Hot damn! It went through!
Sorry, all, I meant to update last week or so but this here site wouldn't allow me to submit documents. I'd wish you a happy belated Thanksgiving now, but that just isn't my style. Instead I'll wish bubonic plague upon you! Fun!
Next chapter may also come late, due to unavoidable events in my life. No, Yggdra Union, I will not play you. You cannot tempt me with your fun gameplay and entertaining story, vile digital succubus. My will is as iron.
Anyway, I'll shut up. Chapter now.
Chapter Two - The Incident at the Inn
"This is your fault, Varrant," said Lorelei. "I blame nobody for this but you."
The two travellers were waiting outside the door of the inn manager's office, having been involved in a bit of a misadventure after they left the factory.
As it turned out, Varrant had been misinformed. There was not a town around here, anywhere. Or if there was a town, they had been completely unable to find it. They had gotten lost in the twisting forest that surrounded the old factory, and the sun had just about gone down when Lorelei spotted the only trace of civilization they had seen in the past few hours: An inn.
Hungry and tired as any fellow would be after a day of fighting robots with a giant chainsaw/sword hybrid, Varrant suggested to Lorelei that they stay at the inn for the night and merely fix the broken weapon tomorrow. Lorelei agreed, because she was every bit as hungry and tired. Having reached a unanimous decision, they entered the inn and went to go have dinner.
They ordered half the menu, which in retrospect was an awful idea. But when you were as hungry as Varrant was, you were far more concerned with obliterating the hunger than actually stopping to think about whether or not you could afford it. But it would soon be brought to light that even if Varrant had been carrying the money around, he would have lost it back at the fight with the Grappler.
To put it in the most blunt terms possible, Varrant had, unfortunately, lost his wallet immediately after finishing what was likely a hundred-thousand boam meal. He assumed that it had fallen out of his coat when the Grappler had smacked him. And so here they were, this Craftknight and his Guardian Beast, outside the manager's office and awaiting whatever horrible, unspeakable fate was to be thrust upon them.
"How is it my fault? You were the one who ordered all that stuff," said Varrant.
"Don't you shift the blame to me! I didn't hear you protesting at the time!" Lorelei said, turning away from him and folding her arms. "Man, of all the Craftknights I could have been bonded to, why'd it have to be you? Why not a crime-fighting vigilante, or a hired killer, or a smuggler? Something cool?"
"Yeah, well you're not that great of a Guardian Beast! I could have gotten a sarcastic robot, or maybe a fairy girl who worships me. But no, I get a valkyrie. There's nothing interesting about you. Your armor doesn't even look that cool!"
"I'll get some cooler armor when you wash that trenchcoat! What are you, a hobo?"
The waitress from the restaurant poked her head out of the door to the office. "Um, excuse me?"
"What?" Varrant and Lorelei snapped in unison.
"The manager will see you now," said the waitress, opening the door wide. The two stepped into the room, staring daggers at each other.
As Varrant entered, he saw the manager and immediately felt sick to his stomach at the sight. The manager was short, monstrously fat, bald, his clothes were filthy, and his head was stretched into a bizarre, oblong shape. He most closely resembled some kind of assimilation of man, frog, and rubber. His face looked like it had recently been violently slammed into a wall. Repeatedly. He was, simply, the most hideous thing Varrant had ever seen.
At this fellow's gesture, Varrant took a seat. Lorelei remained hovering in the air as was typical of her - she was morally disgusted with the very notion to stop flying. Both hung their heads and did their very best not to look at the manager, for fear of throwing up.
"Tryna dine n'dash, were ya," said the manager, whose voice was rather reminiscent of a frog being strangled. "Can't pay, ya worgitoff. Dat's how we run things here."
Varrant groaned, already dreading the prospect of washing dishes for a month. Lorelei seemed to be thinking the same thing.
"Usually I make deadbeats like you wash da dishes," continued the manager, who was spraying saliva in rapid-fire. "But I godda question. You some kinda Craftknight?"
Varrant let out a long, shuddering breath. This man was just so ugly, that he did not even deserve to be referred to as a man. Varrant decided to name him The Abomination. "Yeah," he said, looking at his weapons case.
"Well den, I godda bedder task for ya. Wouldn't wanna impede on yer career," grunted The Abomination, his face splitting into a horrifying grin. "See, I need someone who knows howta fight for a job like dis."
"What is it?" Varrant asked desperately, wanting to get as far away from this twisted mockery of the very term "beautiful" as soon as he could.
"I godda daughter in trainin' ta be a Summoner," the manager said. "She's godda go to an academy up in da north, but I ain't got nobody who can take 'er. If you were to do it, I might be inclined ta drop yer bills."
The Crafknight caught his Guardian Beast muttering something like "This thing has a daughter?" He was now positively drenched in saliva and was tempted to tell The Abomination to say it, not spray it. Varrant eventually decided against this, partly because he might get stuck with kitchen duty for his quip and partly because he didn't want to use such an outdated phrase.
Lorelei drifted over and spoke to him in a low voice. "Varrant, I don't want to have to work for this freak. Make up some lame excuse, you're good at that."
An idea immediately slipped into his head. Surprised at his own quick thinking, Varrant held up his weapons case. "Can't do it, dude," he said. "I busted my only weapon on the way here, and a Craftknight without weapons is like, uh... I dunno, something useless." He immediately felt nauseous, because he accidentally looked at the manager head-on.
"Dun worry, we gotta forge here for travellin' Craftknights. 'Less you wanna wash dishes for 'bout three months."
Varrant winced. No matter which choice he picked, he was pretty much screwed either way. He was not quite sure who to blame for this predicament - Lorelei for ordering all the food; himself for dropping his wallet; or the Grappler that had caused him to lose it in the first place. He decided it was a combination of all three, but mostly Lorelei and the Grappler.
"I think we're stuck with the escort job," he said to Lorelei. The valkyrie let out a groan and fell backwards hopelessly, catching herself again just inches above the floor.
Thus, Varrant and Lorelei were forced into escorting the enigmatic Daughter of the Abomination to the Summoner academy. The trek north was to commence the following day, and so Varrant used the night to fix up his sword's teeth.
The Craftknight hammered some new chainsaw teeth in to replace the old, broken ones, and took care to sharpen all the remaining teeth while he was at it. His buzzsaw sword was the only real weapon he carried around with him, and so he was taking extra care to put it in top form.
Finally, he wrapped the chain around the edge of the blade and fastened it together. He flicked the sword's on switch, and took the blade to a thick wooden log for a few minutes. Finding no problems in the construction, he shut his weapon off again.
Varrant put the sword back in its case and wiped his face off with his bandana. He walked over to a small bed in the corner of the room (the actual hotel rooms were for the paying customers, so sayeth The Abomination) and slumped backwards onto it. Reaching into his coat pocket, he produced the small black crystal and stared into its shiny depths.
"Well, this sucks," he said. "I finally get a piece of dark matter and I have to do this escort job."
"Cheer up, Master," said Lorelei. "We're going to an academy, right? That means they'll have a big library, and the library might be able to tell us more about this stuff. We don't know very much about it, you know."
Varrant smiled at her. "I never figured you would see the bright side of it, Lorelei, thanks."
The valkyrie smiled back. "Don't mention it. Come on, now that you're done here, let's go for a walk."
"A walk? This late? It's almost midnight."
"Come on, Varrant. It's stuffy in here, I need to get some air before I go to sleep."
Varrant started to say something in reply, but before he could get a word in edgewise, Lorelei had gripped him around the wrist and pulled him up off the bed. She tugged him out the door of the small little room, through the halls of the inn, and outside to the front porch.
BREAK
Far away, back at the abandoned factory, the peace of the dark forest was disturbed by two people stepping out of the massive hole that Varrant had made when he'd trashed the Grappler. They were quite the odd couple; one of them was a very young girl and the other was a giant with arms as thick as tree trunks. The girl seemed to be taking great care not to fall while stepping over the remains of the wall, but the giant just slowly lumbered past it.
"Drat," grumbled the girl. "We take all this time getting here and someone took the dark matter already. Typical, isn't it, Sundance?"
The behemoth at her side said nothing, merely producing a round, black crystal that looked almost microscopic in his epic palm. The girl took it from him and squeezed it in her own hand, looking at it expectantly.
The little black crystal slowly began to shine a radiant, sky blue.
The girl smirked in the darkness and handed it back to the giant.
"He's still close," she said. "The thief's still close. Come on, Sundance, let's see if we can catch up with him."