Flight of the Brightsmile

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Seeing the riot he might have on his hands, Zazzy rises to the occasion. And stumbles slightly on the table leg. But nonetheless he gets up to put on a good show. His white eyes stared down the smarmy blond as he ambles up to him with a drunken saunter, keeping himself between the fool and the armed octopus. Mispronouncing the octopus' name would surely be the death of the idiot. "It's pronounce Xeropoustra you dense lil pillbug!"

He leans in close with a threatening sneer on his face, the white of the skull pattern on his face accented well in the soft light of the room. “Now, you’re gonna follow my lead and ya won’t get blasted.” He grumbles lowly, the words soft as silk and not to be heard outside the two of them. “Fake it til you make it out the door.”

And Azazel goes for sucker punch rivaled in strength by possibly a capuchin monkey having a bad day. The goal here was to ‘batter’ the smarmy blond right out the door. Possibly get a drink on the house for saving the day. Maybe. He was stretching for that one and he knew it. The assorted snacks in the snack bowl began to float up slightly and fall back down as he focuses on throwing another punch.
 
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Well… shit. Nice job Vess.

He sighed, rubbing a hand over his forehead, watching through his fingers as the drunk man staggered to his feet and stumbled in his direction. Xeropoustra. That was it.

He was rather dense, wasn’t he? He’d blame it on the rather strong cocktail the other bartender had given him. Yeah, that was definitely it.

“Listen -” he started as the skull-man got up in his face, only to click his mouth shut in surprise. Follow his lead?

And then he was punched square in the stomach.

Vess doubled over, nearly spilling off his barstool. He snagged the edge of the bar at the last second. “Fucker,” he wheezed. Skull-man was strong. Stronger than him, definitely. Fuck.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the snack bowl float for a moment before slamming back down. How curious.

His gaze flickered around the room, to the people, and octopuses watching. He turned his attention back to his assailant. “I don’t want to fight you,” he said, scrambling to get off his seat before he fell off, holding his hands in front of himself placatingly. It sounded like the thing a mage apprentice would say, but it was honest.

Then he was punched again. He instinctively tried to dodge before he could stop himself, and ended up taking it in the side. He grunted, leaning against the bar, his face uncomfortably close to the snack bowl. Once he had caught his breath, he picked it up. He contemplated hitting the man with it, but he didn't want to put up an actual fight, did he? So instead he whipped the bowl to the side, sending the nuts flying at Skull-man's face.

After a moment of staring, Vess tossed the bowl at him too.
 
The octopus bartender now had a gun.

Cima wasn’t entirely certain how such a development has occurred in such a short space of time, but she’d pilfered from enough bars over the years to know that you should probably assume the guy behind the bar is armed. Something the pretty boy probably ought to have considered as well, it seemed, but now he was staring down the barrel of something that looked absolutely ideal for the discombobulation of sgronts. Truly a fate worse than death. As another patron wearing what looked like corpse paint lurched back into some semblance of consciousness and began berating the offending pretty boy (fuck, she needed to start learning this ensemble casts’ names already), she found the small child she was mistaken for earlier (Olan? Eelength? Something like that) also beating a wise retreat from the brewing octopus beatdown to join her near the doors.

Just in time for some manner of legless spirit to come drifting through them.

Cima pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling a stress headache beginning to develop. This was honestly getting hard to keep track of.

As the captain joined in on abusing the pretty boy for his bar-hopping faux pas, Eolanthe began to chatter at her.
“Do you have a party for your current adventure? I'm pretty sure adventure parties are supposed to meet in inns and taverns and the like, but that one just seems a bit too barmy, don't you think?” Cima turned her head to regard the child, frowning.
“Wot the bloody hell’s an adventuring party? Is that like summin you rob, orOH FUCK--”

The goblin thing in the hood had just audibly popped back into existence next to the ghost.

Cima could feel the stress headache dial things up a notch.

More irate octopus sounds began to flood the bar, as she noticed for the first time a number of other diving helmet-attired cephalopods (how has she missed them?) expressing their disapproval at the unsanctioned act of bar hopping. There was something uniquely threatening about the sound of multiple octopuses ubhuwubuhlaaarbing, and Cima was about ready to do a runner when the drunk fellow in corpse paint decided to save them all from a potential mutiny by starting a bar fight instead. Finally, an act of human interaction she was far more familiar with.

Pretty boy seemed less than pleased by this form of social interaction, however, backing off and then resorting to bowl-tossing. Cima rolled her eyes before clapping both hands to the side of her mouth as a makeshift megaphone. “Stop being such a fuckin fop and hit him, you pansy! I wanna see blood!” She turned her head to grin at Eolanthe. “Love a bar brawl. You can pick so many pockets when everyone’s distracted, see?”
 
5,964 Years Later...​
"And then what happened?"

@CoffeeCake added a third spoonful of ants, sprinkling them like candy over the ice cream which the waitress had brought. "Oh, you shoulda seen this ass-whooping. Changed the course o' history that day. In fact, the ol' Prime Initiative folks later revealed it was part of a time heist. But like the Nolan kind, y'know? Where you've already been robbed aforehand."

@Mglo continued waving to the waitress, trying to get a straw. They hadn't really been listening, unlike @Mundane Monster , who was riveted to the yarn being spun by @CoffeeCake. "I mean, it was a just an undercover assassin versus a zombie, right?"

"Sweet summer child..." laughed @CoffeeCake while offering @Mundane Monster a lick of the ant spoon. "You're forgetting about the nuts."

@Mundane Monster suddenly grew very ashamed. But @Drifter , who had been angrily pacing the diner aisle all this time, wasn't about to miss an opportunity. Leaning over @Mundane Monster , the furious @Drifter screamed at full volume. "YOU ALWAYS FORGET ABOUT THE NUTS!"

@Mglo cursed as the outburst scared off the waitress, who was just about to ask if they needed anything else (like a straw, for example).

@CoffeeCake continued to chuckle while stirring the ice cream. "Yes, you see: the nuts changed everything that day. Ever thrown a peanut at a corpse?"

@Jhuton and @MiharuAya , who were listening from the next table over while splitting a bowl of spaghetti, looked to one another and shrugged. They each had to admit, they had never thrown a peanut at a corpse. And not for lack of opportunity.

@CoffeeCake tutted. "Truly, you children have not lived. Well, when the next pandemic comes around, be sure to save a bag or two of peanuts. Better yet, a little butter smeared all even-like on a crust o' bread."

@Drifter turned, taking one hand away from the freshly-slapped face of @Mundane Monster, and roared at the serving staff. "THERE'S NO BREAD! THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE FUCKING BREAD!"

The various employees of the Zangheri Volcano Diner threw terrified stares Drifter's way, and went back to hiding-in-place in the kitchen.

@Mglo started to fashion a straw out of a napkin. "So the fight worked? They tricked the octopai?"

"Octopuses!" whimpered @Mundane Monster, who went back to covering up as @Drifter sensed the grammatical mistake and strode back down the aisle.

@CoffeeCake watched the surviving ants carry his spoon away, slowly, across the table. "Oh yes. It worked. But not in the way you would'a thunk. You see... that was when I made my grand entrance..."

At the next table over, @Jhuton and @MiharuAya finished counting out their spaghetti noodles, and realized they were covered in sauce. They both took out their disgrontificators and began writing reviews. "The Zangheri Volcano Diner promises to erupt with flavour..." muttered @Jhuton.

"But instead... I felt like a virgin, about to be sacrificed... only slightly aroused... while racist stereotypes danced around me..." muttered @MiharuAya, finishing the sentence for @Jhuton as always.

@Mundane Monster suddenly slammed one fist on the table, causing @Mglo to choke on the makeshift napkin straw. "Tell us about your grand entrance! Pleeeeeease!"

@CoffeeCake swirled a finger around the ice cream bowl, licked it, then took a deep breath...



5,964 Years Earlier...​
The octopuses uhbawuba-CHEERED! as Zazzy and Vess rollicked across the bar. Many of them then engaged in the customary declaration of peace-among-cephalopods, whereby they slammed their diving helmets together. It was musical. Elated. Reassuring.

Captain Caelcrust slowly deflated, and the symbol above his head became a gentle circle, curling in on itself like a sausage-dog who had found a fire. Beside him, Xeropoustra likewise grew serene and returned all nine of his firearms to their allotted hidey-holes behind the bar, where teams of plucky worker-mice began stripping and cleaning them.

"God bless us, one and all," Caelcrust murmured as he watched Zazzy and Vess roll out of the bar and into the corridor, startling the various child-characters being groomed by an Elder Cultist in the doorway. Then he turned and strolled to the long window of the restaurant. "I have never, for a moment, regretted my decision to throw wide the boarding planks of this, my illustrious airship, and admit such fine and level-headed people, what with your attention to detail and predilection for..."

He stopped abruptly. His single eye narrowed to a perplexed squint.

Then he spun around and yelled. "OH SHIT, WE MISSED THE VOLCANO!"

The entire bar screeched to a halt, throwing various guests, octopai, children, greased mice, octopuses, and precious-precious-cocktail glasses directly into the bulkhead. There was a squealing sound, the wailing of alarms, and then... gradually... the roar of the engines kicking into reverse, along with a helpful beeping sound (to warn passing manticores).

"SORRY!" the captain announced to everyone as they picked themselves up off the floor. Behind him, at the window, the Zangheri Volcano came back into view. They had overshot it by about two barsecs.
 
Roger, a boiler mechanic, stares in wide-eyed shock at the creature who just stepped inside the airship from...

"I heard someone knocking on the door, from the outside..."

"How did you... we're flyin' over mountains..."

A woman, aged 24-45 steps inside the Brightsmile and snaps her tortoiseshell gaze left, then right, her muddy pink lips scowling in disapproval. "Opening the hull door while in flight is a violation of safety protocol 54 section E in The Agency Health and Safety Handbook. I'll have to issue you an official citation. Also, this yellow safety tape marking the exit door isn't yellow enough. It doesn't elicit the proper terror at the thought of opening the hull door mid-flight, in fact, it's almost inviting. Like it's daring me to open this door. I'll issue a warning this time, so long as it's re-yellowed in the next 7-10 business days."

"Are you getting all this, Diane?"

"Er, my name is Roger--"

A typewriter on mechanical spider legs scuttles between Roger's boots, two of its legs typing at the keys.

TAKA-TAKA-TAKA!

"No time for names, Roger! Just point me to the galley."

Karen leans down and tugs, through her trouser legs, at the hem of her flesh-toned compression sock (which is about three shades too yellow for anyone who wears them). Then, with a determined squeak from her orthopedic shoes on the gangway, the Health Inspector is onto her next inspection! "The game is afoot!"

Karen trips over a box of cogs and gears. "GAH! HAZARD VIOLATION!"

---

"Pickle jar label not fully facing frontwards..."

Karen rifles through the walk-in fridge.

"Cooked rice stored for more than three days..."

TAKA-TAKA-TAKA!

"And...Kimchi..."

...TAKA?

"I know it's not technically a violation, Diane. It's just a little too ethnic for a place that offers open bar volcano tours to kids, don't cha think?"

Somewhere, in the engine room, someone engages the emergency brakes.

HRRRRRRRRRRRRRRK!

The force of the stop sends Karen tumbling, flat ironed hair flying, from the walk-in fridge through the ship's kitchen.

"CHEESE AND CRACKERS!"

TAKA-TAKA-TAKA!

Karen opens her eyes, and peels her Live Laugh Love locket from her cheek...

and beholds, at the stove, dozens of black, marble eyes starring back at her.

Rats. A dozen or so of them, frozen in shock. Some are stirring, in pairs, wooden spoons in soup pots. One uses its tail to hold a chef's knife while another shaves herbs against the blade. One stands on the other's shoulders, reading a recipe book. This one wears a chef's hat. Karen watches, her mouth agog, as she Chef Rat turns to her and offers her a cupcake. Is that whimsical French cafe music playing on the radio?

"Y-you made this?"

The Chef Rat nods. Squeak!

"And you all run this kitchen?"

Squeak! Squeak! The Chef Rat's eyes gleam with intelligence...

---

Karen scrubs the last bloody soap suds away at the kitchen's handwash sink while Diane uses her metal spider legs to toss a heavy garbage bag down the trash incinerator.

"That's the last of them, Diane? Excellent. With that out of the way I think it's time we had a word..." Karen reaches for a hand towel, but there are none.

"...with the Manager."
 
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The bowl bounces off the skull with a sound that was almost like glass hitting ceramic, which didn’t phase Zazzy in the slightest as he ‘escorts’ Vess out and away from the door. He ceases aggression and leans heavily against the wall once they were safely out of sight and hearing range of the bar.

“I think that went well. Didn’t rough you up too bad, did I?” He asks, managing to sound a bit more coherent, promptly before the ship decided to point out his impaired balance and send him tumbling into the poor blond. “Sorry. Fucking hell, who’s even driving this thing?” He complains as he flops off Vess.
 
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Yeah, leaving her room was a good call. It seemed like as soon as she sat down at the bar, a literal fast-forward button was pressed. A series of increasingly chaotic events occurred and then suddenly, everything was "normal" again. A little too normal, she thought as the Captain announced that they'd completely missed the purpose of the trip. She barely had time to secure her jar of mealworms before the ship kicked into reverse. Joss stumbled, a bit trying to gain her bearings and her footing while also keeping a handle on her mealworms. Honestly, she was bound to lose control of one of them. Thankfully, she was able to maintain her cool lizard person demeanor and maintain her footing, her bearings followed suit. Unfortunately, her jar of mealworms flew from her clawed hand, sailing in an arc across the room and shattering against the wall. Juicy, wriggly, heavily seasoned mealworms pooled from the remains of the glass jar, desperately trying to secure their freedom.

As soon as the ship righted itself, Joss jogged over to the shattered jar and began shoving handfuls of mealworms into her pockets. Unfortunately, a good few of them managed to elude her grasp. She shot a mildly apologetic look in the captain's direction.

"A'h...My bad."
 
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5,964 Years Later...​
Everyone leaned across the diner table, staring expectantly at the narrator. But @CoffeeCake was distracted with holding up the ice cream bowl and licking it clean.

"Mhmm... just.... just one second... I ... mhm... yum...."

"Mmmmhm. That's good!"

"Then what happened was.... mhmm... yohm... yohm nohm..."

"Mmmmmmmmmmmmhm...."

"Hand me a napkin?"
 
Vess let himself be dragged and pushed from the bar. It went against every instinct he had, not fighting back, but if he wanted to get out of there without taking out every octo-beast in that bar, Skull-man’s plan was his best bet. So he kept his head down until they were free from the watchful eyes, fingers tight around the strap of his bag.

“No, I’m alright,” he responded. Already, he could feel the bruises healing before they could fully form, although he wasn’t about to tell this man that. He cast a glance over his shoulder back at the bar. “I can’t believe that worked. I owe you one, truly.”

“I-” he started, before cutting off with a grunt the ship decided to throw them harshly into the bulkhead, hands automatically reaching out to steady the Skull-man as he tumbled into him.

“Perhaps our pilot is a squid,” he huffed under his breath, as the beeping of the ship in reverse could be heard. “They must have missed the mountain.”

Once Skull-man had righted himself, Vess offered his hand to shake with a smile. “My name is Vess, by the way.”
 
IvesPerhaps.jpg Ives continued to study the figure ahead of him, at first glance they did not look like a fighter but perhaps they could've been of use in other ways. They appeared out of nowhere almost as if they had teleported: this could prove useful for deliveries, espionage, intelligence, and...
"No no... not yet" Ives mumbled to himself, he hasn't even recruited this person yet, and he's already thinking of sending them on spy missions, it never even crossed his mind that they could've been a child. Though, now that he thought about it...what kid could teleport? and surely no child could emanate such a strange aura. It was clear to him now, the person in front of him was some sort of a magical being that took on the form of a boy.​
"Which means... I can hire them without being morally flawed!" he cheered internally.​
He cleared his throat and folded his hands in a formal manner, "Excuse me sir, but can I interest you in joini-".​
Ives was cut short as he felt a sudden jolt around him, he looked around and saw several passengers getting up off the floor, near where his feet should be an amber stream of beer passed by along with what seemed to be mice, covered in grease.​
He became even more confused when he heard the captain's announcement, "What, we- we missed?". Bewildered, Ives shook his head before turning back to his to-be cult member, "Now, where was I-". This time Ives was not interrupted by the ship or even angry octopi, but a mouse. A single mouse, that was heading right towards his face. Upon impact, his head/helmet made a loud and almost comical DING! His hands rushed to his face to brush off the frightened and greasy creature that clung tightly to his visage.​
Ives said nothing as the dubious 'mouse grease' stained his once proud face.​
"I hate this ship," he said simply.​
 
Zazzy smiles as he sees that the smarmy blond turned out to not hold a grudge. He finds his balance once again, their little fight seeming to do wonders for his coordination. Maybe it was that drink he had finally kicking in. Or maybe it was the unexpected help. "Thanks."

He can't help but laugh at the little mutter and shakes Vess' hand earnestly. "The name's Azazel, but you can call me Zazzy." He starts to head down the hall with his easy drunken swagger. "Let's go see what the big deal is about this big hunk of dead rock."

He glances back over his shoulder, a sudden thought going through his head and out his mouth without consideration. "What's a guy like you barhopping for, anyways? No one pretty enough for your tastes at the other one?"

The consideration kicked in afterwards. After all, there were strict goals of barhopping. To be with friends, which obviously this guy didn't have with him. To pick up dates, he did lean towards the dweeby side of the equation but he knew how to talk so even then he had a chance, and seeing him single and failing to mingle meant that wasn't it. To get shit faced? Why would he go to another bar then instead of camping out?

His expression turns somber for a minute as he looks out the windows at the mountain. "You were looking for someone special, 's that right?" A flask drifts up from the inside pocket of his jacket and he quickly snatches it, taking a swig and completely derailing those thoughts. "Whatever that thing was, it must've been one big mother 'effa. Could ya imagine the day he was having, dying with his ass stuck in a volcano?"
 
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And there it was....

NAME :The Zangheri Volcano

IS DEFINITELY NOT : The lair of a horrible Evangelion gribbly thing that will rise up and attack the ship in an awesome CGI sequence devoid of any emotional weight.

IS DEFINITELY : Just venting a little smoke and such. Nothing to worry about.

SOMETHING INTERESTING : There will be a diner here, one day. It will get bad reviews. But the coffee cake is delicious.

SOMETHING NOT AT ALL INTERESTING : Tommy Lee Jones


"Gather around, my friends!" declared Captain Caelcrust, waving to everyone in the dining club to approach the viewing window where he stood. "Closer! Closer! No... not like that. Stop. Okay, back up now. Further. No. You're still too close! Get back, please."

"The Zangheri Mountain!" he declared, once everyone was at an appropriate distance. "As you all know from reading the First Post..." He pointed to a copy of the in-house newsletter which was available in everyone's cabin for a reasonable surcharge. "...the volcano was once the mountain lair of the fearsome Koberax, a titan of the old world worshiped by the orcs and feared by the men. His corpse remains inside the mountain, and is about be partially ejected via the magma chamber's dectriennial eruption."

"The what eruption?" shouted a voice from the kitchen. Some officious woman, with a typewriter.

Caelcrust formed a scowly-symbol over his head and shouted back at the kitchen door. "DECTRIENNIAL. It means occurring every thirteen years."

"That's not a thing!"

TAKA-TAKA-TAKA

"Yes it is!"

"You can't just combine 'decennial' and ' triennial'. I want to speak to your m--"

"EJECULANT!" Caelcrust roared suddenly, cutting off the health inspector and startling several guests (who, honestly, were standing too close in the first place). As the crowd recoiled, the captain clarified. "Rich, high-yield ejeculant. That is what we are here to capture during our flyby of the volcano. As I explained to the little girl..."

He pointed at one of the little girls in the room.

"... we will be deploying the ship's starboard magno-enturblement net launchers once parallel with the eruption column. They will capture payloads of precious metals and biological detritus and deliver them for processing in the gnome hold."

TAKA-TAKA-TAKA

Caelcrust glared (symbolically) at the kitchen again. Behind him the mountain smoked, and not in a cool way.
 
1612704115470.pngAs if to validate Eolanthe's thought about children being the ones who ought to be running things, two of the men got into a fight! The cephalopods began cheering raucously in their helmet-bubbling, arm-waving way. Eolanthe briefly wondered what octo-children would be like, and whether they should also be in charge of oco-society, when the Adventurer interrupted her ruminations with a sudden shout:

“Stop being such a fuckin fop and hit him, you pansy! I wanna see blood!” She turned her head to grin at Eolanthe. “Love a bar brawl. You can pick so many pockets when everyone’s distracted, see?”

Eolanthe cocked her head in thought. Stealing was wrong, wasn't it? But the Adventurer made it sound like fun... On the other hand, joining her, even to follow and watch, would mean going back in there, and hadn't she only barely escaped? Furthermore, Eolanthe didn't know how to pick a pocket, and getting caught in the act would surely be dreadful. On the other, other hand, perhaps it would be a useful skill to l--

Just as suddenly as it began, the fight was over, and the two gentlemen were acting almost like friends. Perhaps they had faked the whole thing so they could pick some pockets? Eolanthe decided then and there that sometime between her present age and reaching adulthood, people simply went insane. Perhaps at the point when one left the perfectly sensible understanding that boys are gross, and started wanting to kiss them. Yes, that had to be it.

It was a rather terrifying thought, that insanity lay in wait for her just a few short years away. And so it was almost a relief when her contemplation was interrupted yet again, this time by the floor being yanked out from under her feet, or so it seemed.

"OOF!"

Eolanthe climbed to her feet, brushed herself off, and tried to regain her dignity.
"Gather around, my friends!" declared Captain Caelcrust, waving to everyone in the dining club to approach the viewing window where he stood. Eolanthe was less than eager to get close to the Captain again after the isotope-injection incident, but when she saw the volcano, her eyes lit with fascination, and she ran up to press her hands and touch her nose against the glass.

"Closer! Closer! No... not like that. Stop. Okay, back up now. Further. No. You're still too close! Get back, please."

The Captain wasn't making sense again. If the Brightsmile was safe from the eruption thanks to the magno-enturblement nets, then she could hardly be in any danger by standing close to the window! If the airship was in danger, then standing a few cubits back from the window would hardly make a difference, would it? Still, one must listen to one's elders. Which also made no sense, given that her elders were insane--and it was they who said that she should listen to her elders in the first place!

"The Zangheri Mountain!" he declared, once everyone was at an appropriate distance. "As you all know from reading the First Post, the volcano was once the mountain lair of the fearsome Koberax, a titan of the old world worshiped by the orcs and feared by the men. His corpse remains inside the mountain, and is about be partially ejected via the magma chamber's dectriennial eruption."

"The what eruption?" shouted a voice from the kitchen. Some officious woman, with a typewriter.

Caelcrust formed a scowly-symbol over his head and shouted back at the kitchen door. "DECTRIENNIAL. It means occurring every thirteen years."

"That's not a thing!" the voice from the kitchen replied.

"Wouldn't it be something like triskaidecennial?" Eolanthe muttered to herself. Among her collection of fun-to-say big words were 'dodecahedron,' the fifth of the Platonic polyhedra (another fun word) and 'triskaidekaphobia,' fear of the number thirteen. In both cases, the 'dec' for 'ten' came after the 'do-' for two and 'tris-' for three. Order was very important. She shuddered at the memory of the ranting lecture her classical languages tutor had given her when she'd gotten 'Romans, go home!' wrong.

Only then did it occur to her that the Captain might have overheard her. After all, she had no idea what sort of hearing apparatus he had.
 
qu6iigj.jpg
 
“Ah, yes. The big rock,” Vess murmured, lips quirking upwards in amusement. He cast one last glance back at the bar, before moving to follow.

He couldn’t really care less about this mountain, if he was being honest. But what else was he to do? He clearly couldn’t show his face in that lounge again, for a while at least, and he definitely wasn’t going back to Noan the Chicken Juggler. So going to see the ‘big rock’, it was.

Perceptive for a drunkard, wasn’t he? Vess was so surprised it almost showed on his face, but his easy, friendly expression held even as he wanted to shut down. He was a professional, after all. So instead, he stumbled over his own feet gracelessly. A light blush rose to his cheeks, unbidden.

“Uh.” He tilted his head to the side, choosing his words carefully. “More like... attempting to get away from someone,” he settled with.

“I can only imagine a horrible one,” Vess replied with a laugh. His gaze followed the flask curiously. The floating must’ve been Zazzy’s doing; before, when the bowl had floated off the counter, Zazzy had been near as well. “Although it depends on how he died I suppose.”

It didn’t take them long at all to find a window on the right side in order to see the volcano. It just so happened that the first one they happened across was taken up by a very large, very slimy… creature. It turned it’s head 180 degrees to gurgle at them with a tone Vess couldn’t decipher.

There was a bit of space to the side, if they squeezed in, but before they could even consider it, Vess grabbed Zazzy by the sleeve and dragged him down the corridor. “Nope,” he murmured.

“That floating, before,” Vess asked as they came up on the next window. “With your flask. And the bowl, in the bar, was that your doing? If you don’t mind my asking.”
 
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Zazzy nods slightly in understanding with the blond's reasoning, he understood that one far too well. Bad date, bad CO, same difference. It takes Zazzy a moment to process that his chosen window was taken due to his usual wandering of thoughts, and his balance is once again compromised by getting dragged along by his acquaintance. Guess he didn’t want to hang around some slime ball, which was fairly understandable.

He manages to keep his feet under himself and follows Vess' lead to the next window, where his next question has him wishing he'd gotten a refill on said flask before he left the bar. He could tell him that it's what happens when his grip on reality starts slipping, but that was edging into the too much info for a stranger territory... "Wait, you saw that too? I just thought there was something extra in my drink." He says with a little laugh, at first deflecting before considering his options a little bit more.

He rubs his face just below the edge of the skull paint. It really wouldn’t do any harm in the grand scheme of things. “It’s actually been happening for a little while, now that I think about it. Right before I hopped on this ship. It just sorta happens, I haven’t put much thought into the why yet.” He explains with a little shrug, watching the volcano. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about things just kinda floating around people, would ya?”
 
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Meanwhile, in the kitchen...

"Everyone here is going to die," muttered Karen the health inspector, while holding up a jar of expired syrup with chunks of raw chicken floating in it. The jar - labelled For Humans - had sucker-pod marks all over it, and had been left on the shelf with various bulk supplies for cocktail-making.

TAKA TAKA TAKA! declared her arachnoid typewriter.

Karen frowned. "What do you mean there's a portal opening behind me? That's against regula--"

The health inspector turned, and the jar of chicken-syrup went flying as she was tackled to the ground by a lusty wench. "Aha!" declared Vira, a largely non-descript pirate who had appeared in the kitchen from a glowing blue portal. "Avast ye salty dog! Yer booty or your life." She put Karen in a chokehold (with her left hand) while straddling her on the freshly-mopped tiles.

Karen spluttered. "PIRATES? IN THE KITCHEN!"

"PIRATES IN THE KITCHEN!" agreed Vira, before making out with Karen in a slobbering, syphilitic frenzy. Beside them, the typewriter took notes, before being crushed by a boot. A second intruder stepped from the glowing portal.

"This is where it happens..." murmured Limbo, his hair bone white and his eyes crackling blue like the portal as he peered around.

Karen assumed this man to be the manager, so kicked her voice up a few notches (chokehold be damned). "Who are you people?"

"We be time pirates!" declared Vira while fixing a dog collar around Karen's throat.

"We're not time pirates!" snapped Limbo, irritably. "We're here to save everyone."

Karen spluttered some more as the dog collar was attached. Beside her, the jar of syrup and chicken had suddenly become.... fresh?. The vegetables on the counter were also looking remarkably ripe, and the dairy products by the stove were no longer spoiled.

Karen relaxed under Vira's thighs, nodding approvingly. "I surrender."




Meanwhile, in the dining lounge...

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Caelcrust reached for his isotope gun. It was time to put an end to Eolanthe's disruptive behaviour.

"HELLO, BRIGHTSMILE! WE ARE 'THE UNCOMFORTABLES', AND WE CAME TO SLAY!"

Everyone gathered at the window turned to look at the stage, which had been largely neglected in the corner of the dining lounge. Stepping through the curtain was a short albino boy with white wings, who appeared to be blind. He was guided by his companion: a limber girl who was horned, winged, furred, pawed, tailed and ready to rock.

"GIVE IT UP FOR ALOY, THE BLIND BIRD BARD!" purred Neirie, before winking at everyone.

Everyone blinked back at her.

Neirie winked again, then started dancing, her chameleon body moving in strange, confusing undulations. She swirled and sashayed across the lounge towards the crowd, while the bird-boy, Aloy, opened his mouth and began to sing the most beautiful, haunting song.

"Oooooh...." everyone murmured, as the duo unfurled their mesmerizing performance.




Meanwhile, in the corridor...

Zazzy and Vess were interrupted as a pair of passengers passed behind them. One looked blasé as shit, and had a mechanical arm and a cigar. He also had skull-face paint like Zazzy, which was neat. "I'm just saying," Kash remarked to his customer. "You seem awfully eager to sell that sword. Which is strange for a sellsword."

Beside him, an armoured elf with tumbling, golden locks scowled while holding a glowing broadsword. "I just want it far away from me." Fenne hissed back. "And I need the money. Are you buying or prying? Surely your employers like swords?"

Kash puffed on his cigar. "Bitch, don't be concernin' yourself with what my employers do and don't like."




Meanwhile, in the dining lounge...

"Boo!" yelled Sera, a tiny mage girl with a tail who had been sitting in the corner all this time. But the performance of the bird boy had brought her out of obscurity, and now she was the only one in the room heckling while Aloy and Neirie entranced everyone. "Boooooo! You suck!"

Aloy stopped singing abruptly, and his blind eyes searched around. "Who said that?"

Sera scowled. "I'm a cat predator. And you're a bird. We are enemies!"

Another cat-predator (of the burglar sub-species) was Cima, who at that moment blinked out of her hypnosis, and looked down to see Neirie's hand in her pocket, filching her valuables. "Oh, you bitch!"

Neirie grinned nervously, sweat beading on her chameleon face. "Aloy! I told you not to stop singing!"

"Cat predator!" shrieked Sera before tackling Aloy off the stage. Meanwhile, Cima put Neirie in a headlock. Around them, all of the passengers by the window were shaking of the siren enchantment.

Then the kitchen door was kicked open.

"YAAAAAARGH!" shouted Vira the Time Pirate, waving a cutlass around in her left hand while holding a struggling health inspector on her shoulder with the other. "WE BE BOARDIN' YER SHIP, ME HEARTIES. GET THEE FUCKED!"

Limbo stepped out of the kitchen behind Vira and her plunder, shaking bits of typewriter off his boots. "You don't have to use that voice, Vira."

"The Agency will hear about this!" Karen declared while licking her legs.

"We're from the only agency that matters," Limbo answered, then he raised his voice to the entire confused lounge. "The Time Agency. We're here to warn you that the volcano erupts earlier than calculated. You all die in the eruption."

The crowd gasped. Caelcrust formed a question-mark over his head. "Nonsense. My calculations are perfect."

"Your calculations are shit," Limbo retorted. "Luckily, I'm a chronomancer. And I've come here from the future, arriving exactly one hour before the eruption, which will take place at 6pm."

The clock above the bar chimed, and all of the octopuses waved their arms, celebrating the start of Happy Hour, which was at 6pm every evening.

Limbo's eyes went wide.

Caelcrust formed a smile. "Now whose calculations are shit?"

Then the volcano did this, but without the watermark (because all the water was instantly evaporated):

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The initial shockwave shattered the dining lounge window. Neirie felt the headlock she was trapped in go suddenly slack. Twisting free, the pickpocket looked up at Cima, and got a face-full of the blood that spurted from Cima's mouth. The scrappy cat-burglar had taken a whole salvo of glass shards to the back. She remained upright for a moment, gurgling the word fuck-nugget before she crumpled to the floor.

Neirie screamed, but the guests around her had been deafened by the shockwave. They recoiled from the howling breeze, their legs and faces lacerated. "Aloy! Let's get out of here!" the chameleon shouted, before winking and spreading her wings. She leapt through the window, flapping once to get aloft, then was promptly incinerated by a great shower of pumice - the first of many that was rolling in from the ash column of the volcano.

"Neirie!" shouted Aloy. He swung his trusty lute and cracked Sera's nose into a pulp. Getting free of the bird-hating mage, the blind avian skittered across the deck and towards the window, honing in on his accomplice's death-screams. He was almost to the window when he jerked to a sudden halt. Cima's hand latched onto his ankle. The cat's burglar's eyes opened, pale grey and crackling with necromantic magic.

Across the room, Sera chuckled while clutching her broken nose with one hand, and animating the zombified Cima with her other. "Die, you fucking bird!" she squeaked. She continued watching as Aloy was dragged down, and his throat torn out by the glass-impaled Cima-zombie.

Seeing this (and the next fireball coming from the volcano), Magolor popped out of existence and teleported back to the Lor Starcutter. He ran around the cockpit of his little ship, throwing switches, entering key-combinations, pulling levers. "Gotta go, gotta go!"

The voice of his onboard computer spoke calmly, like a chiding mother. "Please be advised, systems are at minimal integrity. Repairs have not been sufficient to..."

"Shut up!" Magolor shouted before engaging the manual override. He gunned the engines... but in his haste had forgotten to disengage the docking clamps. A great screeching sound echoed through both ships as the smaller vessel tore away from the other, gouging a chasm in the underside. The friction sparked between the super-heated metals, and as fuel ruptured from the Starcutter it went up like a miniature homage to the volcano below. Before Magolor could snap his fingers and teleport, he was popped straight to hell as his vessel exploded.

Fire and wreckage tore upwards through the decks, and a piece of the Starcutter ended up impaled through Kash. The cigar dropped from the arms-dealer's mouth, and as his body went into shock his robotic arm went haywire, deploying all manner of blades, skewers and saws. This murderous 15-part assemblage promptly cut into the person standing in front of him. Fenne screamed as her torso was shredded, and by the time she had swung her family sword and lopped off Kash's arm, she was bleeding out. Her journal, tucked inside her breastplate, was shredded too and now rained torn pieces of botanical sketches as she staggered. Then she toppled to the ground in front of Zazzy and Vess.

"Don't... take... the sword..." she gurgled, before breathing her last breath. Both she and Kash were now impaled by metal, their blood pooling towards Vess and Zazzy's feet.

Back in the dining lounge, Ives was alternating between mad laughter and eldritch chanting as he floated across the room. The ship was pitching to one side as the blast from Magolor's ship took out of the starboard stabilizers. The cultist swung his strange, black censer and crushed Sera's skull. "FEED IT!" he hissed. "RENDER THY FLESH TO THE KOBERAX!" He kicked Sera's body forward, and watched it roll across the tilting floor, where it collided with Cima. Both necromancer and zombie pitched out of the window, dragging Aloy's body with them into the ash cloud.

Ives spread his arms in cruciform position, chanting an abominable prayer as guests and octopuses slid past him and tumbled out through the window. Then his skull was blown apart as his sgront count was suddenly, instantaneously doubled. He exceeded his sgrontific tolerance in the space of a half-second, and his body imploded. If he had legs, he would have kicked them in his death throes.

The cultist collapsed, and behind Entei lowered the disgrontificator rifle that he had fired. The quiet arcanist had braced himself behind the bar as the lounge tipped. It was the same tactic that had saved Limbo, Vira the pirate, and her booty health inspector (Karen, still wanting to speak to the manager). "Yaaargh!" declared Vira while looking over at Entei. "That be a fine shot, lad. Know ye the ways of the disgrontificator?"

Entei ran a gentle hand across the barrel. "Yes..." he murmured. "...for after all.. my wife and I invented it."

Before further backstory could unravel, the tipping lounge brought down several shelves of booze straight on top of Entei. He was buried under dozens of cocktail bottles, peanut sacks, octopus memorabilia and recipe books. Vira gulped, then looked over her shoulder at her boss. "Limbo! The time be nigh, says I, do be about some plan!"

Limbo was clutching the bar counter and peering over it, watching guests plummet out of the window and into the fireball. "I can't stop it.. I can't stop anything! Time... TIME!" he yowled as tears streamed from his portal-blue eyes. "...it just keeps... passing...."

Karen the health inspector reached under the bar and retrieved a bowl of fresh, ripe strawberries. "Well, it's not all bad."

Back by the broken window, Eolanthe finally uncovered her head and looked around. The sound of shattering glass, and the wails of departed spirits now filling the room, had overwhelmed the child for a moment. She had been helpless as the lounge tipped, and had fallen with everyone else. But she had not dropped into the ash cloud. No... instead she was dangling.

"Hold on..." grunted Joss. The lizard woman was shielding Eolanthe with her body, even as she herself dangled from the leg of a bolted-down dining table. Below them was the shattered window and the blossoming crown of the volcanic plume. The heat was melting chairs and tables, eating away the lounge around them... and yet Joss's scales were glowing with heat-resistant energy, and keeping Eolanthe from incineration.

Joss grunted again, and peered upwards. "Caelcrust!" she yelled. "Caelcrust. I'm going to toss her!"

Captain Caelcrust was tangled in the dead body of Xeropoustra, who had fallen from the bar and gotten snagged in the chandelier. The poor bartender had appeared to have suffered a heart attack. Unlucky for Xeropoustra. But it had worked out pretty well for Caelcrust, as he had plenty to hold onto right now. He formed an anxious series of exclamation marks above his head while frowning down at the lizard and the girl dangling below him. "What?"

"I'm going to toss her!" Joss repeated.

"Please don't."

"You have to catch her!"

"I don't like her."

"Don't... let this.. be ... for nothing!" Joss screamed as she threw her full strength into twisting and hurling Eolanthe upwards. The girl ascended, and beneath her the bolted table broke free. Joss tumbled away into the fire cloud, and to her last breath kept her eyes on Eolanthe's trajectory. The girl slammed into the chandelier, reached for a handhold, slipped and slid on the rubbery limbs of Xeropoustra, and was about to plummet back through the window when Caelcrust grudgingly put out his hand and snagged her ankle.

"DECTRIENNIAL," he told the girl, assertively.

"Alright, alright!" Eolanthe shouted, waving her arms as she hung upside-down.

Caelcrust considered the girl's surrender for a moment, and once satisfied tucked her under his arm and began climbing. He scaled between the chandeliers, upwards to the bar. "Time to go," he told Limbo, Vira and Karen as he dropped down behind the counter (which was now a ledge).

Having scrambled over the pile of rubble that covered Entei's corpse, the surviving five crawled out into the adjoining corridors as the Brightsmile rolled and plummeted into the volcano's ash cloud. Through the smoke they eventually caught sight of Vess and Zazzy, who were likewise dealing as best they could with the rotating corridor. Each man was clinging to the spurs of metal which had impaled Fenne and Kash.

"This is all because you went to that other bar," Caelcrust told Vess upon reaching him. As the corridor settled for a moment on which way was up and which way was down, the captain plonked Eolanthe on the floor next to Zazzy, assuming the skull-faced drunkard to be an ideal candidate for chaperone duty. "It never ends well."

"Yarrrgh!" Vira shouted while hefting Karen onto her other shoulder. "Be ye havin' any escape boats on this here vessel?"

Caelcrust formed a blinking symbol over his head. "No."

Limbo wiped tears from his eyes and shoved Caelcrust aside. "I can fix this! I can. I just need to open another portal. We'll go back again. Back in time, to before the eruption." He clapped his hands together, generating a burst of blue fire, which stretched as he drew his hands apart. The portal was like an expanding piece of pizza dough (but much more blue and chronomantic than pizza). "Vira, let's go. We have to save the Brightsmile!"

Vira set Karen down, and gave her one last passionate kiss. "Wait for me, sweet lassie. I'll be back afore ye know it. Look fer the risin' of the tide, and the whisper in the wind."

"Brush your damn teeth!"

Vira laughed then hopped with Limbo through the portal. "TIME PIRAAAAATES!"

The portal closed, then a matching portal opened, four seconds later and two feet to the right. Limbo and Vira materialized inside the wall, screaming for a half second before their flesh was blown apart in a quantum explosion that showered Calecrust, Karen, Eolanthe, Zazzy and Vess in gore.

Caelcrust paused as blood dripped from his face. "They were terrible, terrible time travelers."

Despair set in for a moment, as the Brightsmile clipped the first peak of the mountain range it was about to crash into. But then - in everyone's time of need - the health inspector stepped up! With a sigh, Karen climbed to her feet and adjusted her uniform. "Can I PLEASE speak to the manager now?"

Caelcrust looked at her. "I'm the captain."

Karen looked him up and down while wiping blood from her glasses. "Captain Caelcrust - you have failed your annual health inspection."

Caelcrust lowered his head. "I'm sorry."

"You're responsible for all of the deaths today. Especially the children."

Caelcrust pointed at Vess. "It was his fault."

"You will all be called to a formal hearing on this, to face sentencing."

"...assuming we survive."

Karen got up in Caelcrust's face. "Oh, believe me, Captain Caelcrust: you will survive. You're not worming your way out of this one!" And with that, she drew a ballpoint pen from her breast pocket and clicked it twice. Another portal, this one milk-white and smelling of detergent, opened up in the middle of the corridor. And from it stepped... Karen... another Karen. Then a third. Then a fourth. In fact, the corridor started to become very full indeed, with identical Karens in matching office wear and glasses, holding clipboards.

"Cloooooones!" said Eolanthe while waving her arms at Zazzy.

The forty Karens turned in unison and spoke in unison as the ship ploughed through another mountain peak. "Here at the Agency, your health and safety is of paramount importance. We aim to ensure total physical and material security for all consumers. Please remain calm, and keep your hands to yourselves."

Before that last part could be questioned, each of the survivors found themselves being crammed between ten Karens. The clones surrounded them, locking arms, hips, boobs and butts into an impeccable phalanx. It was hard to breathe, let alone move. "Please relax, and do not be alarmed by our deaths," chanted the clones as they formed human impact shields around Caelcrust, Eolanthe, Zazzy and Vess.


Then the Brightsmile crashed.
 
Azazel Croft was many things, however a stupid man was not one of them... despite his best efforts at destroying brain cells through excessive drinking. There was a definitive 'oh shit' moment when he noticed someone else with a skull on their face, but he was unfamiliar, definitely not someone from his unit. Not that it especially mattered much as things started to go kablooey with the big fucking rock.

"Izzit just me or does it look like we're getting a bit too close to all this?" He asked promptly before the screech of metal preceded the makings of a double person kebab like right there. Looks like smarmy blond didn't have an ounce of good luck going for him today, and protecting the poor guy became a priority in his scattered mind as he positioned himself between the guy and the carnage. His white eyes focused on the approaching blood and he could hear the screaming somewhere - probably in the back of his mind, this was exactly why he deserted in the first place, why does this shit always happen around him - "Grab the sword, if you make it through this you're gonna need something a lot better than a snack dish to defend yourself with." He says to Vess with a slightly more hollow note to his voice.

He was definitely far beyond the 'not drunk enough for this' stage, seeing as he felt like he would have much better luck navigating the suddenly not exactly underfoot floor with about three more of Xeri's special drinks. He keeps one hand braced against the metal that was now blocking the hall, and the other helping to support Vess to make sure the blond didn't go tumbling out the window into the volcano and experiencing the same fate as the giant dude who died with his ass stuck in there.

The arrival of the captain and company through the smoke caused several emotions to cross his face in a matter of half a second before his mind settled on punching the absolute shit out of Caelcrust.

However, the presence of a child in the middle of all this chaos had him hesitating. He needed a drink. He needed all the drinks. He probably wasn't going to die from this, he was already mostly dead anyways so he was probably going to be just fine. The kid at his feet and the smarmy blond, however, not so much. This trip was supposed to be relaxing, now he was out here worrying about people due to inverted pyramid head's negligence and he did not sign up for this shit. The explosion of time travelers was just the icing on the shit-cake.

While the gore slid off from his 'skull paint' with ease due to the material's vague waterproof nature, his white tie had been stained completely red.

At the notice of the Karen committee, he finally bares his teeth in a snarl. "Oi, I'm allergic to bureaucratic bullshit, don't rope me into his fucking mess!" He was freaking out now as the clones converged on them all, struggling against them and failing and freaking out more as he started having trouble breathing and freaking out even more. He blacks out before impact.
 
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Alone, in the dark, and being crushed. Flashes of memory:

Receiving a baleful glare from Captain Caelcrust. Since his sole, glowing beady eye gave a baleful glare by nature, glowering through the arrowhead-shaped opening in his helmet, his floating symbol had formed into a cracked image of a balefully-glaring eye to get the point across.

A flickering mishmash of increasingly surreal events aboard the ship as a quite peculiar band started to play, pirates (?) appeared out of nowhere, and the officious woman--

Eolanthe had looked away at that point, since it seemed the officious woman was engaged in the sort of thing she wasn't supposed to see Adults doing.

The pirates (?) arguing with Captain Caelcrust over calculations.

The volcano unleashing a roiling cloud of black smoke shot through with orange and flashes of lightning, strangely silent.

Ducking by reflex behind a structural member between floor-to-ceiling viewing windows just as sound and fury reached the ship, shattering the windows into deadly glittering daggers.

The young Adventurer dying horribly before her eyes, and everything devolving into chaos.

Ship tumbling, screaming as she started to fall...

The pretty dragon lady saving her with a strong arm and shielding her from the heat of the blast with her body.

Hanging by a leg in the Captain's iron grip as he demanded she agree to his linguistic error as condition for not letting her plunge to her death.

Death. Death all around, spirits parting from flesh and swirling around in startled confusion.

A press of bodies as cloned Karens surrounded her...

"Mmmmf!" Eolanthe pushed and struggled against the prison of flesh (dead flesh) that now held her fast. With suffocation a real threat, she squirmed with increasing desperation until she was finally able to shift a leg and gain access to a gasped breath of sulfur-tainted air. With grunts of effort, she squeezed her way past a severed torso, prying herself free to stand at last on wobbly legs in the wreckage of the once grand airship.

Spirits floated all around her like a school of ethereal jellyfish, pulsing and swishing in arcane currents. One of them floated toward her, and she saw a familiar face amongst its shimmering shrouds. Eolanthe! the spirit mouthed. "It's alright, Miss Abernathy, you can go," she replied. Her dress was wet and sticky with blood, and hot winds blew it against her as she watched the spirit of her governess float away.

She coughed in the increasingly horrid-smelling air. The volcano towered over her, its plume of smoke now blotting out the sun and turning her world into a black and red-orange hellscape. Burning meteors of half-melted rock rained down here and there offering reminders of continuing danger. Ash rained down like gray snow. For a moment, Eolanthe pondered the idea of death--her own death, whether or not she should expect to meet it here, and if she ought to welcome the idea. What would it be like to join those other spirits on their mysterious journey?

Eolanthe shook her head to clear those thoughts, and coughed again. For a moment, she froze in terror at the thought of being the only survivor of the wreck, with nothing but memories of blood and death to keep her company. Urges to start screaming, or start crying clashed in her mind, briefly holding each other at bay.

Another flash of memory: the dragon lady's jewel eyes watching her trajectory as she flew through the air toward the Captain, willing that her final act of self-sacrifice not be in vain. "Don't...let this be...for nothing." Tears streaked down cheeks smeared with ash and blood, but Eolanthe nodded with resolve.

Safety locker! she thought. During her earlier explorations of the Brightsmile, she had found a Safety Locker. Defying its instructions to open only in case of emergency, she had peeked inside, to see gas masks with oxygen tanks for use in case of cabin depressurization, among other things whose functions she had not had time to identify before needing to close the locker and look innocent as other passengers had come around a corner into the corridor.

Eolanthe scrambled into the wreckage of the ship until she found a metal box with the familiar markings. She opened it, retrieved a mask, and blew the dust from it. She pulled a set of pictorial instructions from a sleeve on the back of the locker and followed them; put the mask on, pull the straps snug, then turn the knob on the oxygen tank before slipping into the straps of its backpack. The whole assembly was a rather awkward fit and heavy to boot, but she grabbed the other two masks and dragged them away, panting with the effort.

But where could she hope to find other survivors?

From the fog of her memories, another fragment: the Karen clones had not only surrounded her, but the Captain and the two men who had brawled. Start there! With plodding, heavy footsteps, she managed at last to pull the masks to the pile of dead Karens, but she was too exhausted to try moving the bodies.