... to... meet... the... danger...!" She finished as she watched in absolute horror as the door of the elevator that she had measured so many times opened to revel whatever foul thing might lie beyond. The Professor closed her eyes, dropped her stick/staff, flung her hands out in front of her face, got on her knees, and screamed in a merciful voice, "PLEASE DON'T EAT ME! I PROMISS I TASTE BAD; I HAVEN'T BATHED IN WEEKS!" She then remained silent, anticipating a massive, jagged claw to scratch her out from the elevator that had brought her here, then be thrown down out in the open where her bloody-and-bruised-beyond-all-repair body would be soon be bore down upon by the mouth of some giant demonic creature with chain-saws for teeth.
But none of that ever came, and Raine finally decided to take a peek at what was waiting for her. She saw nothing; just a big, circular, open space with runes everywhere, and minimal safety railings. "Whoopee!" cried the nerd in delight, "More stuff I can RESEARCH!" And with that, she gathered up all the piles of paper (that she had somehow materialized on the elevator ride) which contained all her notes on the Elevator of Salvation. She didn't even bother with her rotted, maggot-infested staff, and left it behind. The door of the elevator closed, leaving Rane (now once again in RESEARCH mode) on the infinityith floor, and began the long decent to the ground that was so many uncountable miles below.
Meanwhile, back on the ground...
Sheena quickly retracted her head from the elevator before it closed on her (nobody had yet thought of making a safety-device for elevators to be something of grave concern).
"So how long do you reckon it'll take for her to get to the top of this pillar thingy?" Kratos asked to no one in particular, as he dusted off his hands in a 'that's that' manner.
"Yeah." Colette added, actually talking to someone (Sheena in this case) "Which button did you press any how?"
"I don't know," The former assassin-would-be stated, "I just went for the one with the sideways eight on it."
Everyone got such a huge anime sweat-drop after hearing this that they all lost their balance and fell over. Lloyd was the first to get to his feet as he charged at Sheena and pinned her up against a rather conveniently placed tree. "You mean to say," He began, enraged at her stupidity, "that you sent her to the infinityth floor! Do you realize what you've done!"
"No!" The Mizuhoian replied as best she could with cold sticky sap from the tree collecting on the back of her neck.
"Alright!" Lloyd continued as he allowed her the privilege of once again being able to stand on her feet, "You've just sent her to the infinityth floor; how long do you think it's going to take for her to get to that floor?"
"Why the concern for my sister all of the sudden Lloyd?" Genis inquired as he threw rocks at a nearby hornets nest.
"I'm not talking about her," Lloyd snapped, "I'm talking about us!"
"So why the concern for us all of the sudden Lloyd?" The gray haired fool asked as one of his rocks hit its mark and he was chased around by a large cloud of the thoroughly enraged flying insects. The others ignored his question and thought fondly on the fact that it would be a while before Genis would interrupt them.
"What I'm saying Sheena, is we now have about three questions that we don't know the answers to. One; how long does it take for that elevator to reach the infinityth floor? Two; how long is it going to take the Elevator of Salvation to not only reach the top, but then come back down here? And three; what is infinity multiplied by 2? Because that is how many floors that thing has to go past before we get to send someone else up." He finished in quite a 'behold, I am the bringer of reason' manner.
"Well if we've got twice as much as infinity time on our hands," Kratos suddenly burst out, "we might have enough time to play through an entire game of Monopoly!" He then pulled out an entire Monopoly box from inside the depths of his hair.
"Wow!" awed the rather amazed Chosen, "What else do you have in there?" Kratos responded to the question by violently shaking his head, causing thousands of pieces of gald to fly in every direction.
"Oh," Sheena said, "so that's where all of our gald goes!"
"O.K." Lloyd spoke, "I agree Kratoses motion. I get to be the hat!"
"I wana be the dog!" Sheena proclaimed.
"Hey, that's what I want to be!" Collette protested.
"You were the dog last time."
"But I love dogs, and I need to show it!"
"You're always the dog!"
"So what!"
"So it's time you let someone else play as it!"
"Do you want your teeth inside your mouth, or outside of it?" (Yep, Colette said that)
"Oh, you wana go?"
"You wana kicken' chicken?"
"I'M GONA KICK YO' ASS!"
The two then ran full speed at one another and immediately started bitch-slapping. This continued for a few hours with little desire to stop on either girl's part, until Lloyd finally decided to intervene by telling them the truth. "We don't have the dog piece any more!" He told them, "We lost it, remember?"
The two girls had now frozen in their little brawl with Colette on top of Sheena, with the ninja's hand in the chosen's mouth, and using her other arm to push her face into the ground. While Sheena was attempting to tear out the blonde's (would soon have been baldy) hair with one arm, and about to kick Colette in the stomach from behind. "What happened to it?" Sheena asked as her mouth was not trying to bite on something.
"Genis ate it." Kratos stated as he pointed over his shoulder to the dim-witted midget (who was still screaming his head off as he continued to run from the swarm of hornets which were so very intent on making him look like Swiss-cheese). "So what piece will you be? 'Cause I'm picking the boat."
"Thimble."
"Cannon."
They played together as best they could considering that the dog piece wasn't the only part of the game that was missing. Some of the houses and hotels had been dropped into the ocean, and a few of the bills, 'Chance' cards, and 'Community Chest' cards had been set aflame to be use as kindling when they were in Falanor. Genis had also neatly bitten off the 'GO' corner of the board when they had run a bit low on rations in Teret Desert; so they were forced to play without the occasional collection of $200.
Now for the sake of time, the internet, Bungiefan89s readers, and Bungiefan89s desire to post this chapter as soon as possible, let's just say that Lloyd did pretty poorly at playing due to his short attention span in math class. And Genis, who had been fleeing the flying bugs this whole time, ran into the Elevator of Salvation just as the door opened. He quickly pushed the button with the sideways eight on it before knocking himself unconscious from banging his head against the wall. The hornets however, flew into the Elevator of Salvation just as the door closed. This caused them to act very much like the flying keys in the first Harry Potter movie; with the exception that these were hornets, not keys. They also all went "splat" on impact, leaving a thick layer of insectoid guts on the surface of the door.
"Hey." Lloyd said, "Geins just jumped in the elevator."
"You're not going to get your way out of this one by distracting us mister 'Pity me because I only paid attention in P.E. and art'." Chastised a now quite rich Sheena, "You just landed on my Boardwalk, and you owe me money! Pay up!"
FIN!
That's all for Chapter 3! By the way, would someone mind helping me out with my grammar? As I understand, when a new person starts talking, it's mandatory that you start a new paragraph. I know I didn't follow this thinking when I wrote Chapter 1, but I would appreciate if someone could help me out by way of reviews. Thank you!
Also, I apologize that this chapter took longer than the others. I'll try to spend more time on Chapter 4. See ya then!