Onscreen, the black-haired girl hopped into the first minecart, followed quickly by Ivor, then Petra, gliding neatly into the minecart, and then Lukas, who dropped to all fours and smoothly leaped into the minecart, tail and ears flicking, as the minecarts slowly started shifting in the other direction. Milo brought up the rear and leaped into the last minecart before it took off down the hill, twisting and turning in circles and circles, like a spiral.
The spider hybrid gasped and braced herself as it appeared the minecarts were about to ram into the wall, the tracks switching at the last second and sending them rocketing down another stretch of track.
"How far down did you build that?" Mevia scowled at Isa, massaging her temples and desperately trying to assuage the headache beginning to throb in her temples. Going around and around in circles over and over again got quite dizzy after a few moments.
The black-haired woman sheepishly smiled. "Er... quite a ways down. I think the reason was to make the intruders dizzy so that they'd be more likely to get caught."
Real-Milo let out a low groan, clutching at his head. "I think you will be very happy to know that it is working." The members of the audience that did glance at him upon hearing this comment noticed that he was now looking rather sick to the stomach.
"I- urp!" Onscreen, the blonde-innkeeper was looking a little green, clutching onto the rims of the minecart as they continued rushing down. "I think I might be sick."
"What, now?!" Petra exclaimed, twisting around rapidly to get a good look at the blonde innkeeper.
Lukas's ears twitched. He had a mix of irritation and worry on his face as he glanced back at him. "Milo, if you throw up on me..."
The minecarts abruptly screeched to a loud stop, so the audience would never know exactly what Lukas had been about to say. The force of the minecarts coming to a stop jolted Jesse forward a bit and nearly sending her toppling right out of the minecart altogether. Her six arms tightened on the minecart rim, keeping her from spilling out. As it was, she was looking a bit disoriented from the circular ride.
Petra hovered out unsteadily, wobbling from left to right before the Blaze Rods vanished and she did a weird twirl in midair and landed hard on her hands and knees. Ivor trotted over to get a good look at the Blaze Hybrid, but she shoved her hand out in his direction. "I'm- I'm fine. Bit dizzy, but I'm fine," she said hastily, still staring at the ground. "Man, that was disorienting."
Ivor looked suspiciously unaffected.
"It was always hard to get him all that dizzy," Soren sighed, looking playfully disappointed.
Ivor shrugged, not taking offense at the comment for once. "Potions of calming also stabilize the liquid in your ears, so it keeps you from getting dizzy quite as easily," he stated simply.
"Why didn't you give them some, then?" Reginald asked, pointing at the screen with a confused look on his face.
Ivor just shrugged again, looking a bit bewildered. "How was I supposed to know that the track was that circular...?"
Lukas hopped out, giving his head a good shake. "Wow. That was... dizzying," he stated, stumbling sideways a step and flicking his ears rapidly to try to clear his head, although judging by his slightly loopy look, it wasn't exactly working.
"Thank you, Captain Obvious!" the narrator announced.
"I'm not sure I like this guy," Lukas muttered, although his expression made it clear that he was half-joking.
Half.
Onscreen, Jesse made an irritated expression, still crouching in the minecart, up at the ceiling.
Milo simply toppled out of the minecart, lying on his stomach and looking distinctly green now. "I- I think I'll be fine," he panted, looking a bit like he might projectile vomit any moment now, "just... just give me a..."
He made an odd gagging sound again, before his eyes widened, the blonde innkeeper clapping his hands to his mouth, leaping to his feet, and running over to the gaping hole that the minecarts had come to a screeching halt next to. He doubled over, thrusting his head out over the edge, and proceeded to make several dreadful noises as he was very violently sick.
Many audience members winced at that sympathetically, including Milo. He was not looking forward to that.
Jesse winced and unsteadily weaved her way over to him, patting him on the back using her middle set of arms. "There, there, better out than in, I suppose..." she sighed as Milo continued to violently retch.
"I guess most of the people in Sky City aren't used to violent turns like that... they probably don't even use minecarts up there. There's not really any need to," Jace said thoughtfully, narrowing his eyes at the screen.
Isa winced and rubbed the back of her head awkwardly. "Yes... I did assume that any intruder trying to steal the Eversource would've been one of the citizens... but I didn't realize that that many turns would induce vomiting." She glanced at Milo out of the very corners of her eyes. "My apologies."
Milo blinked at the apology in surprise.
Jesse placed her lowest set of arms on her hips and looked around the area they were in curiously while she was waiting for Milo's vomiting to subside, one of her hands reassuredly rubbing circles on his back. Her eyes widened in surprise, and she turned around, one hand still resting on Milo's back.
The screen switched to show the room they'd come to a stop in, to show dozens of chests lining the walls.
The entire audience blinked.
"That, uh..." Ellegaard blinked twice. "That's a lot of chests."
"Hol-ey cow," the narrator said, before cutting off his own statement. "Hey, there's a chest labelled 'cow'!"
Jesse blinked up at the narrator as Milo straightened back up with a still-faintly-queasy look, murmuring an incoherent thank you, before carefully making her way over to the chests. "This... this is a lot of chests," she said at last, blinking several times at said chests.
"Yeah, and they're all... labelled?" Petra reported with a faintly confused sound, closely examining said chests as she approached as well.
Milo looked a tad pale, but he read the signs on the chests as well. "'Creeper', 'Zombie', 'Sheep', 'Pigman'... curious," he said musingly.
"Is he saying curious because he's never heard of the monsters, or because that's what the chests are labelled?" the narrator asked, making Jesse look up at him.
"That's... actually," Hadrian hummed thoughtfully as he leaned forward, the slightly mocking voice falling off his face to be replaced by a pensive look, "that's a valid question."
"It, ah..." Milo coughed awkwardly, shooting Hadrian a look as if daring the white-haired man to laugh. "... it might be both."
For once, Hadrian didn't laugh at the reply.
Onscreen, Jesse tilted her head to one side thoughtfully, thinking about the narrator's comment, before tilting her hand from side to side in response to the question and moving closer to the chest reading 'Sheep'. Carefully unlatching the lid, she reached into the chest and pulled out... an egg, with pinkish spots on it.
Everyone blinked at the screen again.
Jesse blinked at the egg in her hand in bemusement, before looking into the chest again. The screen switched to show that there were dozens of the egg with pinkish spots sitting inside the chest, clustered together neatly.
Lukas's brow quirked as he drew level with the spider hybrid, seeing what was in the chest as well. "Eggs? The sign says 'Sheep', not 'Eggs'," he pointed out, the others crowding around the spider hybrid.
Jesse frowned at the egg in her hands, before she quickly moved over to the chest reading 'Creeper' and opened it as well. She blinked, before looking back at the others and indicating the chest. They crowded around her again, the screen switching to show that it was full of green eggs with black spots.
Petra frowned down at the pink-spotted egg in Jesse's palm. "Might as well... throw it and give it a shot?" she suggested, questioningly.
The black-haired girl nodded in agreement, straightening up and tossing the egg a few inches into the air once, before lobbing it at a wall with quite a bit of force. The egg cracked upon impact with the wall, a sheep toppling out and doing a little inadvertent flip before landing on all fours, bleating obliviously to the fact that it had just come out of an egg.
"Wha-?" Jesse and Jace chorused, their eyebrows rising a bit. (Although Jesse was the only one in the two who was able to pull it off properly...)
"A... sheep," Petra said slowly, blinking twice at said sheep.
Milo approached the sheep nervously. "Is... is that a monster?" he questioned after a tentative moment, before rubbing the back of his head and cocking his head to one side. "That is not so bad." Turning back to them a bit, he finished, "It is fluffy."
"You've never seen a sheep before?" Dan asked, blinking several times in bewilderment at the screen. Don't get him wrong, he knew that resources were technically limited in Sky City, but- still. This was a sheep.
"So is Lukas's hair," Jesse said cheerfully onscreen, reaching out and patting the ocelot hybrid's head. His cyan-teal-ish eyes crossed a bit as he let out a dreamy purr of pleasure, and his ears drooped with pleasure.
Lukas felt his cheeks flush in embarrassment as several people giggled at that. Real-Jesse turned to him and made a big show of staring at his hair, before reaching up and patting it. "Hm. Onscreen-me wasn't kidding," she hummed thoughtfully, before turning back to the screen.
Lukas's face went a wee bit pinker.
Onscreen, Petra simply crossed her arms thoughtfully, as Jesse let up on the petting. Lukas blinked three times before moving off to go poke through some of the other chests. "The eggs must all have creatures inside of them..." she murmured, musingly.
The ocelot hybrid came back, holding a gold egg with dark brown spots, and a pale gold egg with even darker gold spots. "And they're all different colors. They must be- y'know- color-coded or something to what's inside them."
Petra reached out and took the Blaze Egg, squinting at it thoughtfully. "So... she can just spawn things whenever she wants to."
"You're getting closer as to how the Eversource works," Isa said, tapping the wide of her nose and then pointing at the screen, making several members of the audience twist to look at her in surprise.
"Really?" Olivia asked, sounding rather bewildered. "How does it-?"
The spider hybrid touched her lip with a thoughtful hum of her own, inadvertently interrupting Olivia. "So... the Eversource makes..." She stared at the egg, a slightly blank expression coming over her face. "Spawn... egg... things?" she finally finished.
"So articulate. You should be a poet," the narrator stated sarcastically.
"You've already said that," Jesse muttered back to him, under her breath.
Lukas's ears perked up, and he looked 'round at Jesse. "What was that?"
"Oh- nothing," and Jesse crossed and uncrossed her uppermost set of arms to indicate that it was, in fact, nothing.
The ocelot hybrid just squinted at her for a few seconds, before shrugging and apparently deciding it wasn't really any of his business as he trotted off past the other chests.
"He has good hearing," the narrator spoke up again, almost absentmindedly.
"That he does," Jesse muttered, dropping her voice as she walked in the other direction to avoid anyone else overhearing her. "But of course, you'd know that. You're the all-seeing narrator, aren't you?"
"Oh, I wouldn't say I'm all-seeing. I can't see stuff that's underground, after all, unless you happen to be somewhere in the vicinity," the narrator replied airily.
Jesse scowled. "That's not what I meant."
The narrator's reply was quick and airy. "Oh, I know."
Otto massaged his temples, looking both amused and irritated. "This... man...!" he muttered.
"What makes you so sure it's a man?" Stacy asked him, twisting around to get a good look at him.
"The voice sounds like one," Otto replied.
"Oh. Fair point."
Jesse simply sighed and pressed her hand to her face, her brow twitching in irritation onscreen. "... you're the most irritating voice I've ever met, you know that?" she finally spoke, voice a bit muffled from her hand smothering her face.
"No, but now I do."
There was another three-second pause in which Jesse was silent, probably trying and failing to come up with a snappy reply, before she sighed and let her hand drop to her side. "Never mind. Do you know anything about the Eversource? That you can tell me?" She added, before the narrator could give a snappy reply to the question.
Now it was the narrator's turn to pause. "... assuming you mean things that you don't already know, no."
"Fantastic," Jesse snarked under her breath, beginning to move into the room that was beyond the one lined with chests. "You do know stuff about the Eversource, right?"
"Well, I will say that while the Old Builders definitely had something to do with it, they didn't create it, per se."
This made Jesse come to a stop in her tracks and look at the ceiling, distracted once again. "What?"
"Just keep going, you'll see in a minute or two," the narrator urged the girl onwards. Jesse waited for him to continue, but he fell silent and didn't say anything more. After waiting for a good ten seconds, Jesse let out a low sigh and slowly advanced forwards, looking around. There was a little 'pen' of dirt a bit to the right of the entrance of the next room, and Jesse would've simply overlooked it if she hadn't spotted the pair of small black eyes peeking out at her.
Stampy let out a squeak of surprise and nearly fell off the couch.
Jesse's breath caught in her throat in surprise, before she carefully advanced towards the pen, all six of her arms moving into a more defensive position, as the pair of black eyes disappeared... and from behind the 'pen', a familiar white chicken fluttered out with a squawk, gold crown sitting on her head and a gold medal with a red ribbon around its neck. She ran a few steps forward before tripping and falling flat on her face.
"Oh, hey, it's Benedict!" Jesse said cheerfully, pointing at the screen, before something suddenly occurred to her, and her eyes widened, voice trailing off in surprise.
Onscreen-Jesse proceeded to 'awwww' at the chicken, putting her hands to her mouth and grinning. "Awwww! It's so cute!" she nearly squealed in excitement.
"Okay, good, you fangirl. I was starting to think you were a boy in disguise," Jace said, patting a still-rather shocked Jesse on the shoulder.
She punched him on the shoulder in reply.
Milo looked at the chicken, eyes wide. "Incredible!" he breathed. Although, it wasn't clear to the audience whether he meant because the chicken was wearing a little crown... or because he'd never seen a chicken before. Both were honestly valid options.
Jesse paused onscreen, narrowing her eyes at the little chicken, before she gasped as the truth hit her with the force of a sledgehammer, actually making her stumble back a step or two in surprise.
"What? What is it?" Lizzie asked, leaning forward in slight excitement.
The black-haired spider hybrid slowly turned to face her friends, her lowest set of arms gesturing at the small white chicken running around behind her. "You guys... meet the Eversource."
A/N: Yes! Haha!
Alright, next chapter will be dragged out a bit... or it might just be shorter. One of those two. Probably both.
I'm confusing myself.
RQTC: Have any of you seen the new PHANTASMAGORIA teasers I've been putting up?
RWBYSTRQ: (laughs) I'm glad! / Really? Where's that? / Thanks!
LunarStarsMoons: No problem, the computer(s) were being little jerks. (sticks tongue out at computers) / Hehehehe xD / A little bit, but I figured it was about time that Jesse got angry about SOMEthing xD / Ooh, alright. / NEVER xD / Oh. xD / I know, I've seen! :3
the indecisive bird: (laughs) Indeed. / The second one was correct. xD / Yeah... although they didn't really stop. / Alrighty! :3
RavenBlaze4850: (laughs) Yes, indeedy. / Hehehe, very true xD / Yes, veeeery smooth. xD / He's not allowed to tell you. That would also be breaking his contract. xD / (nods) I see. / Ahhhh. I post my PHANTASMAGORIA teasers there, so that's why I was asking.
AquaK13: Yes indeed xD / Ahhhh. Thanks! / (coughs) Er, maybe next chapter. I'm not a dirty person, so it's awkward to come up with innuendos. / Hehehe xD
Darkbeast Dend: Okay, literally, I just told you not to advertise other stories or authors, and then you go ahead and do it. Please don't keep this up or I will stop replying to your comments altogether. No role-playing or advertising stories in the comments of THIS story, please. This is MCSM, not Naruto or whatever the other ones are. Now, this is your second strike. If you have a third strike, I will have to start deleting your comments and I just won't reply. Please stop doing that. I'm really sorry if this comes off as mean, but it's really irritating when I ask someone to stop doing something and they just do it right after I ask. / That being said, I will answer your question. I don't honestly know, I'd probably have something akin to my Author powers.
Emily The Avenger: Only two more chapters! :3
homeworkoverload: Le gasp xD / Bye!
ChoyofBonk: Alright, I'll check you out :3 / Yes, indeed. xD How far are you on the next chappie of Decibels, by the way?
NoItsBecky: Fair enough xD
Rabbits rule: That was based more on what happens when you really piss me off. I go from zero to freaking infinity if you make me mad. Looks like we've got something in common! :3 / Ahhhh.
sailor . mikuchan: So why don't you make an account? :3
Guest: Hmm. Not a bad idea. (smiles) I'm not going to spoil anything for you, but we'll see if I can include that in there.
LittleAngelbun: :3 I'm glad you like this!
DarkPrincess2001: Oh, that was you! Yeah, I saw :3 / I know, right!
x.X. A.L. X.x
