Wild ARMs: Off on a Tangent
By: Chibi-chan
Part One
Scenario Two: “Elmina’s
Boogaloo”
*
A seemingly lone figure stood before the immense Temple of Memory. Her knee-length crimson hair moved slightly with the breeze. “Think this is it, Zed?”
A small green-striped white
mouse-like creature crawled out from behind her hair to her left shoulder. He took a look at the sandy, dilapidated
ruin for a few moments, then said, “If that guy with the umbrella back there was
right, then this is it.” The little mouse
paused for a moment, then continued.
“Why did you want to come here, Elmina?
This place has been picked over by a whooooooole lot of treasure hunters
before; we probably won’t find anything of any value.”
Elmina smirked. “Call it intuition, mousie, but I think
there’s something here that could help us.”
With that, she began to walk towards the entrance to the ruin.
Zed sighed. And she says I’m the goofy one
here…
*
Elmina and Zed stood before a strange, ornate box-like device. “Hey, Zeddy, you know what this thing is?” Elmina said as she tapped the top of the box.
Zed shrugged, “Beats me. I wonder how you get it started…”
Elmina then got an idea. A stupid idea! Elmina got a stupid, foolish idea! She drew one of her legs back and kicked the machine as hard as
she could.
If it were possible in this world,
Zed would have acquired an anime-style sweatdrop. “Er, I don’t think that’ll-“
The machine sputtered to life. “Seeker of the memory, engrave your name
here.” A voice from the machine said.
Elmina shrugged and, with a small knife, engraved her name on the plate
the machine so generously supplied. The
machine hummed for what seemed to be the longest time, then replied, “ID
Match not found. Intruders, you will be
sent… TO ANOTHER DIMENSION!
HAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!”
With that, the floor beneath them vanished.
Elmina and Zed did the only thing they could
do. They fell like… like a person and a
mouse that were dropped from a high place.
*
The Treasure Hunter, Elmina Nietee. She searches the world for the “Absolute
Power”. Is it in a sword? Is it here?
Is it there? Is it in the little
bitty shrimps that go EVERYWHERE?
*ahem!* I’m going off on another tangent there… Back to the backstory. With her Wind Mouse companion Zed, who isn’t
a dumb as he seems, (he’s just very, very goofy) she travels the world. What is her purpose? Hell if I know. I haven’t gotten that far yet.
Oh well, the action scene’s almost over. Ta!
*
The pair finally lands in a room free of spikes and/or boulders. “Damn, that was NUTS!” Elmina exclaimed.
“I’ll say…” Zed agreed. “I say we get outta here before any more
boulders try to squish us!”
Elmina got up and dusted herself
off. “I’m with you, mousie!”
*
A treasure chest loomed out of her reach. A note on the wall asked just how anyone could get that treasure. Zed decided to speak up. “I can get it for you! Check out my MAD WIND MOUSE SKILLZ!” He rushed out towards the treasure… then tripped on a rock and falls in the pit that separated the treasure from the rest of the temple.
After he climbed out of the pit,
Elmina grinned and asked the mouse sweetly, “ You can do what,
mousie?” Zed merely glared in response.
*
Elmina stood before a row of those darn pop-up spike beds. “Well, looks like there’s no other way…” she muttered before she broke into a mad dash to beat the spikes to the other end of the room.
When she made it there, she noticed
she was alone. “Zed? Where…?” she got out before she saw her
rodent friend losing the race against the spikes. She wasn’t sure whether to laugh as show some concern over the
scratched-up Wind Mouse. So she tried
to do both… but laughing won out as Zed fumed over her reaction.
*
“OK, Zed, I’ll take this switch, you
take the other,” Elmina ordered. They
were at the last puzzle of the ruin with Elmina at one end of the room and Zed
at the other. Zed was really
glad that this ordeal was almost over.
He was so overjoyed, in fact, that he didn’t pay attention and ended up
overshooting the other switch and ran head first into the wall. He still landed on the switch, which with
Elmina on the other one triggered a glowing-red portal in the middle of the
floor, but Elmina had to pick up Zed before she could go in it.
*
“… ow…” the little mouse uttered,
finally coming to. He and his
treasure-hunting friend were in a room with a huge machine that looked like a
refugee from a bad sci-fi movie. It was
big, blue, and had tubes the diameter of one’s hand going in (coming out?) from
the machine to the floor. Zed took one
look at it and blinked twice. “What the
hell is that thing?” he asked.
“Dunno,” Elmina said. “Think I should kick it to see if I can get
it going?”
The machine turned itself on. It knew what she did to the last machine
in the ruin that she came across and didn’t want to be next. DON’T YOU EVEN DARE!! The
machine wailed in a ghostly voice.
If they could, both Elmina and Zed
would have sweatdropped here.
A hologram of what looked like a
woman with impossible proportions and long (but not pointy like an elf’s),
fuzzy ears appeared before them.
OHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO! So, you humans made it here. Well, this is just a little warning… Don’t seek Lolithia, OK? She is the death wind, the absolute
destructive power. The Naga have
departed and they don’t want you messing with their stuff, you got that? And, er, no, she’s not anywhere near the
‘Land of Light’. Really, I’m not lying. Now get your asses out of our Temple of
Memory! And if this is Lina, you’re
still too flat to return to us, so nyah!
There was a looooooooong pause after
the hologram faded away. “Dude, that
was messed up,” Zed said to no one in particular.
Elmina was thinking. Whenever Elmina thinks, she comes up with a
plan. Whenever she comes up with a
plan, something blows up sooner or later.
Fortunately, this was one of the delayed explosion ideas. “Say, that woman said something about the
‘Absolute Power’ being in the ‘Land of Light’…” she muttered to herself. “Say, Zed, you know of any ‘Land of Light’?”
Zed had a bad feeling about
this. However, he knew she would figure
it out sooner or later. “Uh… I think
Adlehyde means ‘light’ in some old language.
I could be wrong tho’-“
“Then what’re we waiting for?! Let’s GO!”
She quickly headed to the new glowing-red portal.
Zed
wasn’t prepared for the sudden motion, so he fell off her shoulder and barely
managed to latch onto her hair before she was teleported out of the room! “HEY!
Not so fa~~st!!”
*
Why does man seek power? Is it so they can alter the future? Or is it because their electric screwdrivers
won’t work without it… oh, wait, wrong type of power. Although she doesn’t realize it yet, the power that she seeks is
binding her soul…
*
End Scenario Two
Chibi’s notes:
Er… this was a little more difficult to write, seeing as this section was pretty much about a dungeon… Did I do OK? ^^;;
Rudy: Well, it could be worse…
Ted: You did fine, really! ^_^