Here's the second chapter! I hope it's a lot better than the short first chapter.
Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon Quest VIII or any other series mentioned or hinted at.
Day One (Part Two): Drunken Hairy Hippie Fortuneteller
After finding the princess-turned-mare, Medea, when Joey and Yangus fought off the three Slimes, the odd group of travelers found themselves at Farebury, a cheery town enclosed by walls that were built by a Chinese guy to keep invaders, monsters, and "Mongorians" out, just like most other towns and castles. Just as the carriage Medea was pulling was passing by a pile of ashes the size of an extremely small house and smoke that rose up into the dusk colored sky Joey ran up to the burning mound carrying some sticks, a bag of marshmallows, a box of graham crackers, and some chocolate while cheering, "Let's go make some smores!"
Yangus was about to join Joey in the festivities of smore-making, but stopped when Trode whacked the smores fanatic over the head with a newspaper retrieved from a shocked passerby and spoke to him as a master would to a dumb, dopey dog, "No Joey, bad boy!"
It wasn't the first time King Trode did that nor, unfortunately, would it be the last. Really, it was sometimes his only way of getting his point across to Joey and it didn't help that the cursed thorns enveloping his once wonderful castle also tauntingly held Joey's meds at an impossible to climb height.
Joey then made a sad denied face before putting everything away and shuffling weakly to the town square with everyone else. After Trode deemed a spot within the square worthy to stop at he gave Medea a signal with the reigns and hopped off.
"Yes. Yes! Here we are. If my memory serves me correctly, this is the place. This is the town where Master Rylus lives," King Trode announced to the group.
"Hold your 'horses, grandad! I thought it was Dhoulmagus we was after," Yangus blurted out in confusion.
"I AM NOT YOUR GRANDAD!" Trode shouted.
"Coulda fooled me!" Joey snickered.
Trode shot Joey a glare before continuing. "And of course Dhoulmagus is our man!"
"Whoa, I didn't know it was like that! And what's this 'our' thing you're going on about!?" Joey exclaimed, now utterly uncertain of the green midget king's motives.
"What are you talking about?" Trode asked, eyeing the boy with caution.
"Let me ask you a totally serious question: Are you chasing after Dhoulmagus because you want to make sweet monkey love to him or something?"
Everyone's brain abruptly imploded upon itself, shriveled up and died, except for Joey's because he was already as brain-dead as a blonde. Fighting the urge to throw up, King Trode snapped, "Remind me after this journey is over and Medea and I are turned back into our respectable selves to put you out of your misery."
"Ay ay, captain!" Joey saluted.
"Aren't you supposed to be a silent hero of some sort?"
"Nah! Screw the rules, I'm too sexy to be silenced!"
Trode let out an aggravated sigh. "Enough of this nonsense. Joey, will you please go see if you can find Master Rylus before I decide to strangled you?"
Sure, but only on one condition!" Joey held up ingredients for smores.
"Excuse me Joey?"
"But I need the smores or I'll explode! That happens to me sometimes…"
The small green king was about to leap for Joey's throat with his short stubby hands when Joey grabbed Yangus by the vest and hightailed it to search for Rylus. The two stopped running when they were at the outside entrance of the local inn. Having no real clue of where to start searching for the old man they walked in the building. They went upstairs to ask people for information seeing as the innkeeper's only interest was to have them rent rooms for the night, even though there truthfully wasn't any vacancy to begin with. Yangus was left to ask those people in the rooms they resided in while Joey ignored them and decided to jack some of their belongings while they were paying no attention to him. Unfortunately for Yangus he wasn't able to get any information due to being seen as a thief and invader because of his appearance. Sighing off his failure (then again it wasn't his fault that some people decided to discriminate against others based off of looks), Yangus went to check on his friend and found him with an amused expression on his face as he gazed at two bags hanging off the wall.
"Wot are you so focused on, guv?" Yangus asked. Joey had stuck his hand into one of the bags and laughed, "Ha, I'm grabbing into a sack!"
"That sounded wrong, guv," Yangus commented with a sweat drop. "Anyway, we should ask some other people 'bout this Rylus person, so we should go."
"Okaaay," Joey whined, pulling his hand out of the sack. When they finally walked out of the inn Joey couldn't help but look around the building to find a backdoor.
"Hey Yangus! I found the backdoor! Should I go in?" Joey snickered. Yangus could only face-palm as Joey entered the inn once more, giggling as he went.
Upon entering the inn through the backdoor, Joey immediately recognized the main room where the counter separated the innkeeper from his customers. He also noticed that the wall to the right had sacks hanging off of it. Turning his attention to the innkeeper who was surprised by the intrusion Joey asked him innocently while pointing to a bag, "Is this your sack?"
Although he was baffled by the question, the innkeeper answered, "Yes it is."
Suddenly a catlike grin adorned Joey's face as he asked almost teasingly, "Do you mind if I reach into it?" Joey was then quickly thrown out the door and greeted by Yangus who looked down at him.
"'Ow'd go, guv?" Yangus inquired.
"I think he took it well," Joey replied.
"You didn't ask him 'bout Rylus, did ya." It was more of a statement than a question.
"Nope, I talked about his sack," Joey chuckled. He then lifted a hand to the sky.
"Ya gotta stop that, guv," Yangus sighed as he helped Joey to his feet.
"Can ya call me the 'Governator' instead?" Joey questioned.
"No," Yangus' quick response was.
"Aww," Joey pouted as he dusted himself off. Then he proceeded to look for people to talk to when he saw a blonde woman in a red dress and wearing a blue do rag near the gate that the odd party had entered through earlier. Joey then ran up to her and just stood there, observing her like a scientist stumbling across a new species of microorganism, which inevitably caused the flaxen haired woman to feel extremely uncomfortable. She was about to pull out the pepper spray and kick him where the sun don't shine when he made a sort of frown and complained, "Stop looking at me! I'm trying to look at your boobs!"
"Pardon me!?" the blonde exclaimed in disbelief and a hint of disgust.
"Nope, not big enough. Thank you for your time!" Joey shook her hand before running off towards the stairs that led to another part of the town overlooking the square. The blonde woman's brain cells were officially fried from what the young man had just said.
"Sorry 'bout my friend, ma'am. He often gets way too carried away," Yangus apologized to the confused blonde as he hurried to follow the complete spaz he called guv.
By the time Yangus caught up Joey the bandana-wearing airhead was gazing almost dreamily at a sign that indicated where the town tavern was, hidden away by the mini-maze of buildings.
"We're going to the bar my friend!" Joey cheered as he dragged Yangus by the vest, like earlier, and rounded the corner and entered the bar. Once inside, the two breathed in the merry drunken atmosphere and looked around…
…However, Joey deemed it necessary to point out towards people, starting with a man wearing a mask decorated with a pair of ox horns,-
"Too big and ugly."
-a guy wearing an orange turban,-
"Too thin and ugly."
-an elderly man,-
"Too old and ugly."
-a beautiful blonde wearing bunny ears and a fluffy tail.-
"Yay! A bunny girl!"
At this point Yangus decided it was his turn to drag Joey by the back of the collar through the pub, even while Joey kept commenting (if anyone could call it that) on the people in the bar. He then continued pointing towards a heavier man,-
"Too fat and ugly."
-the bartender,-
"Too skinny and ugly."
-and a drunken hippie fortuneteller.
"Too hairy and ugly."
Yangus stopped a few feet away from the bar counter and checked on his friend, who seemed fussy about something. Curious, he asked him, "Wot's the problem, guv?"
"That's 'Governator' to you!" Joey snapped. Yangus rolled his eyes before Joey finally answered his question. "This bar sucks! There's only two good lookin' people in here."
"Who's the second one?"
Joey smiled like a vain woman and put his hand on his own chest. "Me."
Yangus chose this time to let go of Joey's collar and let the back of his head meet the wooden floor with a hard 'thunk!' and say, "Get up, guv."
"Governator," Joey corrected.
"Hmph." Yangus ignored him in the fit of his put off mood.
"Was it something I said?" Joey whimpered to anyone who was listening, though no one heard. Tired of being the makeshift floor-cleaning rag Joey hopped back onto his feet and was shortly startled into listening to a conversation between the bartender and the drunken hippie fortuneteller when said hippie shouted a resounding "WHAT!?"
Yangus was thankful that it shut Joey up right away since he was being annoying enough for the day. Joey kept listening in on the conversation since he was thinking that if someone, especially a drunk person was randomly shouting about something, the subject matter was bound to be interesting.
"My fortune-telling… HAPHAZZARD!?" the drunken hippie went on, "Are you a complete fool!? Let me tell you something for free. All fortune-telling is 'haphazzard'! What do you expect!?"
The hairy fortuneteller took a breath to calm himself a little, though it didn't work completely to the desired affect. "Anyway, so what if I saw it? So what if I fortold the fire?"
"Well, we now know half of how the smores factory was made. Now it's all a question of 'who'," Joey thought out loud to himself.
"What smo- oh," Yangus was about to question before realizing what Joey was referring to.
"If I'd tried to stop it, then what!? It would have led to another disaster, that's what!" the drunken hippie fortuneteller concluded.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Kalderasha, sir. I don't follow…" said the obviously slightly puzzled French bartender.
"He almost sounds like Sean Bob," Joey randomly commented.
"Sean- wot?" Yangus perplexedly asked.
"You know, the talking frog that believed he was a prince!" Joey exclaimed, shocked that Yangus had no idea who he was talking about. Yangus was about to say something, but thought better of it.
"If you're saying you knew about the fire, shouldn't you at least have warned Master Rylus?" the bartender questioned.
The hippie fortuneteller known as Kalderasha then lowered his voice to a near regretful tone. "Yes… Poor Rylus… How many times I argued with the old man… I cannot believe he is gone…"
Joey chose to now be officially involved in the conversation by first saying pitifully with a hint of teasing, "Aww, were you tsundere for each other?"
"What!? What is it?" Kalderasha snapped in his drunken haze, apparently not listening to what Joey asked, before taking what seemed like a creepy approach (to be truthful it was creepy no matter how one looked at it) and getting in Joey's face. "Hmm!? You! Come show your face to the Great Kalderasha! Yes! Yeeesss!"
Feeling extremely uncomfortable, Joey cried out, "Aaahhh! Drunk guy trying to come onto me! No thanks! Yangus, HELP!"
Yangus ignored his friend, feeling that he brought it upon himself, and picked his nose out of habit. Just as Joey was about to fall backwards in a futile attempt to escape, a blonde man wearing green frantically warned everyone in the tavern about a monster in town. All the people in the building, except for Joey, Yangus, Kalderasha, an old guy, the bartender, and the bunny girl, immediately dashed out the door.
"Wot the…!? This ain't good, g-"
"Yangus, the next time I scream for help, SAVE MY ASS! I could've been raped for all you know!" Joey yelled.
Yangus sighed while pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Sorry, guv-"
"Governator."
"You know I'm never gonna call you that, guv. At any rate we gotta go check on grandad, 'cause I've got a bad feelin' 'bout this."
"We share the same grandpa? That would be really weird, 'cause-"
"Just shut up and let's go, you bloomin' moron!" Yangus hissed as he ran out the door by himself.
"Hey," a voice called from behind Joey. He turned around to see Kalderasha with his hand imitating the likeness of a telephone put up to his ear while winking at him and purring, "Call me."
Joey promptly ran outside in fear to catch up to Yangus.