Interlude Chapter

Stats

Ranks:

Noelle: Holiday Girl

Berdly: Top Nerd

Noelle was not fine. Not in the way where you were not fine when one of your more 'patience taxing' friends hang out with you for too long or you forgot your house keys and you're too afraid to ask your mom, this was worse. Oh holy night, this was so much worse. Maybe not as bad as when your sister disappears or your dad being hospitalized, but boy was it getting close.

While Noelle had woken up this morning in the same hometown, she had spent her whole life in, she now found herself under an endless black sky, apparently kidnapped by a large blue and white robot lady. The robot lady, who was a Queen… or her name was Queen… or maybe both, had taken her from some large black geyser into a palace with bright red floors and turquoise walls. It was filled with randomly placed furniture, along with paintings of the Queen that Noelle was pretty sure was either referencing other more famous works or just straight up plagiarizing them.

Also, for some reason, she wasn't dressed in her usual holiday colors, but a white robe. Noelle didn't know when the robot lady or any of her bird servants had changed her clothing, but for the sake of her already frantic heart she did not want to know how that happened. The deer girl was already in a state of sheer panic. Her legs had gone into their 'deer in headlights mode', completely locking up from the stress. The only reason she had even been moving was because one of the more muscular bird servants with the colored shades was pushing her forward on a transport trolley. Noelle probably should have felt more concerned about how she was being taken somewhere else against her will, which she was, but not having to walk did at least give her more time to process this whole experience. The girl did her best to compartmentalize and analyze her situation. It was pretty simple: she was in a strange new world, apparently enslaved to a big, tall robot woman, and now was being taken to some unknown location with no chance of going home.

Compartmentalizing her situation did not help her stress levels.

"I want to go home." Noelle squeaked out in the barest of whispers. Queen stopped her endless exposition about the tile set of her place,

"Oh my circuits! Noelle spoke her first words. I need to post this on instacram!" the robot woman said, clicking a button on her face visor to snap a photo. "For a bit there, I thought she just muted herself this whole time."

"Ah no, your excellency. My dear doe damsel just has a poor, pathetic, frail heart. She is just adjusting to this grand new destiny you have given us." Noelle's friend Berdly told the Queen. Oh yeah, Noelle had nearly forgotten that Berdly was here with her. For some reason, he was dressed in one of those cosplays he raved to her for hours once, and he wasn't even resisting Queen or seemed to be concerned at all. However, Noelle at least had one of her friends with her, which was a whole lot better than zero. Granted, she would have preferred Catti, Jockington, Temmie, MK, Snowy, or even S-susie, but at this point Noelle didn't care who came to help her. Desperately recalling that one secret ghost ship in Great Thieving Automobiles, Noelle began blinking out the SOS sign to Berdly for help.

"Why is she blinking so much, does the young mistress have something in her eyes?" the incredible buff birdman towing her asked, looking touched concerned for the deer girl's health.

"Oh no, she's just signaling SOS." Berdly casually explained, looking not worried at all.

Queen rotated her head around from where she was walking, "Wait! Is she in trouble?! Did she take the Tide pod challenge!?"

"Oh no, your splendidness. She's just scared." Berdly explained, still not helping Noelle.

The bird servant tilted his head, "Should we be concerned?"

"Not at all." Berdly said with an overconfident smile, "Noelle likes being scared." Noelle closed her eyes in defeat, giving up all hope that Berdly could even know a thing about her, much less actually help her in her time of need. "She told me all about how the womandela catalog terrified her so bad, yet she then watched every episode after. One time she even took me to a horror movie, only to scream and shake at every jump scare, but by the end she seemed so happy and kept going on about it. Just last week, she was thinking of seeing the sequel coming out. So yeah, she likes this kind of stuff. Nothing to worry about."

Noelle maybe would have screamed at Berdly, if everything he just mentioned wasn't true. HOWEVER, there was a big difference in scariness of a movie you walk out of and actually being kidnapped! Movies were the good kind of scary. THIS WAS JUST SCARY! Noelle expressed this feeling with a meek 'meep'. Queen took a photo of Noelle's second noise since coming to this world.

"Alright. That's pog." Queen nodded as she resumed her walk to wherever the hell they were going, "I'll make sure to update her room's settings to have all of the jumpscares for Noelle's delight. Oh oh oh! I just know she'll upvote it!"

"Anyway, my graciousness." Berdly continued to just go along with this whole kidnapping thing for some reason, "I must inquire you about what great feats and trials you require my services for? Is there a mighty dragon I must slay, a great and powerful wizard, or if you're one for the classics: a terrible demon king?" Berdly gave one of his 'smart' and 'superior' smug smiles, eagerly awaiting whatever task Queen had planned for them for some reason that was beyond Noelle's comprehension.

Red text flashed on Queen's visor, reading out 'LOL?'. "Yeah, no? I just wanted you two to be my son's new babysitters." The robot said as if that was a perfectly normal reason to kidnap people.

"Oh…" Berdly finally seemed to deflate at the seemingly mundane task given.

"So that's why I'm taking you two to my training ground." Queen explained, "I want to make sure you guys are super powerful, can play and protect my son Lancer, can burn down buildings, and can beat up other feral children. Those last two are very important."

"Oh! My mind palace can foresee what you're getting at my Queen!" Berdly immediately perked up, "You want us to guard your heir from all sorts of neerdowells that would see him ill. Putting this wonderful kingdom's future in our hands, what a fine first quest to have!"

"Uh, I suppose that's one way to look at it." Queen acknowledged Berdly's fantasy slightly, "But you know, I just want you to do that, or vibe check anyone else I or my Lancy-poo point at." The hallway they walked through (or carted in Noelle's case) finally ended, revealing a large, opened door to a relatively open ground inside the palace. "Speaking of, here's the training domain! Now, we can finally display all your cool features!"

The following few minutes involved Noelle finally getting let off of the trolley, and Queen demanding them to do magic, monologuing, and the importance of having second phases in your boss fights unlike her stupid ex-husband. Noelle still had no idea what was going on right now or what the robot lady was talking about, but that was nothing new. However, Queen's long rant about her ex did give Noelle enough time to calm down just a tad. Queen wanted them to use magic. While a cool concept, it was ridiculous. Noelle couldn't do magic; magic was just a thing in stories and video games. Not real life. Noelle thought this over to herself, as she was in a strange new world, where the whole sky was dark, with robot ladies and giant black geysers. Ok, maybe they could use magic here, as clearly normalcy didn't exist. But that still left the question on…

"My stupendous Queen, I have a question." Berdly interrupted the rant.

"DON'T THE BLEEP INTERRUPT MY RANT!" Queen yelled with red symbols of '!' on her visor.

"Umm, but aren't we supposed to be learning our cool moves here, like how to use magic?" Berdly asked an actually useful question for once. The Queen's visor showed a red gif of eyes blinking for a moment, before playing her 3 sound file.

"Right. Thought we were on 'exes are the worst' subreddit for a moment there." Queen laughed and continued on "Let's see here. Tutorials for Light Nerds..." Here visor printed the words 'accessing Metube' and searching 'lightnerds tutorials'. "Ah here we go, lonelyprince3 has one."

Then a meek, soft voice started playing from Queen's speakers "H- hello! M- my name is Rals—"The video suddenly sped up into an incomprehensible speed.

"Yeah, this is taking too long. We'll pick up the pace…" After a couple moments, Queen hummed up a catchy tune as she analyzed the video, eventually giving a clap of her hands as it finished. "Alrighty then, I basically got the gist of it. So, all you gotta do is beat people up with your weapons and then shoot them with your spells until you win. So… go do that."

Noelle blinked as that didn't explain anything at all. For once, Berdly seemed to agree with Noelle, and it looked like he was about to object until his eyes lit up. "Ah! I see what you're getting at! You have such faith in my smartness to figure out how our abilities work! Well I won't let you down my Queen!" Then he began grunting for some reason, raising his feather fists in the air like he was trying to power up like in that old anime.

Queen tilted her head, "Okay, no. I would rather you just use your cool magic moves now. Perhaps you two need a target. Swatch, summon someone useless here for target practice." The bird butler apparently named Swatch bowed, and almost immediately several smaller bird butlers dropped off a gray robot with the number 99 on its chest into the training grounds. Apparently, this broken robot would be the target. Noelle hoped it wasn't alive like Queen was.

"I've been discarded from my one and only purpose. Now I have nothing but hate for the god that created me." The robot said. Oh no, it was.

"Yeah, that'll work." Queen nodded before turning back to Noelle and Berdly, "Okay, go hit it with your cool moves. And for extra motivation, either of you do the most damage, you'll get this free NTF of a monkey~."

Noelle froze up, unsure what to do. She didn't want to hurt anyone, although she wasn't sure she could. Like, how was someone even supposed to use magic? "Garlic Gun! Expelliarmus! Force Choke! Zap-worldo! Falcon Punch!" Berdly began shouting out different attack names, as he performed them with a series of bizarre poses. Noelle and really everyone else stopped to watch in some mutual cringe induced shock, which just turned to cringe when nothing happened after each yell. Eventually, Berdly stopped, scratching his beak in thought. "Maybe I need to power up more to do my cool special moves? Or is this more like a video game, where I need to execute a weird series of inputs to do my special moves?" He wondered out loud to himself.

"If you pardon my interruption, sir babysitter." The bird butler spoke up, "I think you're going about this the wrong way and displeasing the Mistress. Perhaps instead of screaming out different magic words and grunting like an uncivilized barbarian, you could try thinking of something that deeply resonates with your soul, then try conjuring it into reality as your attack."

Berdly nodded his head dramatically, "I see, thank you for your advice, noble peon! Very well, I'll try it! Are you watching, my fabulous Queen?"

"I'll be honest, I got bored AF, so I'm playing Floppy Bat now. Swatch, give me a recap later." Queen said, as the letters 'AFK' displayed on her visor.

Perhaps too caught up in his own moment to notice the Queen's apathy, Berdly went on like nothing had happened, "Alright then! I'll summon something that is inseparable from my very existence as an attack." The blue bird thrusted out his wing dramatically, "Here I GO! SMART ATTACK!" Nothing happened.

"Hmm." Swatch grunted before turning to Noelle, "How about you–"

"Hah, I guess that didn't work, which isn't that surprising since I don't really know how smart could really translate to a physical construct. I mean, I guess it could become all my good grades, but I could just throw my homework instead." Berdly then pulled out all the homework with A pluses from a folder that he kept somewhere on his cosplay outfit to show to everyone.

"Uneleg–" Swatch tried to regain control of the conversation but had as much luck as Noelle when Berdly wasn't listening.

"Hmmmmm, in fact…" The blue bird unknowingly interrupted the butler again, "Ninja A+ attack GOOOOOOOO!" Berdly threw out his homework like ninja stars, and… they actually flew straight into the robot on a gust of wind giving the robot thousands of paper cuts?!

Berdly squawked out a noise of both surprise and delight, "I did it! I DID MAGIC! DID YOU GUYS SEE THAT, I DID MAGIC!" Queen continued to ignore the situation, absorbed in her game.

"Congratulations, sir babysitter. You did an attack." Swatch nodded, already seeming tired of all of this, "It seems you have the power to–"

"To control homework papers!" Berdly finished the butler's sentence for him.

"To control wind. Because you're a bird." Swatch corrected.

"Oh." Berdly blinked, "Yeah, I guess that makes more sense. And that means I can create tornadoes!" With a wave of his wing, Berdly sent three tornadoes right into the robot, sending it up in the air. Swatch seemed a little more impressed by this attack than the previous, giving a nod of approval. "And FLY!" The blue Bird launched himself into the air with a great gale, before falling right back to the ground with a loud thud. "R-right, still level one." Berdly slowly got up, wincing from pain "Don't worry guys, I'll work on it later." Swatch looked less impressed by that performance.

"...Quite." Swatch gave a nod and proceeded along, "Anyway, the Metube guide said something about each Light Nerd getting their own weapon when they enter the Dark World, which they can summon. How about you try it, and then Madam Babysitter can have a go?"

"Heh! It'll be a piece of seed-cake!" Berdly smirk oozed with confidence, "If my magic is wind, then my trusty weapon can only be a…" He raised his wing up into the sky, and to the shock of Noelle one of those axes with a sharp point like a spear manifested out of thin air into his hand, "Aha! I was right! My faithful weapon is a Hal-bird!" Berdly then began examining his weapon with a pleased expression, "Yes. This trusty instrument will be my greatest companion for my journey, truly it will be invaluable in defeating all villains that oppose me!"

"Ah, your weapon is a halberd. Yes, I expected something like this, and thus prepared a cyber halberd as an upgrade." Swatch handed a green, holographic looking weapon of the same type to the blue bird, who immediately snatched it up and tossed his previous weapon aside.

"Ah yes! This faithful tool will be my invaluable partner for my quest, truly it will be instrumental in defeating all foes before me!" Berdly said, looking over his green upgrade with a satisfied expression.

Turning his attention to the 99 robot, Berdly leapt forward into melee range, staring down on his foe as he prepared to strike. "You thought you were so high and mighty, but it looks like you won't have the last laugh now, villain!" The boy was lost in his own little world, which was honestly starting to get a little fascinating to Noelle as she watched him enact his own little fantasy. Berdly swung his halberd high and mighty, ready to thwack the robot down, until…

"I don't laugh." The robot actually responded.

Berdly blinked in surprise, "Oh, uh–"

"But one day I'll laugh. I'll laugh when the sky runs black with terror, the land cracks with fear, and the earth breathes her final breath. When all darkners, all lightners, all people will face the end. When all of you finally are discarded by Angel like I was discarded, then I will laugh, and laugh, and laugh…" the robot said morbidly.

Berdly paused to stare at the robot. Then he brought his halberd down, once, twice, three times upon the head and then he knocked it around with a few tornadoes before heading back to Noelle and Swatch. "Soooo. What else are we doing?"

"Well, I do believe it is Madam babysitter's turn…" Swatch paused, expecting to be interrupted again. When Berdly stayed quiet for once, the butler continued, "So why don't you show us either your physical or magical attacks." The butler and Berdly looked expectantly at Noelle.

What did they expect out of me? The girl wondered, nervously looking around. She didn't know what kind of weapon she was supposed to have. While the robot did say some really messed up things, she wasn't sure if she could really bring herself to hurt it.

"Feeling a little nervous my dear doe?" Berdly said with an irritating smugness to his voice, "I, your brave knight in glow in the dark armor, can aid you. Simply focus your chakra into your hands, reach out to grab the weapon of your essence! I know this can be hard for one not as talented in this area as I, but I have faith in you!"

"Ah yes. Do not worry if you can't summon one. I've already made an educated guess on what your weapon was going to be anyway and brought an upgrade for it beforehand. But when you're ready, just go up there and hit the target with your weapon." The butler held up a giant, chainsaw axe or also known as an autoaxe for Noelle. The large weapon made a rather loud 'zrrrrrrt!' making the deer girl jump up with fright.

I'm supposed to summon that?! Noelle hopelessly thought to herself, staring helplessly at her small, weak hands. Then she paused as she noticed something unusual. "H-have I always had this ring?" She asked no one in particular, but she did indeed have a ring in her hand. The Snow Ring.

Leaning over to see what Noelle was talking about, Swatch paused for a moment before coughing into his hand, quickly putting the autoaxe away in barely concealed embarrassment. "That's a magic ring Madam Babysitter. It must be your weapon. It should help you cast all sorts of spells. According to lonelyprince3, a low-level wizard like you should be able to cast healing, pacifying, and elemental attack spells along with minor elemental magic you're associated with. How about giving it a go?"

"A- a- alright Mr. Butler." Noelle squeaked, timidly walking up to the mean robot, and looking down at her ring. It would kind of hurt if she tried punching the robot with the ring on, so instead she decided to try to use her magic. She hoped this robot didn't feel pain, although with all the abuse Berdly gave it that was perhaps true. Considering her vector of attack, Noelle decided on waving her hand to send out magic like Berdly did it, b- but the robot was staring at her. Its robotic eyes looked directly into her soul, staring at her with contempt. Noelle just wanted to get away from this thing as soon as possible, so she just squeaked and threw up her hands at it. Sparks of frost flew right out of her hands, but didn't even flinch at the robot. Seeing her display, Noelle ran back to the safety of the butler.

"Pitiful." the robot said.

"Hmph." Berdly grunted, before throwing four more tornadoes at that robot, knocking it around more. Looking back at Noelle, he put a smug smile, "Well, it wasn't the best attack, but don't worry my dear Noelle, I'll always protect with my superior fighting prowess." He gave a big feather thumbs up, "Because we're a team!" In embarrassment, Noelle covered her face with her robes cowl.

"Disappointing, but perhaps you could try to use a spell? For magic like yours, using enchanted words can help focus and refine your power, at least according to lonelyprince3's tutorial on the subject. Try saying some magic words you know to create a spell; it could help bring the most out of your powers." Swatch advised Noelle one more time, "Try again." Noelle tried pulling her cowl tighter to ignore the new and stressful situation. "Go on now, hit the useless robot again." Swatch said again, getting a little impatient at her hesitation.

"It's okay, Noelle." Berdly tried to console her, getting the slightest idea that Noelle was upset. Probably due to not being as amazing as his cool powers, but he could hardly blame her for feeling a little jealous. "All you have to do is try again. Don't worry if it doesn't work out. I'll be able to carry us through any situation, so it doesn't matter if you suck at this."

"F-fine. You want me to do a spell. I-i'll do a s-spell…" Noelle turned around and stared down the robot who callously stared back. Spell names, spell names. What spells can I do? Noelle thought to herself. In her life, there had been plenty of magic words she knew like please, thank you, alakazam, and Merry Christmas. However, she didn't want to do anything nice right now. She just wanted these people to all stop bothering her. So, if they want an attack, she'll give them an attack. Perhaps it was how her family was associated with the winter holiday and the winter season in general, but Noelle settled on a certain spell she remembered from Dragonblazers.

Letting out a chilly breath, Noelle raised her hand at the robot and spoke the magic words "Iceshock." The lonely cold nights of recent Christmases, the bitter feeling of the winter air stringing her cheeks, and other memories flashed before her eyes, until that coldness in her mind, body, and soul converged into her hand and then came out!

In a flash, a blue ice energy built up around the robot before exploding outwards in the release of snowflakes and frost. Then from the ground up, ice expanded and froze over the entire darkner, encasing it in a shell of ice. The robot was frozen solid.

*Noelle became stronger.*

"W-w-what– what happened?" Noelle stuttered out, eyes wide at what she had done. Everyone else watched Noelle in shock and disbelief at her action.

"OH MY CIRCUITS!" Queen cried, shocked out of her gaming session. "Noelle… you… you… YOU HAVE THE COOLEST SUPERPOWER EVER~!" The female robot shouted with joy, with the sound of ' 3' being played on her visor.

"Y-yes, well done Madam Babysitter. G-good show." Swatch congratulated Noelle, while taking a few steps away from the deer girl.

Berdly looked conflicted, "Ah, you're more powerful than me… Of course…"

Feeling like something very very bad had just happened, Noelle looked around the room, panicked and confused "W-what d-did I do exactly? W-what is m-my power?"

"Oh you silly billy." Queen came over and gave her new favorite peon a wide smile. "Your superpower is killing people!" She sounded far too joyful about such a morbid topic than Noelle was comfortable with.

Speaking of which, Noelle was pretty sure she was hyperventilating again, with her legs locking up again. Her vision was starting to swarm a bit too. Yep, she was definitely freaking out again.

Unexpectedly, she felt a feathered wing grab on to her, steadying her swaying balance. "H-hold on, Noelle didn't kill that robot right? Robots don't die from being frozen; they just need to be picked out of the ice and will be just fine, right my Queen?" Berdly's question actually helped Noelle start breathing easier, as his point got through to Noelle's rattled mental state.

"Ummmmmmm…. Welllllllllll…. I guess I could put melt this guy out with my cool flame guns." Queen admitted reluctantly, "But I mean that would be sooooo much work TBH."

"But the robot is going to be okay, right?" Berdly asked again, still steadying Noelle.

"Probably? I don't see why it won't be if I get it out of the ice, I guess." Queen shrugged. Recovering from her near fainting experience, Noelle finally had enough sense in her to give Queen an inquiring look along with Berdly, which made the robot shift around. "Well, I'll take good care of him, would that make you feel better?" Queen eventually acquiesced. Noelle and Berdly nodded.

"Alrighty then! Now let's go do your important duties then. First on the docket of your babysitting careers: Arson." Queen picked up tons of gasoline and flame throwers, "We're going to burn a house down!"

"There won't be anyone inside it, right my extraordinary Queen?" Berdly asked for clarification. Apparently, the experience with freezing the robot had made the blue bird wise up a little bit on his new boss's more extreme character quirks.

Queen shifted her eyes to the side for a moment before answering, "... No."

"Very well then! You can rely on us! My wind will fan the flames to be even higher!" Berdly proudly declared, letting out what he probably thought was a heroic laugh.

"Tubular!" Queen grinned, "Then you can be as useful as Noelle!"

Berdly stopped laughing, and looked mildly offended "But her ice would just put out the fires though…"

"A-actually, um… Queen. I-i have a q-question." Noelle finally gathered enough courage to talk to Queen directly, who immediately snapped another photo while motioning for her to continue. "W-well." Noelle tried thinking of how to put this without potentially coming off as an idiot, "I-if we're supposed to be babysitters, w-where exactly is your s-son?"

"Well, he's righ–" Queen looked down and around her, as there was a notable lack of her bouncy, blue, blabby, baby boy. Smile fading, she looked at Swatch, "Do you–" Swatch shook his head.

"Where did you last see the young master?" Swatch asked, trying to help his Mistress with deductive reasoning.

"Oh, that's easy, it was back when I told him to go play in that dark scary forest while I threw hands with three feral children." Queen replied with a grin at the memory.

"And then what happened?" Swatch continued his questioning.

As she processed and analyzed her own memory banks, Queen's visor went into a blinking animation for a moment, then she started sprinting at breakneck speed through the castle "$!$! $!$! $!$!, Lancey-poo I'm COMING!" It seemed her son was still in that forest then.

Noelle, Berdly, and Swatch watched Queen disappear into the maze of halls of her palace. "We should follow her." Swatch decided before elegantly walking towards where Queen went. With two confused looks to each other, Noelle and Berdly followed behind him. Ironically with the emergency distracting Queen and the butler, it gave Noelle and Berdly some down time with each other for the first time in this new world.

"Uh, Berdly?" Noelle asked, giving a side eye to her usual study partner and annoying friend.

"What's up?" Berdly looked at her with a smile, "Excited for our new quest?" For once since coming here, he was actually listening to her.

"Uh, no." Noelle answered, feeling more confident than with Berdly being in one of his more reasonable moods, "Why are we going along with this? Any of this? This whole mess is as crazy as eating your own Christmas tree. We got kidnapped by a crazy robot lady!"

"Ha ha, oh my dear Noelle. Don't you realize what's going on?" Berdly said it like it was obvious, acting like he did whenever he managed to figure out a homework question before her (which was rare).

"N-no?" Noelle said meekly, already having a hard time articulating herself once Berdly had started looking so confident.

"It's simple, we've been Isekaied." Berdly explained with an obnoxious energy, "We have graciously been transported to a brand-new world, where we will finally fulfill our destiny of becoming heroes to this land. We will journey forth and make many new female allies to expand my ever-growing harem and make many dastardly foes. Some of which will undoubtedly turn to our side after we do a couple of cool fight scenes with them. I'll even get my very own rival, who will battle me many times as our story continues. My power level will skyrocket until the power creep gets out of control, but still I will carry our team and confront the final villain: my ultimate nemesis. It'll be tough, but I'll get help from my rival, you, and the rest of the B team and we'll defeat the big bad, and I'll get to kiss my true love. Then we will all have our happily ever afters. Just like what happens in all Isekais."

Noelle watched Berdly spout out his own delusional fantasy that sounded suspiciously like several different anime, "Berdly, I-i just want to go home."

Berdly then started 'tsking' at her, "My silly doe, don't you know anything about the hero's journey? We can't go back to the familiar, known world until the very end. Judging from my extensive Isekai watching experience, we'll get a chance to go home after defeating the demon lord or we get a wish that could let us go back. But for now, you should be enjoying this new world with our cool new magic powers, because we'll probably be here for a couple of seasons."

"Berdly, y-you have c-cool powers. My p-powers kill p-people." Noelle managed to retort.

This actually made her friend wince a bit, although he recovered quickly. "I mean, the butler said you have other spells like healing and pacifiers! That's pretty cool. You could probably heal your sick dad with those if you work on it."

Noelle nearly stopped in her tracks, as it seemed like her heart skipped a beat. Berdly said something about leaving all the fighting stuff to him, and he would be her knight or something or other. However, she stopped listening to him. Dad. She thought about her dad who had been hospitalized with cancer. It wasn't looking too good, but… if she stayed here and mastered her healing magic… could she save her dad? All those lonely nights she had been stuck in the house, waiting for her mom to come home from work only for her to do an all nighter on her mayoral work. All the times she spent in bed awake, wondering if dad would be okay. This growing coldness she had started to feel every day as everything just felt like an act, as she awaited helplessly to hear the fate of another family member. It could all be over…

Letting out a frosty breath, Noelle picked up her pace, looking ahead with more determination than she felt in a long time. If this new world had the keys to saving her father, then she had to explore it and master her powers. Right now, that meant helping Queen with finding her son, getting in her the good graces of the ruler of his land. Despite her insane demands, Queen's resources could really help her on her quest, even if that meant she had to apparently burn a house down.

So, look out Dark World! Noelle Holiday was here, and she was ready to take on whatever bah humbugs you had to offer! So, what if you're weird and completely hyped up on expired fruit juice?! Noelle had Kris fricken Dreemurr as a neighbor and friend her whole life to psychoanalyze and prank her, and there was nothing in this Dark World that could be as bad as them!

P-probably…

H-hopefully…

—

Stats

Ranks:

Noelle: Frostmancer

Berdly: Sky Knight

Author's Note: Thanks for reading the interlude chapter or chapter 5.5 of THS! Yes, it isn't Ch 6, and no I did not want the title to be Interlude Chapter: The Interlude, instead Chapter 5.5: The Interlude, but kept taking out the 5.5 and made it a 55 which would have been more confusing. Anyway, I wanted to keep main chapters to be focused on the main 'heroes', so any side chapters focused on Noelle or any other side characters will be saved for interlude chapters, though I don't plan on being too many more of these. But we'll see.

Anyway, I hoped y'all liked this rendition of Noelle and Berdly, and we'll get to see more of them and their interactions with the three heroes in future chapters. I certainly liked writing for them, although Noelle is kind of hard to get down right as she's both pretty meek and a logical character, which means she often gets overshadowed or makes the plot happen too quickly. So it can be hard to give her some funny moments, while keeping this idiot plot trainwreck on course.

Anyway, Thanks for reading THS.