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312. Complete and Utter Bullying
🕑 Added 2025-02-22 15:00:06 +0000 UTCIke ran around the corner and into the park, in time to find Wisp cornered by a taller man. The man, promisingly, stood in front of a barrel full of brooms that emanated mana signatures—weak ones, little more than Rank 2, but mana signatures all the same—and less promisingly, held his hands out, brows furrowed, blocking Wisp from proceeding.
“You were approaching these brooms. For what purpose? I don’t recognize you as a student,” the man accused her.
Wisp gasped, taken aback. “What? I was just walking past. You’re throwing wild accusations around on circumstantial evidence. Are you trying to bully me?”
The man harrumphed, rather than answer her ridiculous question.
Ike walked into the park at a short jog. “Wiiii…llow. Willow! There you are. I was looking all over for you!”
“You were?” Wisp asked.
Ike nodded. “Did you get confused and go to the wrong place again? Come on. I know these parks all look similar, but they aren’t the same place!”
Wisp squinted at him.
Ike widened his eyes. He nodded a little bit. Come on, play along. I’m trying to buy you an out.
She nodded, slowly. “Right, yeah. Yeah. Sorry, mister. I guess I got confused.”
The man crossed his arms. “Try not to get confused again, will you? You’ll cause troubles for people.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Wisp said, barely hiding the tinge of sarcasm in her voice. She retreated, walking to Ike’s side. Ike lifted an arm to sling over her shoulders casually, like she was a little sister, and led her away.
Outside of the man’s gaze, Wisp slipped free. She glanced at him. “How does this help us get the brooms?”
“It doesn’t, but neither does making that guy suspicious.”
Wisp stared into the middle distance. She shrugged, then looked at him. “He wasn’t going to be suspicious for much longer.”
Ike sighed. “Wisp, we’re in enemy territory. We can’t just kill random puppets. They’ll probably know if we kill any of them.”
“Yeah, but… the only good puppet is a dead puppet.”
“Right, yes, but…” Ike rubbed his forehead. “I want to kill these things as much as the next guy, but maybe not right now? Not in the middle of our sneaky investigation of the puppet town?”
“It could be a little less sneaky.”
“A little less sneaky is immediately a lot less sneaky. Look, let’s just give it another day. One more day, and then we give up and take the less subtle technique,” Ike replied.
“One whole more day?” Wisp whined like a toddler.
“One more day.”
A bell rang out. There was a pulse of mana in the sound, some kind of message, but he didn’t understand it. Ike looked up, startled. He blinked. “What?”
Wisp spread her hands.
Beside her, Mag frowned. He tilted his head back and forth. “I can almost…”
The man from the park poked his head out. He waved at the trio. “Go on! Hurry! He’s almost here.”
Ike stared at him, a blank look on his face.
“If you don’t know where to go, just go to the main road! Did you somehow miss the instructions? Bunch of dull-headed low-rate louts,” the man grumbled, muttering the last few words to himself. Shaking his head, he retreated back into his park.
Ike raised his brows at the others. He jogged off, and the other two fell in. As they ran, he glanced back. “Guess we’re about to find out what’s going on.”
“Guess so,” Wisp agreed.
“That sound meant something,” Mag stressed, still distracted by it.
“Yeah, obviously. Called all the puppets to come worship, or whatever,” Wisp replied. She rolled her eyes at him.
“I can almost hear it,” Mag continued, muttering to himself, totally disregarding Wisp.
Wisp turned to Ike and shook her head. “He’s a lost cause.”
“You’re all lost causes. I’m a collector of lost causes,” Ike complained.
“Even me?” Shawn asked.
“Especially you,” Ike replied, looking at the tiny mountain. “Do you want us to find somewhere to plant you, by the way? I know you’re kind of casually following along with us to figure out where you want to put down roots, but we’ve only been focusing on our own problems. We haven’t really been looking for a good place for you, and I kind of feel bad about that.”
Shawn shrugged. “It’s fine. If I stay in this form until I burn out, I’ll still outlive all three of you. Don’t worry about finding a place to root me too much. I’ll find it when I find it, and I’m happy to enjoy the adventure until then.”
“Are you sure? I feel bad about not helping you,” Ike said.
“You’ve already found me two candidates. Shopkeep’s city lacks a mountain entirely, but it has a root, and the city where we had the trial has a mountain, but lacks a spirit to dwell in it. If I were truly desperate, I could easily choose either of those. So don’t worry about it! I have options, I’m just being picky.”
Ike nodded, satisfied with Shawn’s answer. If the little mountain really didn’t feel threatened by not having a place to put down roots, who was he to tell him he was wrong? He didn’t know what it was like to be a mountain, after all. Maybe Shawn really was fine, and he was just overconcerned about it.
As they were chatting, they reached the main road. Other people already lined both sides of the street, standing in a neat single-file, single-man-deep line. Ike, Mag, and Wisp reached the road to find the line already taut, but at the sight of them, the people shuffled closer to one another to make room. The three of them joined the lines.
For a while, they just stood there. Nothing happened. The artificial sun beamed down. No more mages ran around or flew overhead, no one worked their shops, fixed up the town, or cleaned the streets. Everyone was completely still. The people who remained in shops stood expectantly behind the counters, waiting for something. All of them poised, almost like a diorama about to spring to life. The only difference between this and a diorama, was that this was human-sized, and it could spring to life.
Two figures appeared at the very apex of the spiral stairs. They wound their way down slowly, descending toward the town below. The other puppets gazed up, expressions almost worshipful. A spine-chillingly familiar pressure brushed against Ike’s mana senses, and he tensed.
Oh, fuck. One of those men is Brightbriar, isn’t he?
