Chapter 5 – Exhaustion
The first thing we did was have Yakko climb up to the top of the coliseum to get a good view of the landscape. He took Wakko's cell phone to compare the map and find out where to go from here. Fumbling with the buttons of the unfamiliar device he mumbled to himself, "How do you find the text messages on this..." when he finally pulled up the map, he was relieved, still annoyed, but relieved. "There you are." He said as if the crappy map drawn on the screen of Wakko's phone could talk back to him. "Oh, Kay!" He sighed as he turned his head to identify the various landmarks. "If that's over there, then we should head this way to... But what if this is that thing? Then we go this way... This map sucks." He said to himself. He took some time to study the map a little more and identify more landmarks in order to find our way.
After an hour of studying and being frustrated at the inability to translate no-talent, he finally gave up and said, "We are so lost!" Suddenly, off in the distance, he thought he spotted something moving closer to their location. Yakko placed his right hand above his eyes to shield them from the evening sun and to try to get a better look at what he thought was approaching them. He was soon able to confirm that there was indeed something closing in on their location. However, he had no idea what it was. And it was too far to see clearly. He guessed that it would take approximately all night to actually reach them and so wasn't particularly worried. He made his way down from his roost to join his siblings for a meal.
When he had gotten to the rest of the group, he found that they had worked on fixing up the fire stoves and Dot was cooking something in a large pot over it. (Ace used his magic to light the fire) "So, what did you find out?" Wakko asked. "Not much, whoever sent you that map needs art lessons badly." He said. "No, I mean about where we need to go." Wakko reminded his brother. "Oh, I think we need to head northwest for a few days." Yakko responded then took a sniff at the air. The wonderful aroma of beef stew ran across his nose and danced in his head for a time, and his stomach began to growl, telling him that it was empty. "Ho, man that smells good." Yakko said as he began to drool. "You're sure that this won't attract any more dragons?" "If it does, we can always show it what happened to its cousin over there." Yakko retorted, pointing over to the pile of thawing out hunks of dragon flesh outside.
The good news was that it didn't attract any more dragons; the bad news was that it attracted some sort of strange bee-type creature that kind of looked like miniature praying mantises. It was getting quite annoying until Wakko pulled out an awning with bug nets from his gag-bag. "I don't remember you ever having that before." Dot stated. "I put it in last summer, when we got swarmed during that barbecue." Wakko answered his sister. Dot then pictured that even in her head. It was in the middle of August and Dr. Scratchansniff planned a barbecue in a nearby lot. The Warners had attended (uninvited) and nearly destroyed everything. Wakko pigged out on the spare ribs until a swarm of wasps decided to attack him and make a meal out of the barbecue sauce that covered nearly 40% of his body including 60% of his face. "Good idea." She urged after envisioning the event and chuckling slightly. "That was not funny! I hurt for weeks!" Wakko retorted. "Ok, ok. Let's eat and get some sleep. It's getting late." I interrupted.
Night fell, and boy was it a cold one. It felt like the temperature had dropped into the teens once the sun had fully set. Wakko had pulled out a couple of sleeping bags out of his gag-bag. The three Warners putting two of them together to create a larger bed and Runt, Ace and I snuggled up in the third. The strange bugs had also gone away seeking shelter from the cold air. 3 hours into our sleep, I was awoken b y a strange noise that sounded similar to rocks being rolled down off of a ledge and down a slope. I scooted toward the opening of the sleeping bag to get a better look at our stalker. I didn't see anything in all of the shadows, and the sound had stopped. I stayed alert for a while and couldn't see anything so I fell back to sleep.
Dawn came and the sun arose into the sky from beneath the horizon, its light startling us all awake. Yakko groaned and turned to shield himself from the sun, Wakko yawned deeply and tried to sit up but plopped back down, Dot almost immediately sat up and stretched to get any kinks out of her neck, back and shoulders. I woke up first from our group. I scooted out of the sleeping bag's opening and stretched my front legs. Then I stretched my back legs one at a time as Ace woke up and crawled out of the sleeping bag and stretched the same way I did. Runt, however was still fast asleep and probably would stay that way for another 24 hours. The Warner brothers slowly arose after their sister shook them awake. As for Runt, over time, I've learned a quick and easy method to awaken him with no worries at all. First I waited for the Warners to become fully awake, and then I had them grab the ends of the sleeping bag and turn it around 180º. I then unzipped the sleeping bag and the sun's rays did the rest. (Normally I'd find a shiny object and shine it in his face.) Runt groaned, blinked his eyes open, yawned and stretched.
After our good mornings, Wakko pulled out his new magic refrigerator and a cooking pan. Dot took over for now. Since Mira taught her how to cook her famous scrambled eggs with mushrooms and jalapeño skins we all had a delicious breakfast. Ace especially loved his meal, since he ordered breakfast sausages alongside his (a treat for saving us the other day). Suddenly, we heard something moving closer toward us. When we looked in the noises general direction, we saw the tiger-lion-thing we first encountered when we got to this world.
We all were starting to freak out when Ace courageously walked up to the creature and began speaking to him in what I can only guess was the Valkyrian language. It sounded mostly Japanese with a small amount of Hungarian and Egyptian thrown in. (I think) There was no way any of us could tell what he was saying. But, whatever it was, the large feline responded in the same language. They began having a small conversation for a while until Ace walked back toward us. "So what did he say?" I asked him. Ace stared at me like I was crazy for a while. "You mean you didn't understand any of that?" He responded. "Lemmie guess, it sounded like English to you." Dot retorted. Ace simply nodded. "In that case, tell us what the tiger-thingy said." Dot added. "Well, first off, he said that he was called a 'shishitora'. It's Japanese for lion-tiger. And he said in exchange for our jalapeño scrambled eggs, he'll take us to the 'Silver Palace'." We all simply stared at Ace for a while then turned our gaze to the giant feline creature. It simply gave us a goofy grin similar to Ace's.
We agreed to feed the creature as long as it keeps its end of the bargain. "So, how did you do that?" Wakko asked out of curiosity. Ace simply tilted his head to the left to think about it and responded, "I don't really know Uncle Wakko. But we made a new friend."