Side Note

Hello, it's me, Madeleine the first, and I'm currently standing on an elephant. In fact, I'm standing on an elephant that is standing on a bigger elephant. It turns out one of the symptoms of the apocalypse alongside a God-Demon war, the opening of a giant hole in reality that leads to the Abyss, and whatever the hell is happening to Veera, is that the wildlife in Mendass goes kinda funky, like these elephants. Some are as big as the floating island that I see slowly crashing into the ground off in the distance, and some are as small as Sherry's miniature swing set. Speaking of Sherry, she's trying to teach the elephants this thing she calls 'Synchronised Swimming'. Apparently, she learnt about this back when she spent time on Earth. Earth sounds silly. I want to visit it with Mel one day to learn about her homeland.

"Then we can do that right now."

I recognise that voice… it's Myka's serious voice! She only does that when planning to be 'evil' or when she cheats in Go Fish! Where did she even go? Actually… where did I go? Tall, grey towers, many cars, really nice clothing… hmm… 

"What do you think, Mel?" I kick Mel, who I notice is on the ground sleeping. She was sleeping on the elephants, so I guess surprise teleportations are something she can sleep through. I'm jealous.

"Huh?!" She got up, glaring at me for interrupting her sleep, before looking around and realising we weren't on Mendass. "Why are we on Earth?"

"Because I want you here," Mel and I turned to Myka, who had appeared behind us. "The more there is, the longer this goes on. Man, I hate y'all for making me care."

"Aww… she cares about us!" I tried bringing Mel and Myka in for a hug, but Myka easily dodged. Darn… one day.

"What? That makes no sense." Mel questioned Myka. I'm glad Mel is here to do the questions since that lets me be silly. That's a whole lot more fun.

"I have to be cryptic, you know. Make them guess my motivations, build up mystery, tension, and all that jazz. It's for our good. " She sends a wink at us. "I'm throwing that line in for good measure. Everyone loves a sympathetic motive. Especially from an antagonist."

Oh, she's doing this again. "This didn't really go well last time, though."

"Haha… nah, I ain't trying to end this shit now… entirely different this time. For now… maybe you two should go see the Creator and learn her backstory or some shit. Don't matter to me… but to stall for time." 

Myka snaps her fingers, making a flying elephant appear in the sky, which shoots down a laser beam around, damaging a nearby grey tower and causing some rubble to fall down to the road. A few pieces of rubble looked like they were about to fall on some bystanders, Mel and me. I stomped the ground, causing an armoury's worth of spears of darkness to grow from my shadow and be launched towards the falling debris.

"Have fun dealing with that." And with that, Myka disappeared.

"What a prick." Mel clicked her tongue (Which, as I've said before, is hot) before looking around at the bystanders, who were dumbfounded and staring at us. "There's no combatants… Madeleine, you deal with the Flying Laser-Shooting Elephant while I try to evacuate the folks around so you can go crazy."

"Collateral damage!"

Mel took out her bow, creating a light arrow that she shot out upwards. The arrow split itself nearly a hundredfold, and crashed into the nearest falling debris, completely disintegrating it. I guess that's the signal for me to start fighting… how the hell do I get up to the elephant?

You know what, I've got a dumb idea I've wanted to do for a while now, might as well do it here. I tap the ground, making a shadow clone rise from under me, my feet on her shoulders. A second shadow clone grows under the first, then another, then another. Yep, I'm making a giant Madeleine totem. I guess I'll throw daggers at falling debris and sometimes at the elephant to pass the time. Huh, that's neat. The elephant seems to have an automatic defence system since every dagger I've thrown at it has been sniped by a laser. I like the sounds of the lasers. Pew pew.

Oh, it seems the Madeleine Tower of Absolute Power has finished, and now I'm on roughly the same level as the elephant… now what? I can't use magic, I have to tap the ground for that, and I can't use daggers. Those get sniped by lasers… I didn't really think about this. Hmm… oh, the shadow clone under me seems to be reaching her hand out… is that a tiny shadow clone growing in its hand? Huh, it threw it… holy shit, the mini-shadow clone exploded… wow. That damaged the elephant.

I immediately created a tiny shadow clone of myself in my palm and threw it straight at the elephant, only for it to not explode… what? The shadow clone under me threw a mini-shadow clone upwards, which I caught. It's some random dude? Aha! It's the weirdo who exploded stuff in that one cave… I only remember this because of old Madeleine going through all my memories. Damn, I forgot I even had him in my Shadowrealm.

I created a bunch of shadow clones of him, giving them wings via umbrakinesis, and watched them all fly towards their death. It's kinda cute in a morbid way… and the elephant is pissed off and has noticed me. Well shit. It seems to be charging a laser beam in its mouth… I can't dodge that. Either I jump off and maybe die, or I don't and definitely die. Damn…

Before the elephant could attack, however, a laser beam hit it from above, which had also split the clouds above it, revealing a young girl riding on a broom who was wearing a really neat witch hat. The girl flew over to me and gave me a little sniff.

"You… smell kinda like my sister."

"Umm… who are you?"

"I'm May Rose, Goddess of Magic here! And you are," A magic circle appeared around her right eye, which eyed me from head to toe. "Madeleine… oh, another niece from Mara. Do you want to meet the family?"

Huh.

Chapter namesake: Elephant by Tame Impala

pojlk

You know, when I made Side Note, I wasn't expecting to make an entire arc essentially an indirect sequel to a story I never finished, but I guess that's what I'm doing. Even weirder is that, for a chapter with a major effect on plot and the story's direction, I wrote this in a panic and in under an hour, which is shorter than the amount I tend to write these.

On a side note, the moving is finished, so Side Note will return to its usual released schedule, which is every two days at a specific hour that I won't bother saying (I've said it before, I think).