A/N: hm I thought I would get this up way sooner but I ended up having a cold (seriously who gets a cold in summer) and was incapacitated for a while because writing takes up so much energy, who has time for that (spoilers, not me *cries* DX) Anyway please enjoy this episode of YAOS!
Chapter 5: In Which Madame Fawn Gets Quite the Profit
Kuni and Chibi woke up feeling refreshed and energized.
"Ahhhh," said Kuni, sipping the Monster he got from the merchant at Yakushi. "Let's go, Mutt! Let's tackle another day! Let's save some people! Yeah!"
"Yeah!" said Chibi. "Give me some of that drink, it's good." (A/N: please do not feed your dogs a Monster)
With way too much energy to spare, they made their way to the edge of Shinshu Field and blasted a hole in the wall.
"Whooo! Do it again, do it again!" Kuni cheered.
Chibi giggled. "Yeah!" He ran around, blasting more holes through more walls until they came out of the tunnel onto the edge of a lake.
"Woah, wait Mutt, what's this? What happened to Agata Forest?"
"You mean Agata Lake, right?" Chibi snickered.
"It didn't used to be a lake," said Kuni. "Hey you, what happened here?"
A big man wearing a bearskin looked at them sadly. "I'm not sure what happened, only that my home is under all that water. I mean, I've heard rumors of a curse…"
"A CURSE!" Kuni shouted. "Onward, Mutt! We'll banish the curse once and for all!"
"I don't know about curses, but I can handle cursed zones," Chibi offered, blooming the Guardian Sapling.
"Hey, we should ask that guy what's going on! HEY YOU!" Kuni ran off toward some guy in the tunnel.
"SACRIFICES MUST BE MADE!" he bellowed as Kuni approached.
"Oh, uh…that's nice. So what's up with the forest here?"
"SACRIFICES MUST BE MADE!" he repeated, making them feel marginally more uncomfortable. They returned to the lakeside whereupon a cutsene revealed a little mermaid swimming towards them.
"I feel like someone was talking about me," she said once she reached shore, giving a casual flip of her mysteriously wavy blue hair. "Oh! Was it you, Squiddy?"
Chibi and Kuni looked at each other.
"She's looking at you, Mutt," Kuni whispered.
"But I'm not a squid!" Chibi hissed back.
"Well you look more like a squid than me."
"Don't you remember me, Squiddy?" the mermaid said. "It's Nanami!"
Kuni coughed. "I'm sorry, but my Mutt here doesn't know what you're talking about, and also neither of us are squids so that makes you an even worse nicknamer than Link."
"I wasn't talking to you, Octopus Hair," Nanami retorted. "Anyway, I'm a bit stressed out right now because someone stole a very important treasure and it's my job to get it back, so I'll see you later!" And with that she dove back under the water as swiftly as she'd appeared.
Kuni touched his curls self consciously. "My hair doesn't really look like an octopus, does it?"
"It kind of does," Chibi admitted.
Kuni decided to get a second opinion and ran up to the nearest person, who happened to be a kid wearing a dead rabbit on his head.
"Oh hello," the kid said. "What's up?"
"I dunno, you tell me," said Kuni. "I'm Kuni and this is Mutt."
"I have a name you know," Chibi said indignantly.
"I'm Kokari and this is Ume," the boy greeted.
"Kokari?" Kuni rubbed his eyes. "Wait, what are you doing in Agata? What happened to Kamui?"
"It was a little too cold for me, aha," Kokari said. "But how did you know I was in Kamui?"
"Oh uh…anyway you were going to tell us what happened here, right?"
"Oh yeah," Kokari said. "A demon came a while ago and flooded the forest. You won't believe this, but I heard it was a—" He leaned in and beckoned them to do the same. "—giant catfish!"
Chibi and Kuni glanced at each other.
"That sounds dumb," said Chibi.
"Believe it or not, catfish are super dangerous!" Kokari went on. "They're monstrous killers of the river! But I'm going to catch it and become a real man, just like my hero, Jeremy Wade!"
"Who's Jeremy Wade?' Chibi asked.
"Dunno," said Kuni. "Besides, I don't believe in catfish."
"Anyway, if you don't mind I'm going to keep fishing," Kokari said. "It requires 100% of my concentration!"
"You don't have any line," Chibi pointed out, but Kokari ignored him. To Kuni, he asked, "What are we supposed to do now?"
"Wait for him to hook one, I guess," Kuni replied. "I mean, isn't that what your mom did?"
So they waited around for a while, watching Kokari attempt to fish without a line. It was extremely boring. Just like real fishing.
"Are you sure we're supposed to wait for him to catch a fish?" Chibi said dubiously. He was still feeling fidgety after all the Monster he drank.
"Pretty sure," said Kuni, who wasn't sure at all.
Chibi, being the god that he was, decided to take matters into his own hands and find the fortune teller for forward progress hints. He found her in a gaudy tent on top of a hill by the sacred spring, but she wanted to sell him a fortune for 500 yen; and because he was a cheapskate just like his mother, he decided to just figure things out for himself. It was already dark when he came back out to the lake, and Kuni was arguing with weird blue fairies circling over the water.
"Hey, listen!" the fairies clamored.
"I've been listening!" Kuni cried exasperatedly. "Ugh, Chibi, thank god you're here, they won't stop talking!"
"Shit," Chibi said. "What are we supposed to do with these?" He sent Kuni back up to the fortune teller's and he came back with a paper that read, You should have just bought one the first time, dumbass.
"That doesn't actually help," said Chibi, feeling ripped off.
"Hey, listen!" said the fairies. Chibi suddenly noticed they had numbers on them.
"Oh, connect the dots, duh!" he said, now feeling stupid and ripped off.
Somehow creating a star pattern with the fairies made a secret entrance appear in the lake, and with a triumphant cry of "Leap before you think!" Chibi and Kuni fell straight into a demon market.
"Good thing I brought this paper with me!" Kuni said, sticking one on his face and one on Chibi's.
"Where'd you get that?"
"Madame Fawn sold them to me for 500 yen each."
"So much for teamwork," Chibi mumbled. Kuni didn't seem to understand the value of money.
With the faces of monsters newly plastered on their foreheads, they proceeded through the demon market, stopping every once in a while for Kuni to cry, "Ew, gross!" or make gagging noises at the pieces of body parts strewn across the counters. Chibi didn't admit that he wanted to try the fingers. They looked particularly crunchy.
They didn't get very far before they were stopped by a weird floating ball of gas that appeared to have something resembling teeth if you looked closely.
"Can't let ya through!" the demon cried cheerfully.
"Aww," said Chibi. "I wanted to see the rest of the stalls!" The market was reminding him of what his mom described as a festival, and he'd never been to a festival before. He wanted to see the famous parties and drink the famous sake.
"Well, supposin' I could let ya through…" the demon went on, feeling a little bad. "I'd only do it if ya got me a fire eye, all under the table like! But I mean, it's not like ya could find any of those nowadays!"
"Oh crap, we need to go on some quest to find a fire eye, huh," Kuni sighed as the demon laughed. "Or fight some scary monster or something."
They desperately scoured the area for secret entrances and the like, but besides a piece of Link's masterpieces they didn't find anything.
"Ugh, let's talk to this guy and see if he knows anything," Kuni said.
"Hey, you kids lookin' for a fire eye? Good thing I restocked!" The red fire demon gave them a fire eye for the cheap price of only 500 yen, and with that they returned to the blue fire demon at the gate.
"That was deceptively easy," Kuni said.
"Why is everything 500 yen?" Chibi grumbled. They continued exploring the rest of the demon market, which to Chibi's disappointment wasn't very much, and came once again to another blue fire demon, who could have very well been the same one as before.
"You kids lookin' to get past, eh?"
"Yep," said Chibi. "This festival has been utterly disappointing."
"Well, past here's a special event, so I'm gonna need a password from you if you wanna join in!" the demon said. "Actually, there're three passwords, us demons are very thorough, haha!"
"So, uh, how do we know what the passwords are?" asked Kuni.
"Oh, they're around somewhere," the demon replied, waving them away.
"I think he was just trying to get rid of us," Kuni muttered to Chibi.
"Well, there's no harm in looking anyway," Chibi said, so they ran up and down through the market, looking at everything possible there was to look at.
"Hey, I found something!" Kuni cried. "It says…" He paused, seemingly confused. "Um, it says… 'A real man eats butts'?"
"Mine says, 'Hellbent god baby consumes'." Chibi wasn't sure what that meant, and wasn't sure he wanted to know. "Um but yeah. I guess we need one more then."
They found the last one on some weird smiling statue that was painted all over in graffiti reading, THE LAST PASSWORD'S HERE, IDIOTS! This one said, 'ravenous flesh, hmmm'.
"Okay, we have all the passwords," Kuni announced to the blue demon.
"Oh yeah? Let's hear it then!"
"Um okay… 'A real man eats butts. Hellbent god baby consumes. Ravenous flesh, hmmm.'"
"Woah, is that supposed to be a haiku?" Chibi asked, somewhat disturbed.
"A work of art, that one is! Alright, you two can go ahead. You better hurry, registration's almost closed!"
"Registration for what?" Kuni asked innocently. The demon only responded with a cackle.
The room they entered was a wide, circular arena with a giant, wrinkly head smoking a pipe at the opposite end.
"OMIGOD GROSS WHAT IS THAT THING?!" Kuni cried, recoiling with disgust. Thankfully the Witch Queen was deaf or something, because she ignored him and puffed out a few lazy rings. Or maybe she thought it was a compliment.
"What's Nanami doing here?" asked Chibi, noticing the mermaid in a huge glass container.
"That mermaid's the prize for the winner of the arm wrestling contest!" a particularly helpful demon explained.
Chibi looked at Kuni, who was sweating terribly.
"Yeah, okay, I got it!" Kuni said. His teeth chattered and his legs were shaking. "I-I-I'll help her! I'm the son of Susano!"
"You're the adopted son of Susano," Chibi corrected.
"Oh shut it, Mutt, I'm trying to be brave here!"
Kuni was doing such a good job of trying to be brave that he wasn't bothering moving forward at all, so Chibi dragged him off to sign up for the tournament.
"Sorry, registration's closed!" boomed a short little yellow imp. "Unless you pay me 500 yen, that is…"
"UGH FINE," Chibi said.
"AAAAAAAAAALRIGHT!" the MC declared, grinning toothily. "Oh, what's your name, kiddos?"
"Uh, bluh," said Kuni unhelpfully.
"Weird name," the MC scoffed, but continued nonetheless. "AAAAAAALRIGHT! First match is the Green Paddlers versus the Uh Bluh Team!"
A pair of green imps rushed out to them. One grabbed Kuni's hand. The other looked at Chibi, baffled.
"How am I s'posed to arm wrestle a dog?" it asked.
"READY, BEGIN!" the MC cried. Kuni found himself entangled in an intense arm wrestling match with his imp. It was surprisingly strong.
"Oh, uh, what's the mermaid doing over there?!" he cried.
"Huh?" said the imp looking around, and Kuni slammed its arm on the table.
"I win!" he cried.
Chibi simply destroyed his imp.
They did the same thing the next round. Kuni honestly didn't expect it to work again, but as it turns out demons are pretty stupid and gullible. It made them almost endearing.
"Wow, the Uh Bluh team is doing really well, despite having an awful name!" the MC declared. "Now for the final round against the champ of years past, RED HOT RIDER!"
There was cheering as a fiery top with a single eye hopped up to the table to challenge Kuni.
"It…has no arms," Kuni said. "Wait, how did this thing become the champion if it doesn't have any arms?"
"Oh. Huh. You're right," said the MC. "Well, usually the other team forfeited or we let Red Hot Rider win because his name is so awesome."
"That's dumb," said Chibi. Red Hot Rider sniffed and spun away from the table in shame.
"He didn't mean it!" Kuni called after it. "Wow, what a jerk. You made it cry."
Chibi felt a little bad.
"And Team Uh Bluh is the winner!" the MC said. "Congrats! You guy's earned a mermaid and a 500 yen cash prize!"
"Oh good," Chibi said, glad to have gotten at least some of his 500 yen back.
Meanwhile, Kuni went up to Nanami's container. "Hey, we're here to save you!"
"Huh!" she sniffed, turning her head.
"It's us!" Kuni lifted his mask a little to show her. "See?"
She gave him a withering look. "I knew it was you, I'm not stupid. You didn't cover your stupid octopus hair, of course I would recognize you anywhere. But anyway that's not the point! The point is, I don't want to get rescued by you!"
"Wait, why? But you'll be eaten by demons!"
"Because I hate humans!" she huffed.
"Wow, that's a dramatic change from earlier," Kuni said, a little hurt.
"Some kid wearing a dead rabbit on his head caught me and offered me as a sacrifice!" she cried. "Do you know how humiliating that is? Not to mention life threatening? Humans have no respect for us Dragonians, that's for sure!"
"Must've been Kokari," Chibi said. "No one else fishes in Nippon anymore, it's so boring."
"Well, we're taking you anyway," said Kuni. "We came this far already, it'd be a waste of my brave show of bravery! Also we don't want you to die, this is a kid's game. No one dies in kid's games."
Kuni attempted to push the heavy container, but ended up tripping and somehow tearing the mask off both his face and Chibi's.
"How did you even do that?" Chibi said, half in awe and half in exasperation.
"Oh shit!" cried the MC. "Intruders!"
Suddenly the Witch Queen seemed to be a lot more invested in what was happening. She leapt off her pedestal and whipped out a couple giant, bloody cleavers she kept in her hair, slashing at Kuni and Chibi and Nanami.
"OH GOOOOOOOOOOOOOD," Kuni wailed, backing into Nanami's container. She flopped out helplessly onto the floor.
"Ugh, stupid useless fins!"
Kuni gulped and drew his sword, his legs shaking so bad Chibi was afraid he'd fall over.
"Take her and run, Mutt!" he cried. "I-I'm the son of Susano! I won't die even if I'm killed!"
"Don't try it, please!" Chibi said, worried in spite of himself. He flung Nanami onto his back and hightailed it back through the demon market while Kuni distracted the Witch Queen.
"How are we going to get out?" said Nanami in a carefully calm and practical voice.
"HEEEEEEEEEEELP!" screamed Kuni, flailing towards them with the Witch Queen at his heels.
"COME BACK TO ME, MY PRETTY!" the Witch Queen screeched.
"And how is he not dead?" she added.
A fishing line suddenly dropped down and without bothering to think about it Chibi grabbed hold. Kuni jumped and held onto his tail as they were being pulled up.
"Oh god, that was terrifying," Kuni wheezed, lying on the bank. "Who saved us?"
It was Kokari, of course.
"Madame Fawn told me if I cast my line here, something good would happen," he said. "And it's a good thing I did!"
He looked at Nanami and she turned away with a huff.
"I'm sorry about sacrificing you," he said. "I am really very ashamed. It's not something I should have done. It's not something Jeremy Wade would have ever done!"
"Won't you forgive him, Nanami?" Kuni pleaded. "Look at that face. That is a sincere face."
It really was, except for maybe the rabbit. Nanami pursed her lips. "Oh fine! I forgive you!" she snapped. In a softer tone, she added, "It wasn't entirely your fault, I guess. But if you ever do it again…"
"Oh, never!" Kokari promised.
"See? We can all be friends. Hug, let's have a group hug. You too, Mutt." Kuni gathered everyone in a group hug. It was endless amounts of cute and soft, squishy feelings on the inside.
"NO HAPPINESS!" boomed a voice, and with a heavy wham! a giant catfish scooped Kuni into its mouth and ducked back into the depths.
A/N: We can't be having happiness now, can we. Also I would like to note that Jeremy Wade is the host of a show called River Monsters, which is like my favorite show because I am a nerd and enjoy randomly learning about various river fish (no but seriously though that show is the best check it out). Anyway, keep doing what you've been doing and keep up the reviews! :D