I titled this…whatever I titled it…because I’m not even sure where I’m going with the plot. Ummm…enjoy it. I don’t own a lvl50 dit or a lvl45 sin…I’m doing this with the aid of Hidden-Street. I’m probably thoroughly unqualified to even write this, but nonetheless, creative licence transcends all bounds!

Um, hope you like it. ^^’
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I never wanted to stick my Steelys into his swollen head so much as I did at that moment, when he was bending over the body of the dead horny mush and wondering – aloud – with that innocent smile on his face why they were called ‘horny’ mushrooms.
“It’s the horns on their head,” I emphasised through ground teeth. “Not because of any other reason.”
“I don’t know,” he said speculatively, picking up the cap as the mushroom faded away to fungi heaven…if it had been a good mush. “The way they run at you sometimes…” That was it; I threw a Steely at him and he ducked, clucking his tongue like a mother in disapproval of her children would. I told him as much; he laughed.
“That’s funny,” he said, after a while of laughing while I grew impatient and resisted the urge to waste precious throwing stars on the likes of him. “You’re funnier when you’re annoyed. Actually, you’re funnier when you’re not trying to be funny.”
“Oh…oh yeah?” I said, then realised how pathetic-sounding, as a comeback, that was. “Well, I’m not trying to be funny when I say I’m going to shove this-” I waved my Blood Avarice at him- “Where the sun don’t shine if you don’t shut up!”

He looked at me and burst out laughing again, and this time I gave in to the temptation and threw some more knives at him. All of which never connected, even though he was practically hysterical.
“And you’re the one…who always insults me…about my bad grammar. Do you even listen to yourself? ‘Where the sun don’t shine’…that’s terribly incorrect, along with it being so clichéd.” My sulk was progressively deepening as he spoke, and the moment he finished speaking, I exploded with, “If you’d learn to shut up, I wouldn’t be tripping myself up all the time!”
“Literally,” he teased, and I went bright red. So I had tripped on a lupin’s peel…big deal. If only he would leave it alone.
“Whatever,” I muttered. “Let’s just get out of here.”
“One more Charm,” he said cheerfully. “You promised.” I entertained myself with the idea of how smug he would still be with that Pilfer of his crammed down around his ears and him, staggering around blind while the zombie mushrooms mobbed him.
“Of course, dear Az,” I said, trying to make myself sound cheerful and failing completely. “One more.” The mushroom came almost out of nowhere. One minute I was about to make a snarky remark at him…the next, it bounded out, barely giving me time to Lucky Seven it straight in the head, almost flattening him before he turned around and drove his cutter straight into its fleshy-

“Ow,” I muttered, as the mushroom died with a shriek of pain that monsters from miles around must have been able to hear. “That must’ve hurt.” I hoped it had been killed by me and not by him…for its sake.
“You bet it did,” he agreed, lifting up a Charm of the Undead while the body of the mushroom faded, pocketing the mesos it left behind. “All done. Let’s go.”
“What do you need them for, anyway?” I grumbled. He leaned down in front of me and held up a finger, grinning.
“Ah, ah, Li-a,” he chanted, waving the finger from side to side. I snapped at him; he drew back, still grinning incorrigibly, and asked, “What do I say?”
“Don’t kiss, don’t tell,” I snarled, and he nodded, like a schoolteacher approving the class idiot. Forget the Steelys; at that point I just wanted to grab him and knock him unconscious with my fists.

All the same, the air outside the Henesys Dungeon Entrance was pleasantly fresh, and nicely monster-free. Too bad I hadn’t counted on the thorn bushes. Flat on my face, pants tangled in the red thorns, him laughing at me so hard I think his throat imploded. I hoped it had. At least I wouldn’t have to put up with him mocking me any more.
“My hate for you is greater than Ossyria,” I growled, intending to make it sound great and threatening, but instead it came out very muffled and I ended up swallowing grass. Ew. I didn’t want to know what had been on this.

The whistling sound over my head made me pull free very quickly, ignoring the cloth part of my pants tearing as he leapt over me and stabbed the blue mushrooms into chop suey overhead. I tried very hard not to wince as mushroom pieces rained around me and disappeared.
“Taking care of you is a full-time occupation,” he said, sounding amused as he helped me up and dusted me free of stray mushroom bits, grass and dirt.
“Putting up with you is too,” I shot back, to which he just frowned.
“I wonder what slimes taste like,” he said thoughtfully.

It was such a random comment that I stared at him for about five minutes, wondering what in the unholy name of Zakum was transcending in that broken machine of his brain. In the meantime, he just stood there…staring…at…a…slime. Unaware of its soon-to-be-plight, the creature was bounding around, making happy squeaking noises as it chased a green mushroom around.

“What do you mean,” I finally managed to say, “What do they taste like?”
“Well, you know,” he said patiently. “Red bean soup tastes like red beans. Ice cream pops taste like ice cream. Pizza tastes like a lot of random things thrown together and baked. So-”
“I know what you mean by ‘what do they taste like’! Why slimes, for the Dark Lord’s sake?” I exclaimed, hoping he hadn’t gone completely insane and was about to go on a mad rampage through the town of Henesys, or something. I wouldn’t have put it past him. Either way, I readied my throwing knives.
“They’re rather green,” he said thoughtfully, studying the nearest one. “Something that colour can only be artificial.”
“I hate the ancestors who spawned you,” I muttered, hitting my head with a palm. “Why? Why me?” Before I had even finished with the personal pronoun, he was running at the slime, and had speared the thing to the ground before it had even so much as squeaked. I winced as he bent down, and sighed in relief as it faded before he touched it. That’s the end of it for now.

Or so I thought.

“Li,” he called, “Where are there lots of slimes?” I wasn’t willing to encourage his newest obsession, but if it kept him from poking fun at me…hey, it was worth it.
“Ellinia, slime tree,” I said, affecting disinterest. Too bad I couldn’t examine my nails or something. I could, but it would make me look like an absolute idiot…I was wearing gloves and a claw, after all.
“Let’s go.”

I sighed and leapt up the rope, leaving him to follow the swathe of destruction as I killed my way to bowman town. I could hear him singing a song about a yellow brick road behind me, and willed him with all my might to shut up. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a magician, and my brainpower was too pathetically low for any attempt at mind-control.

Approximately ten minutes later. Henesys, sitting on a bench outside Mushroom Park. Chief Stan was glaring at us; I glared back at the senile old guy, and he coughed in my direction. I carefully moved around to the other side, interposing Az as a kind of barrier between myself and the crazy chief, hoping that if Stan was coughing some kind of deadly virus, then he would be the first to get it. He noticed, but just grinned and started mock-coughing, really loudly.

“What did you…have to do…that for?” I complained through gasps. Who could’ve known that an old coot like Stan who coughed all the time could run that fast?
“It was dramatic exaggeration,” he said, looking cool, but I noticed his red ears and the sweat on his forehead. The esteemed Chief of Henesys, grumpy geezer that he was, had chased us all the way, out past the Hill and the Rainforest East, all the way out into the Forest. It would have stopped at the Hill if Az hadn’t yelled that taunt about ‘cranky, ill-mannered octogenarians’ somewhere along the way.
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Hehe. Will Az and Li get to Ellinia sans mishaps? Will Az find out what slimes taste like? Will Li go insane because of Az? Will we ever find out what their full names are? Find out next time. =P