Wild ARMs: Off on a Tangent

By: Chibi-chan

Part 5a: “Cecil and Elmina’s Excellent Adventure”

*

Somewhere in the world, a figure dressed in heavy armor stood before a large glass tube with much machinery hooked up to it and a cocoon-like thing floating in it. “Soon, Mother, we will claim the Tear Drop and break the seals the cursed Guardians have put on you. Then, you will live again and we can annihilate Filgaia TOGETHER! AAAAAAAAAAH~HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA-“ the man suddenly went into a coughing fit. “*cough* Dammit… *cough*hack* How does… *cough* that crazy scientist… *cough*hack*cough* laugh like that?!” he half-whined.

A ball of light appeared to the man’s right. The ball turned into a floating figure that was almost completely obscured by long, flowing robes and a funny-looking gold mask. “I heard Belselk failed in capturing the Tear Drop, Zeikfried. He always was quite a disappointment…” the figure said.

The man, now known as Zeikfried, turned to the robed… er, whatever it was. “It is no matter. The puny humans cannot keep the crystal from us forever, Emma,” Zeik said.

Another figure decided to drop in, literally speaking. The “drop-teleport” was a specialty of this particular demon. “Yo, Zeik, I found the location of the one who’s got the Tear Drop!” he said.

“Excellent, Lord Harken. Where is he now?” Zeik asked.

“Er… he? Zeikfried, some human chick’s got ahold of it now,” Lord Harken said, “She’s in Saint Centaur now. She’s not hard to miss, either. I mean, how many humans do you see with blue hair? Anyway, I didn’t try to take it from her myself ‘cause there was a Guardian with her. The odds were automatically against me, you see?”

“Saint Centaur? Hmm, I think I shall handle this one…” Emma said in a menacingly cheerful tone. “Looks like I can claim the Tear Drop, break the seal there, and still have time to pick up a cappuccino in one fell swoop!” With that, the one known as Emma changed into a ball of light again and vanished.

A big, vaguely insect-like creature with bad fashion sense entered the room. Surprisingly, it used the door rather than teleporting in. “Zeikfried, the bearer of the crystal…” it started.

“Never mind the crystal, Belselk. Your job now is to go after the seal on Mt. Zenom. Emma is taking care of the crystal,” Zeik told the creature. Belselk grumbled something about “slave drivers” and “no fun”, then left. “Lord Harken, go fetch Hanpan. I think I shall have a job for him soon…”

*

All was fuzzy and brown. A woman’s voice was calling. Something was jumping up and down on the young man’s head. Cecil… Ceeeeeciiiiil… CECIL!

The young man looked up. What he saw was fuzzy, red, dark pink, green, and brown. Suddenly, a strange shape was before his eyes. It was white and green. You think he hit his head somewhere along the way, Elmina? He doesn’t seem very responsive…

“… ‘mi… na? Where… where are we?” the prince said haltingly. He had managed to move himself into a seated position, but everything was still fuzzy. His sight, his hearing, any sense that could help him was acting up.

The blurred thing of red, dark pink, green, and brown, which was Elmina, spoke. “You OK, princey? Me and Zed were starting to worry ‘bout ya.”

“I think I’m OK, but my mind’s kinda hazy right now…” Cecil replied slowly.

“Well, if I remember my geography right, we should be just a little bit east of the small village of Baskar,” Zed said, “We should be able to rest there for a while.”

“OK, let’s go then!” Cecil said. He then tried to stand up. It wasn’t a rather successful attempt, seeing that he shortly dropped back to the ground after getting up. “… just as soon as everything stops spinning,” he added.

*

It wasn’t too much later when they got to Baskar. Elmina, tired of waiting for Cecil to recover, had carried the dizzied prince on her back the entire way to the village. “Sheesh, princey, how much do you eat anyway?! You weigh a ton!” she complained.

Cecil managed to mumble a simple “Bite me” in response. He couldn’t help it that spell casting takes a lot of energy, so he tends to eat more than other people. Elmina didn’t really know that, but her complaining about his weight peeved Cecil quite a bit. “Are we there yet?” he asked.

“We are, thank the Guardians. I don’t think I could have carried you much further.” Elmina paused, then added, “Er, no offense.”

A little girl from the village walked up to them. “Is he hurt, traveler from the outside world?” she asked, pointing to Cecil. Elmina nodded. “Then please, follow me,” the little girl asked. She turned around and walked toward a relatively large building.

“I hope this mean I can put him down soon…” Elmina muttered before following the girl.

*

“He’ll be just fine,” the healer of the village told Elmina. “The blurry vision should clear after he gets some rest.”

“Thank you,” Elmina told the healer. She turned to the village chief. “So, do you know anything about any seals around this area?” she asked, “Gurdijeff told us we were supposed to protect them and we’ve gotta be here for a reason.”

The chief looked surprised. “You are the ones from my vision? I pictured you as more heroic looking,” he said.

Zed decided to make an appearance to complain. “Hey, we’re plenty heroic, dude! You can’t get away with saying that about the… the…”

“The smallest klutz in the world?” Elmina suggested.

“Yeah, the smallest…” Something clicked in the Wind Mouse’s head, then he protested. “HEY! That’s not funny!”

The Baskar chief cleared his throat. “Anyway, there is a legend of a seal on an evil heart up on top of Mount Zenom, which is north of here,” he said.

“Great! We’ll go there right away!” Zed said with much enthusiasm.

Elmina flicked Zed off her shoulder. “We’ve been walking all day. Cecil’s in no condition to be walking. We leave tomorrow at the earliest. Got that, Zed?” she said flatly.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah…” the Wind Mouse grumbled.

*

Mount Zenom, despite his name, isn’t all that tall. In fact, our valium… rather, valiant party could see the top of it quite easily. It is, however, inexplicably snowy and very slippery, as Cecil soon found out. After taking a few steps up, he wound up flat on his face. “At least it isn’t yellow snow…” he muttered under his breath.

“I told you it seemed too easy,” Elmina told the prince. “Now, watch and learn how to maneuver on such terrain, princey.” She soon found herself flat on her face after trying to mount an excursion up the really steep and slippery hill. “Eheh, looks like I’ve gotten a bit rusty at this,” she said a bit nervously.

Zed, who was mysteriously absent during the meet-and-greet session with the snow, ran to the others. “Hey, I found a path that’s clear of snow!” he chimed. He was soon dodging snowballs. “What did I say?! What did I say that was so wrong?!” he cried.

*

At the top of Mount Zenom, the crew found they were too late. “This… This is horrible…” Cecil murmured softly as he looked to the desecrated statue of Denogenos, the Mountain Guardian. Funny, he thought, but shouldn’t I feel a dispersion of power in this site? Something’s not right here… but what could it be?

Elmina scratched her head. “I thought the heroes were always supposed to make it in the nick of time. Now we don’t even get to see what we’re up against,” she complained.

“Well, at least we don’t have to fight anything,” Zed said. Unfortunately, you should never say that in a story, for that means something’s going to come out and get you shortly thereafter. This time, it was… “Eew… A snowman made of yellow snow?! That’s just… Eew!”

“Snowman? Just leave it to me,” Cecil said, smirking. The familiar purple-black aura that came with casting black magic appeared around him. “Flame!” he shouted, hurdling a double helix of fireballs at the snowman. The snowman quickly turned into a puddleman. “That was ridiculously easy,” Cecil said.

Too easy, if you ask me… Elmina thought. “We may as well go back to Baskar. There’s nothing more that we can do here,” she said.

Cecil nodded. “Yeah, maybe they’ll know a way to get to the next seal.”

*

Belselk teleported in and laughed a really quite annoying laugh. “Foolish humans! The illusion Emma made up for them fooled them completely!” The illusion was dispelled and showed the statue to be completely whole. Belselk then shattered the statue and laughed annoyingly again. “This is too easy! HAAAAAAAARharharharharharhar!”

*

Cecil froze in place. Something was very wrong and he felt it. He turned around and ran back to Mount Zenom. “Cecil? Where are you going? What’s wrong?! CECIL!” Elmina shouted to him. Seeing as he didn’t respond to her, she ran after him.

*

“I can’t believe this! I, a graduate of the Curan Abbey, couldn’t tell this was an illusion?! I failed without trying to keep this from happening! This is un-freakin’-believable!” Cecil ranted, holding a stone from the now-for-real destroyed Guardian statue. He drew his hand back and threw the stone as hard as he can. Unfortunately, he throws like the proverbial girl and it only went a few feet before dropping like, well, a stone, thus diminishing the effect quite a bit.

“Now, now, Cecil, calm down. There are two seals left, and we only need one or to keep the Tear Drop away from the demons to keep the demon queen to be resurrected. Who knows? We might even catch up to Laine along the way!” Elmina said, trying to inspire some hope into the really pissed-off young man. Unnoticed by all, the statue’s remains started to glow…

“… Laine?” He then jumped back on his feet and said with much confidence, “Yeah! We can stop them and find Laine! And you wanna know why?”

Zed quipped, “Not really, but you’re gonna tell us anyway.”

Cecil continued with his speech, not even listening to the Wind Mouse. “It’s because I am the Innocent One, the shaman of the Guardians!” he declared, sounding uncannily like Genki of “Monster Rancher” fame. “We just gotta BELIEVE!” He then did the traditional “Champion of Justice” pose.

“Er, right, princey,” Elmina said, unbelievably embarrassed by Cecil’s idiotic display. She turned and proceeded down the path to the base of the “mountain”.

Elmina was halfway down the path before Cecil noticed she had left. “HEY! Wait for MEEEEE~EEEE~!!” he cried as he scrambled to catch up with her. He didn’t seem to notice he had just acquired yet another rune.

*

“The next seal? You need this to get to it,” the Baskar chief told Cecil and Elmina. He took out a jar with a mysterious flame in it. “This it the Kisim Fire, the key to reactivating the teleportation device of the Naga. Use this in the pyramid northeast of here and it will take you to the next seal’s location.” He handed the jar to Cecil. “Good luck…” He muttered, “… you’ll need it,” under his breath.

*

The duo stood before the furnace in the Naga Pyramid. “OK, now how do you get this fire into there if you can’t get past these bars?” Cecil asked, holding the Kisim Fire jar.

“Maybe I should kick it?” Elmina suggested.

“NO! NO KICK!” Cecil and Zed yelled in stereo.

“Let’s see… I wonder…” Cecil held the jar with what would soon enough be the open end pointed toward the furnace and opened the jar. Sure enough, the fire leapt out of the jar and lit the furnace. Cecil felt some strange but strong energy as the pyramid came back to “life”. “OK, now let’s go!” he said before rushing to find the teleport point.

Elmina shook her head. “How did I get stuck traveling with him again, Zed?”

“Laine let him join, remember?” Zed told her, not realizing it was a rhetorical question. He could have sworn Elmina grumbled something along the lines of “twit” before going to catch up with the enthusiastic prince.

*

This is the land of the Sacred Statue that seals the evil heart!

*

Intermission

Go to Part 5b whenever you feel like it.

Notes will be there if you wanna read them.

OK, stop reading this.

No, really, stop.

Just because I said intermission doesn’t mean you gotta stay on this half for 10-15 minutes.