Forgotten Girl Quest

“Pffbt. First time having your hopes crushed? Amateur,” Natsuko said.

While, Sofiane sobbed about his poor Use-Number, Shuixing was clutching her chest and taking deep breaths to calm herself down. Charles was anxiously sniffing the dead demon. Only Natsuko was in good spirits.

“Y’alright Shui?” Natsuko asked.

“E-Erm, I-I am still reckoning with mortal peril from which one cannot be re-summoned but, aside from that I—”

Natsuko slapped her on the back. “Ain’t it somethin’?”

The same experience that horrified Shuixng had Natsuko feeling the best she'd felt in years. Here was something so exciting, so exhilarating, so risky, that the idea of Use-Numbers disappeared from your mind entirely, replaced with nothing but raw adrenaline. She wanted another demon to fight.

Natsuko cleared her throat. “What if we—”

“No,” Shuixing said.

“I haven’t said anything yet!”

“The answer is no. We need to find a way out of here,” Shuixing said. The familiar act of reining Natsuko in grounded her.

Shuixing rang her rod and an orb of water conjured in front of her. She rolled her face in it, healed her, then wiped the water off on the sleeve of her robe. “Okay, let’s start thinking about how to get out."

“W-Wait… Maybe there’s more in here…” Sofiane said.

Shuixing sighed. “Even if that is the case, the danger of proceeding in a dungeon in which we believe death may be permanent is… inadvisable. Experience and Ying only matter for living Heroes."

Sofiane stared at his feet. “This was my last opportunity.”

Shuixing placed a gentle hand on his back. “I am sure once we have all had time to calm down and settle our minds—”

“Get over it you dweeb. You’re a loser now. Face it,” Natsuko said, forming a circling parade around Sofiane with Charles at her heels as she rubbed it in.

“I am sincerely looking forward to being rid of you,” Sofiane replied.

“Feeling’s mutual, puffball."

“If you need any help adjusting to life in Vermögenburgh, we'd be happy to help,” Shuixing said.

“Not happening!” Natsuko and Sofiane said at the same time.

After investigating for an hour or so, Shuixing found a spot in the back right of the cathedral where an intricately-carved ram statue had enough intersecting angles that she was semi-confident it could sustain a dimension-jump upwards.

“Is this safe?” Sofiane asked.

“Much safer than the opposite direction. You’re guaranteed to have a dimensional plane above you when you jump upwards versus down,” Shuixing said, switching into teaching mode. It was the only time her voice carried confidence and volume.

“So how do we do it?”

“First, we take an object with a few tight angles itself. Natsuko's bottle would do, but it's cumbersome. In this case, the text block of some of these old books should suffice,” Shuixing said, holding up one of the many books along the back wall of the cathedral that were filled with nothing but long strings of letters and numbers.

Natsuko turned the book sideways and upside-down trying to parse any meaning from it. “I think I might have found something here.”

Sofiane's eyes widened. “Wait, really!?”

“Upside-downs, the number 58008 looks like the word “boobs”," Natsuko said.

He exhaled. “I’m ready to leave.”

With everything set up, Shuixing sent Sofiane up first by having him jam the pages of the book into the ram statue as he was leaping upwards to preserve vertical momentum. She knew it was a success when a distorted version of Sofiane shot straight through the ceiling.

“Any chance I can bring Charles up with me?” Natsuko asked.

Shuixing shook her head. “We don’t know how foreign material will react when in comes in contact with differing laws of physics. Plus, it’d be best if the Yishang didn't find out about our excursion. That means no souvenirs.”

“Yeah, I get it,” Natsuko said. She bent down to rub Charles’ ears again. “Maybe one day we’ll figure out what’s going on with this dungeon and bring you up. Hang tight until then, alright little dude?”

The not-quite-fox-ish creature nuzzled against her leg and flashed its watery eyes at her.

“Oh, you didn’t have to go and make it hard on me dammit! Shuixing are you sure—”

“Yes.”

After a longer good-bye than Shuixing would’ve preferred, the two of them dimension-jumped upwards and found themselves—after another flashing light display in a dark void—on a cliff overlooking Hammertal Canyon.

Natsuko took a long, deep breath in, threw her arms out into a big stretch and exhaled loudly. “Glad to be back somewhere I can safely get killed!”

Sofiane was already stomping off.

Shuixing pursed her lips. “Should we—”

“Nah,” Natsuko replied.

It was getting towards sunset when they arrived back in Vermögenburgh. Shuixing went straight back to the Mage’s College to sleep, mentally taxed by trying to figure out the alien physics. Natsuko, meanwhile, had some money to make at the pawn shop.

“What? Five Ying!? Are you shitting me?” she said.

The store clerk, a big, hairy man named Lawrence, folded his big, hairy arms. “How many people do you think buy candelabras? Then compare that with how many Heroes come back from ancient dungeons with 'em, and what do you think the proportion is? Any guesses?”

“Yeah but—”

“Natsuko, I have twenty candelabras back there,” he said, pointing to a backroom so bursting with looted treasure the door wouldn’t shut. “No one buys any of that crap! Not for years. All of that is leftover from when we still had Heroes wandering around, and I can’t even make a dent in it! The only reason I’m willing to buy these—” he wrapped his mitts around the arms of the candelabra. “—is that you’re our weekly wyvern slayer. It’s charity.”

With a measly five gold clinking in her pocket, Natsuko beat a path to Devil’s Cut. She needed more gods-damned money. That stupid dungeon wasn’t even worth the amount of money she could make badgering Shuixing for an allowance. When she arrived, The Devil’s Cut was busier than it had been the afternoon before, though still filled with subdued Non-Heroes talking about the same stuff they always talked about. All except for a bright purple puffball sitting at the bar with his lavender head down in a mug.

Natsuko walked up beside Sofiane and signaled for the bartender. “Hey Klaus, put this towards my tab!”

She slid the five coins across the bar with the slickness of a high-stakes gambler. Klaus scooped it up, tossed it in a lockbox, and erased the “195” next to “Natsuko” on a chalkboard.

“What can I getcha?” Klaus asked.

“The usual,” she replied.

He chalked “200” next to her name and went to go pour a double shot of whiskey and a pint of Vermögenbier.

Head resting on his arms, Sofiane turned to face her. “Of all the bars in all of Vermögenburgh, you walk into this one.”

“There’s only two bars in Vermögenburgh and I’m banned from the other one,” Natsuko replied.

Sofiane moaned. “O gods… which of you deities did I blaspheme to get stuck with the two worst Heroes in Po-Lin."

“Hey, it was your stupid empty dungeon! Me and Shuixing did our job,” Natsuko said, slamming back the double shot of neat whiskey and swallowing the tickling in her throat with a growl.

Sofiane’s response was to explore an even deeper dimension of sulking. His mug of Vermögenbier was still three-quarters full. “Leave me alone…”

Natsuko laughed and slapped his back. “If you want me to screw off, I will, you purple sourpuss. But lemme give you a word of advice first: Once that little Use-Number of yours starts going down, and the Celestials decide you’re useless, no one’s gonna hold your hand or have your back except for other useless losers like me and Shui. If you don’t wanna go crazy, get with the program and start making friends. You’re only hurting yourself by—” an old memory made her pause for a second “—by burning bridges. There. Preaching done. Enjoy your beer, dork.”

She gave his purple bob a ruffle and started off to go drink with the Non-Heroes.

“Wait,” Sofiane mumbled.

A suppressed grin wriggled in her facial muscles. “Hmm?"

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Sorry for what?”

Sofiane exhaled. “Sorry for being an ass just because I was in a bad mood about the dungeon being a bust.”

“How sorry are you?”

“What?”

Natsuko’s grin finally burst to the surface. She gestured at the chalkboard of outstanding tabs. “Are you about 200 Ying worth of sorry?”