Meanwhile, a few blocks over, a certain lost friend of Deirdre was wandering up and down the streets, wondering why there were so many red lights and why so many of the women standing underneath them were scantily clad. Good thing it was summer or else they'd be freezing their belly buttons off. Hopefully, they got to wear pants during the winter if they had to stand outside and wave to customers.
But Wes Holdworth couldn't concern himself with the pantslessness of these women. He had other concerns to be concerned about, such as how in the world he ended up in this curious-looking ward. He could've sworn that the shop which sold the little keychains was up this way, but apparently not. Perhaps one of these inadequately clothed women could direct him to his intended destination.
“Excuse me, miss,” he said to a tan-skinned woman whose attire, she could at least say, covered all the important bits. Her pareo was nice, though she wore too much makeup. “I was wondering if you could give me directions.”
“Directions to where, exactly?” she asked seductively, which Wes thought was strange and unnecessary.
“To the shopping district,” he said. “I was looking for this store—I can't remember the name of it—but it sells a bunch of novelty items like toys, keychains, and whatnot. You wouldn't happen to know what I'm talking about, would you?”
“Mmm,” she said as she thought about it for a second. “Afraid not. But don't you think you found something better?”
Wes took a gander at the shop behind her. Deep Passion, the neon red sign read. Pretty good name for a novelty shop, he thought. “Do you guys sell keychains here? I'm looking for one of a character from this comic series I'm reading. Her name's Vermilion. She's about ye big, and she's holding a halberd like this,” he said, mimicking the pose. “Do you know what I'm talking about?”
“We don't sell keychains, sweetheart, but we do sell something better.”
Better than keychains? “There are the figurines of her, but those are a tad on the expensive side, and I'm trying to hold back on my spending habits,” he mumbled. “Do you have anything cheaper?”
“We have them at all prices,” she said. “If you come in, I'll show you.”
He contemplated for a moment. “It can't hurt to look...”
“Then come on in.”
Wes followed her in, and he noticed that she walked by literally putting one foot in front of the other, which gave her hips a considerable amount of swing. That's an odd way to walk, he thought. Can't be comfortable.
The inside was nice and homely. Hardwood floors, soft, white sofas and loveseats, and even marble statues. Wes couldn't remember the last time he entered a shop that had marble statues. However, there was a distinct lack of shelves for which to house goods for the purchasing. Also, there were more unsatisfactorily protected women sitting in a line of chairs facing the entrance. When Wes came in, they smiled and waved and taught him that running one's fingertips across their collarbones was a new way of saying hello. Such great customer service.
“Oh, he's a cute one, Lyn,” said one sparsely garbed woman.
“The very definition of handsome,” said another meagerly dressed woman.
“Hey there. Wanna come and sit on my lap?” said a third scarcely robed woman.
“Sorry, girls, but I've got dibs on this one,” said the incompetently covered woman Wes had been talking to, whose name was apparently Lyn.
“Aww, boo. You're no fun.”
“Why do you hog all the good ones?”
“If she doesn't do you good, I'm always available, daddy.”
These women sure did want to sell him stuff, though he could've done without being called daddy. “So, where's your merchandise?” he asked, trying to see if there was a door or a hall that led to the actual shop part of this shop.
“It's right here,” Lyn said, waving her hand to display the employees seated before him.
Wes tilted his head and raised a brow. “You're selling women?”
“Heavens, no,” Lyn snickered. “Our ladies are for rent. Of course, if you do want to buy one, you'll be stuck with them for life. No refunds, and no returns.”
“It's adorable how innocent he is.”
“But he won't be innocent for long.”
“He's not that innocent if he came here, of all places.”
A shop where the employees are also the merchandise? This must be one of those business models from one of those cultures way down south. But still, renting women...for...for what?
“I learned about this place where you get to rent women.”
Why'd I remember that?
“If you're ready, sweetheart, I'll show you some merchandise you'll never forget,” Lyn said and took Wes by the hand. As she led him to a staircase, he recalled that memory.
“—called a—”
“—would anyone rent a woman—”
“—and then they get naked.”
“It's called a—”
“Guess what I learned about!” a middle school friend of Wes said one day during recess.
“How much money the queen has?”guessed a second middle school friend of his.
“What's underneath a Reef Turtle's shell?” guessed a third middle school friend of his.
“How to make arcane circles?” guessed a middle school Wes.
“Better!” Friend A said.
“Better than making arcane circles?” Needless to say, a middle school Wes was skeptical.
“I learned about this place where you get to rent women.”
“What would anyone rent a women for?” Friend B asked.
“Why else would you rent a woman? So they can clean your room,” Friend C said.
“But my mom already does that.”
“You don't rent a woman to clean your room,” Friend A said. “It's a place a man goes to rent a woman so that”—he did a check to see if anyone was within earshot—“First, he pays the woman. Then she takes him to a room and locks the door. Then”—another check—“and then they get naked.”
“N-NAKED?!” Friend B exclaimed.
“Shh! Quiet, you idiot!” Friend A's head swiveled around in a panic.
Friend B went red in the face.
Friend C's face was glowing.
Wes didn't get it. “They get naked? Then what?”
Friend A leaned in closer and covered both sides of his mouth. “And then the man sticks972Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡApuAC06v0l
HIS THING972Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqSBoBdL9hw
in the
WOMAN'S THING.972Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJHieLqA6zt
Wes paused.972Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3jlVNSeX4D
Lyn stopped on the third step. “What's the matter? You're not getting cold feet, are you?”
He didn't answer. He was staring into space as he connected the dots.
The red lights outside...
The half-naked women for rent inside...
The lack of actual merchandise...
“Hellooooo?” Lyn was waving her hand in front of his face. “Anyone home?” She knocked on his forehead.972Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5FSbsr1PZr
This was that place. The place where a man stuck his thing in the woman's thing. And it was called...it was called.....
“It's called a brothel.”972Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8sbakdAle5
Wes went pale. He broke out into a sweat. If Deirdre catches me here...
“What'd you do to the poor boy, Lyn?”
“I didn't do nothing! He just stopped all of a sudden!”
Wes came to. “I, uh, I'm sorry, but Ineedtogetgoing.” He spun on his heels and set a direct course for the exit.
“Hold on a second!” Lyn said, chasing after him.
“SorryIdidn'tmeantowasteyourtimebutIhaveafriendIneedtofind.”
“Slow down, I can't understand what you're saying.”
Wes burst out of the brothel and froze at the sight greeting him.
“Geez, what is wrong with you?” Lyn said. “First, you're hot, then you start acting as though you got a call from your wife and—”
“Do you have any idea how long—”
“I'msorryDeirdreit'snotwhatitlookslikeIgotlostisallandthoughtthiswasanoveltyshopthatsellskeychainsthat'sallIswearIwasn'tdoinganythingwithanyonecrossmyheartandhopeto—PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!!!” Wes dropped to his knees so fast he could've dodged a bullet.
“As I was saying,” Deirdre said, “Fifteen minutes. I spent fifteen whole minutes looking for you. You know how many shoes I could've browsed in that time?”
“Um...Six?”
“No. Not six. Maybe not even seven. I'll never know, because I spent that time not looking at shoes.” One of history's lost mysteries. “To make up for it, you should bake me cookies. Double fudge double chocolate chip. Can you write messages with the chocolate chips?”
“Um, It's kind of hard to get write.”
“Never mind, then. One dozen double fudge double chocolate chip cookies and I'll forgive this little misadventure of yours. And a baker's dozen, I might add.”
“Yes, miss.” Wes heaved a sigh of relief. Better than that time she had him plant new flowers in her garden because he had messed up the date of her birthday and hadn't bought a present in time.
Lyn clicked her tongue. “Should've expected you to be the whipped type.”
It was at this time that Deirdre noticed the bimbo whose getup looked like it had gone through a shredder, trampled on, and then ducttaped to her body. How degrading, she thought. Even wild animals had the decency to roam naked than to torture other living creatures with such horrible excuses for clothing.
The walking wardrobe malfunction didn't take too kindly to the stinkeye Deirdre was shooting her way. “Excuse me, but what's that look for?”
“Oh, nothing.” She averted her eyes. “I was just wondering what sort of creature treats their own body in such a boorish fashion.”
“What I do with my body is my business and my business alone,” the tawdry swine said.
“It becomes my business when you use those tree trunks you call your thighs to seduce my friend.”
“Unless you're his mother, what he does with his body and mine is not your business.”
“Wes is a pure and untainted soul who deserves better than some floozy who'll strip herself for a couple of coppers.”
The sentient contagion scoffed. “'Pure and untainted'? Ha! That's the funniest joke I've heard since my last customer told me he was a god in bed,” she said. “If your friend here is so pure and untainted, what's he doing wandering around the red-light district?”
“I already told you, I got lost,” Wes said.
“Are you serious?” the forlorn detritus said. “I thought you were role-playing.”
“What are you talking about? Isn't role-playing for, like, video games?”
“Don't worry about it, Wes. This succubus has the ability to increase her sex appeal at the cost of her individual brain cells, and I'm guessing she's sacrificed a lot,” Deirdre said.
“It's cute how you think I'm the stupid one here,” the unfortunate accretion of atoms said, “when your friend here doesn't even realize when he's in the red-light district.”
“I lived a very sheltered life,” Wes said.
“No one's that sheltered.”
“Is is my fault my mom was a fanatical zealot? No.” He crossed his arms. “I don't believe it is.”
“You should consider yourself lucky that Wes's mother isn't here to see what you're trying to make of her baby boy,” Deirdre said.
“Please don't refer to me that way,” Wes said, trying to hide his face with his hand.
“The thing that repulses me the most about the red-light district is that no one here understands the basic principle of less is more.”
“Uh, hello?” The malnourished bacteria habitation waved her hand to display that unsightly wreck of a vessel she called her body. “Are you blind on top of being stupid?”
“I can see your level of denseness quiet well, thank you very much,” she said. “To explain using little words your low degree of intelligence can understand, less is more means that the less skin being shown the better.”
“Um, no. Just. No.”
“You think I'm wrong?”
“I know you're wrong.”
Deirdre narrowed her eyes.
And the uncouth troglodyte narrowed hers.
Sparks were flying, the air was growing hot, and a storm was brewing. Wes, if you're looking to back away, now would be a great time. Know what, don't just back away. Run. Run far away. Head for the hills if you have to. Because the last thing anyone wants is to be caught up in is a Death Debate Duel!!
In the one corner, we had the tiny terror, Deirdre Weichert. She was itty, she was bitty, she was a shrimp. She was so short, people of average height used her head as an armrest. She was so short, a kindergartener once asked her why she was skipping school. She was so short, she needed a step stool so that she could reach the chair she used to reach the cabinet above her sink. She was so short, she—all right, all right, so Deirdre wasn't that short. She was a solid 152 centimeters (160 if she stood on her tippy toes), but if you asked her, she was due for a growth spurt any day now in spite of all the milk she was drinking. Hang in there, little lady. Someday, you'll be tall enough to touch the stars.
And in the opposite corner, we had the vitiated flesh, Lyn [last name omitted for legal reasons]. She was tall, she was tan, she had a set of curves that made a man want to run his hands up and down her, appreciating a magnificence he hadn't unearthed no matter how many mountains he climbed, no matter how many canyons he crossed, and no matter how many nights he spent gazing at the faint arms of the galaxy. That's right. The search was over. Absolute Magnificence wasn't at the world's poles or the bottom of the ocean's trenches—it had been right here all along. Absolute Magnificence. The ultimate pulchritude. An innate panorama. A perfect marvel. The very thing whose existence was rumored to be the atlas that would guide humanity to the Throne of God—a place so fabled, so legendary, yet so revered and so yearned for that our forebears devoted entire generations to discerning its whereabouts, that we might at long last obtain the knowledge necessary to prove once and for all that God is really—Wait, what were we talking about again?
Anyway, here we go, boys and girls. The argument: less is more. Let's start with Deirdre. Mighty Munchkin, state your case.
“When you see a person on the street, what are they wearing? Clothes. Now, why do we wear clothes? For a number of physiological reasons: protection, warmth. But they also provide the effect of making us photogenic. A dress isn't functionally useful, but that's what a woman wears on a date or to a party or simply because she wants to look good. And when she looks good, she feels good.”
Great opening by the Sassy Shrimp. It's as the old saying goes, clothes make the man, but as duly noted, clothes can make anyone. Let's move on to the Maker of Meaning's perspective on less is more.
“Ask anyone on the street what less is more means, and nine times out of ten, they'll say that less refers to clothing, which only makes sense. We were born naked. Nakedness is our natural state. When we're naked, we show the world how truly beautiful we are. Wearing clothes covers all that up, and besides, if you have to wear clothes to look good, you probably don't look good in the first place.”
An excellent rebuttal by the Answer to Civilization's Most Foregone Existential Questions. Nudity is when we're at our most vulnerable, but it's in that vulnerability that we find connection with one another. So, Pretty Pygmy, what say you to that?
“You're under the assumption that everyone is beautiful naked, but nothing is further from the truth. How many men and women have walked through your brothel's doors whose faces you've cringed at? Plenty, I'm sure, and that's without them needing to shed their attire. Even if someone isn't pleasing to look at naked, they can at least look decent based on the clothes they wear.”
Good counterargument, Exuberant Elf. We've all come across people we were glad who covered themselves up. All right, the ball's back in the Wokest Proletariat's court.
“That's the core problem with your argument. Wearing clothes to appear decent-looking is fake. It does nothing but trick people into thinking an individual is more attractive than they really are. It's deceit, is what it is. At least with wearing fewer layers to begin with, others'll know what they're getting into and won't be in for a world of disappointment when the clothes come off.”
Yet another unique lens through the eyes of the Nihilistic Requisite. Haven't we all taken someone's shirt off and gone, “Eh” or “Oh”? Teeny Tyke, it's once again your—
“It's hard to take your clothes are fake argument seriously when you're wearing so much makeup, which, I should point out, women wear to cover up their imperfections and, as you put it, trick others into thinking they're more attractive than they really are.”
A smashing job at reversing the Contemporary Bluestocking's argument and turning it against—
“Makeup's totally different. It isn't about fooling others into thinking we're pretty, it's about expressing ourselves and showing the world who we are with saying a word. It's an art form in and of itself, requiring precision, dedication, and patience.”
Who would've guessed that putting on makeup could be so—
“All I hear are excuses for needing to hide your wrinkles and moles. Face it, not wearing makeup is the only way to show the world your true beauty. Take it from an expert.”
So true. The natural look is the best—
“An expert? Oh yeah, that's rich, especially coming from a stringbean who has to hide her 'true beauty' behind a frilly, little dress I bet cost an arm and a leg.”
Hey, hey. We attack arguments, not—
“People look at my face when they talk to me, not my body, you thick dope.”
What was just said about—
“And I bet everyone you come face-to-face with just loves looking at an imp.”
Ladies, we're gettin—
“More than they like dealing with a wench.”
That's eno—
“Keep telling yourself that, mosquito bites.”
You—
“Back alley tool.”
“Pampered princess.”
“Scourge of humanity.”
“Annoying little insect.”
“Scum dredged from the earth's core.”
“Spoiled brat that needs a spanking.”
“Shameless vixen.”
“Ignorant urchin.”
“Diseased tramp!!”
“Crybaby midget!!”
Wes had a feeling this argument had gone way off track. What are they fighting over again?
“What's going on here?”
“My friend's arguing with a prostitute.” Wait a second... Questions don't ask themselves. “Who're you?”
“The name's Herschel Cosper. But feel free to call me Hershey. Nice to meet ya!” This fellow was a tad too smiley to meet someone. It was like screaming for joy at finding a moss-covered rock. He held out a hand, which Wes eyed like it was covered in mud, garbage, and other filth of an origin best not spoken of. But he shook it only so that he didn't appear rude.
“Likewise...”
“So, which of them is your friend?” Given that the choices were a.) a young woman in a frilly, black dress and b.) a half-naked woman, it went without saying that Hershey boy wasn't the best at the multiple choice questions on his school's tests. When he examined Deirdre, he didn't figure out the answer, but he did figure out something else. He pointed and said, “You're that girl I was talking to!”
Deirdre, despite being locked in the fervor of battle, sensed the attention cast on her from her flank. After she scoped out the horizon to see what new threat was approaching her direction, she concocted a list of tactics on how best to deal with this unforeseen peril. She considered all her options and their possible outcomes before deciding on a strategic retreat into Wes's arms. “Sweetie! That's him! That's the big bad man who was sexually harassing me!”
“Sexually what?!”
“Sweetie?”
Deirdre grabbed Wes by his collar and dragged his ear down to her mouth. “Play along with me, sweetie. Okay?” She released her sweetie, who gave the big bad Hershey a hey-is-that-true-guy look.
He backed up, waving his hands before him. “That's not true at all! I kept my hands to myself, honest! Promise! I'm a gentleman of the highest caliber. I wouldn't dare lay a hand on a lady without her consent.”
Deirdre tugged on her beau's shirt. “He was talking about how he wanted to have his babies with me.” Now Wes gave him a hey-that's-not-cool-man look.
“I. Did. Not! ...Well, I did mention that I want kids...But I didn't say I wanted to have them with her!”
“He said that after flirting with me,” Deirdre said to her honey-covered treat.
At this point, the look Wes was looking at Hershey with was a hey-it'd-be-best-if-you-shut-up-and-walked-away look.
But Hershey didn't shut up and walk away. He stood his ground, stating, “...I will admit, I may or may not have been trying to flirt with her, but I didn't know you were her boyfriend! She said she was looking for her friend, not her lover or whatever.”
“That doesn't change the fact that I've been scarred for life,” Deirdre pouted.
“Wow, shorty, if you can get the waterworks going, you might be up for a best actress nomination,” said a certain narrowly undressed froth of human existence.
Deirdre broke out of character to address the hairless orangutan behind her. “You're still around? Listen, I can't be bothered to deal with you and loverboy here, so would you mind disappearing?” She waved her hand to shoo her away, and then amazingly enough, the brainless baboon obliged. She obliged so well, it was almost as if a giant invisible hand burst out of the brothel and dragged her out of the plot before slamming the door.
“Uh...” Hershey seemed a bit on the confused side over how a woman managed to moonwalk without moving her legs.
“Now that that problem's dealt with, would you do everyone else here a favor and disappear as well?” Deirdre requested of Hershey, who complied the same as the lamentable derelict had. Well, mostly.
As he was performing his stepless moonwalk, he grabbed the sledgehammer from his back, stabbed it at the ground, and held on tight, which made it difficult for giant invisible hands to do their job.
Deirdre's eyes widened a little—a little—at his capabilities. Or perhaps stubbornness was the more appropriate word. “Well, color me impressed.” But not too impressed.
“See? I told you I wasn't half-bad with Dohsoon.”
“The hell's a Dohsoon?” Wes pondered. “Is that, like, the sound you make when you bang your head on something?”
“I believe it's that contraption he's wielding as compensation.”
“Compensation for what?”
“Dohsoon is not a contraption! He's my trusted partner and closest ally!” Hershey said, defending an inanimate object.
“Uh-huh. Sure. You have no real friends. Now that we've gone over that, would you mind leaving this time before I toss you through a wormhole?” Deirdre requested of him, again. If there was a third requesting of him, she couldn't be held responsible if her wormhole dumped him in the middle of an ocean.
He sighed. “Sure. Yeah...” He sighed again, and he was quite dramatic with it, like he was trying to draw sympathy from Wes and Deirdre. Not that either of them were sympathetic. But he got a C- for effort. “I'm sorry I made you feel harassed and violated and whatnot.”
“You'll be forgiven if you leave me and my sweetie alone and never talk to either of us again.”
“I think he realizes by now that we're not—” Agreed, Wes. An elbow to the ribs is a good indicator to shut your mouth.
“Okay.” [insert melodramatic sigh here.] “But if you don't mind me asking, what is it you see in him? What do you like about him?”
“What isn't there to like? He's tall, he's handsome, he's great at baking and cleaning, and he's the Third Hand.”
“The...the Third...Hand...?”
“You heard correctly. The third strongest magus in the country. How can a girl not fall for that?”
“The third strongest, huh?” Hershey raised Dohsoon and gripped it tight with both hands.
“Uh, what're you doing?” Wes asked.
“What else? I'm going to fight you.”
Wes studied the giant construction tool. “Why?”
“Because you're the Third Hand, and that means if I beat you here and now, that'll make me the Third Hand.”
“There are so many things wrong with your logic, I don't know where to begin.” Not that he had the chance to, because Hershey swung that bad boy, and following its swing was this gale so strong, it carried Deirdre off in one direction and blew Wes in another. He maintained his balance pretty well for someone taking a ride on the Sudden Hurricane Express, voted world's most extreme locomotive for five years running. Free rides weren't allowed, however, so here came Hershey to collect the fee. Cost of admission: a hammer to the face. Wes, however, couldn't afford that, so he absorbed the blow with his forearms as his heels ground into the street.
While they were showing each other amusement park attractions, Wes introduced him the one where a slab of rock popped up out of the ground and sent you flying. It didn't have a name, but Wes liked to call it the Please Give a Guy a Little Breathing Room Spring 3000™. Common customer reactions included, but weren't limited to, screaming, crying, begging for mercy, wailing for one's mother, and general ragdolling through the air before going splat! on the ground. But Hershey here wasn't your common customer. There was no squealing or regret for having left his brown pants at home, and instead, there was twisting his body and landing on his feet before pouncing forward. He was nimble as a cat and swift as a panther.
Wes rushed to meet his straightforward attack, gloved fists ready to lay down the beatdown Hershey needed for starting brawls in the middle of a public street. He needed to earn his paycheck, after all.
Hershey came in swinging, and Wes went, Hey, batta batta, and then vaulted over the handle, giving the batter his first strike, then his second strike, his third one, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and is it a bad time to mention that neither of these men knew how to play baseball? Wes was an advent fan of Cobbleball, which required tripping your opponent up and pinning them to the ground (he played it back in high school), and it showed with how he kept going for the ankles and knees.
But the pussycat wasn't nimble as a pussycat for nothing, avoiding Wes's attacks or countering them outright. He didn't remember Cobbleball opponents being this tough, but they didn't have blunt force trauma-inducing weapons, either.
Seeing that Hershey could deal with a fist or a foot coming for his joints, Wes wondered if he could handle the cobblestones spinning around beneath his feet. He hypothesized that he couldn't.
Wes twisted a foot, and a cobblestone underneath Hershey did a 360, and the grimalkin himself went whirling with it. With his opponent now experiencing that miniature heart attack unique to slipping on ice, Wes went in for the finishing blow.
But the furless feline deflected the finisher by becoming the embodiment of a top, twirling around and knocking Wes away.
His gyration came to a halt, and then he leaped head-first for the rocky wall that Wes erected for him to smack into. But Hershey wasn't so clumsy as to bash into an abruptly manifested sample of human construction. Not only was he nimble as a cat, he was graceful as a swan, for he vaulted over the wall and dove for Wes in a series of fluid motions.
Wes and the anthropomorphic chordate were at it again, now locked in a fierce dance competition to see who had the flyest moves. Wes was great at keeping the rhythm to a 4/4 beat, but the white avian was like a breakdancer who had no off switch. Regardless of the outcome of this match, they could start a dance duo together and become a national sensation.
But this wasn't just dancing, it was extreme! dancing. That is to say, the sort of dancing where the floor kept moving around and trying to bust Hershey in his chin. Anything but the chin (or the rest of me), he said as he boogied his way around Wes's rave.
Such a slippery fellow, Wes thought as Hershey thrived in his physical representation of a music equalizer. It had been a while since someone was able to endure the hard difficulty, let alone the easy one. Normally, they were like, Ow, stop it! That hurts! Not my faaace! so having someone who wasn't whiny was refreshing. But it was also a teensy bit concerning, because Wes, who wasn't sure how it happened (he'd tell you he blinked or the sun got in his eyes, despite it being nighttime), found himself face-to-face with the business end of an incoming hammer face. Not into kissing inanimate objects, he backstepped to avoid it. A successful backstep, if he did say so himself, but maybe a little too successful, since the Sudden Hurricane Express pulled into the station at that moment.
He went flying high, and he went flying long, and at this rate, the train was gonna take him to the next town over. So he reached for the rooftops below, his fingertips and feet brushing against their tiles. One, two, three, four. It took four rooftops to kill his momentum enough for him to disembark from the train before it departed for the countryside.
Once that departure was gone, Wes was going to jump down to the alley below, because—and he doesn't like telling people this—he wasn't a fan of high places. Especially when there were hammer-wielding maniacs coming in hot for the landing on his spleen.
Rather than attempting to block that attack, he sprung for the rooftop behind him, and Hershey crashlanded on the ridge he had been on. But despite the tiles and wood splinters flying up from the impact, Hershey still managed to land on his feet, that cat.
“Hey! You're pay—” Wes started before he fled from Hershey's followup blow. Another damaged roof. Aw, crap... Deirdre wasn't going to be happy about needing to fix that, and if she refused, the damages were coming out of Wes's next four paychecks. He started sweating bullets.
Most of the rooftops around here were slanted, and though Wes had trained and fought on steeper surfaces, he was on team Flat Surfaces. But better than flat surfaces were flat surfaces that were made of earth, but the buildings were so built so close together that he couldn't find a decent-width alleyway, and when he did, Hershey was too fast, and he ended up escaping to the adjacent rooftop out of reflex.
His objective at this point was to make it to an empty park or plaza and finish Hershey off there, but he only made it to the meter-wide ridge of a tenement before a certain pretty kitty caught up to him, and now that he had caught himself some prey (Wes wouldn't appreciate being called a mouse), he wasn't letting go. Due to the speed with which he was using Dohsoon, the only thing Wes had time for was blocking and the occasional counter, which Hershey would counter, and Wes would counter that counter, and then Hershey would counter that counter, but Wes would counter that counter's counter to the counter and—That chain went on for a solid minute before Wes broke it by dodging rather than countering.
In all the time that Wes was sparring with this guy, the one thing he wasn't able to do was knock the hammer out of his hands. Usually, people dropped their swords if you so much as looked at them funny, but no matter the maneuvers and strikes designed for disarming foes Wes used, that jumbo assembly implement just did not want to leave Hershey's hands. Must've had a rune attached to the thing that bound it to his grip.
Wes wasn't able to do much aside from punch and kick up here, but Hershey sure seemed to be up to something, what with all the wind he was stirring up. Whatever it was, Wes didn't have time to go investigating, not with that sledgehammer head looking to perform on-the-spot facial surgery. There was quite a bit of rattling, though, he could say that much.
What else he could say was that he didn't like being up here. Being away from solid earth, he felt like a fish taken out of water, like he might die. Literally, like he might die. Hershey wasn't exactly holding back with his swings. Well, he didn't seem aware of how Hands were determined, so it came as no surprise that he didn't realize he didn't need to murder one to rank up. Time to fall back.
It took a few seconds, but he managed an opening from which he would enact his exit strategy and vanish into the night. A perfect plan, if only a certain contemptible household pet hadn't put a roof tile where his foot was going. Thanks, furball (this was why Wes was a dog person).
Wes slipped, and the wind came, and it brought with it a tornado of more roof tiles. Oh, so that was what Hershey was up to. And just to point out, these were ceramic tiles, so they didn't feel like plushies and feather-filled pillows.
He protected his head and torso the best he could from the onslaught, but he also had to watch out for Hershey—oh, speak of that devil.
In about the worst position he could be in to dodge or block or do anything, Wes rolled out of the way and went tumbling down the slanted roof before spilling over the eaves to the street five stories below.
Hershey gave chase, 100% informed to the fact that the street was made of earth. Speaking of, a portion of which was blasting off with his sculpted face as its intended landing zone. But a little boulder never hurt him, since he tended to smash them apart with his hammer. No fuss, no muss.
What was a fuss, however, was the second boulder behind the first. Unable to prep another blow, Hershey blocked it as it made impact, taking him for a joyride.
With the air pressure pushing against his back, he found it a little difficult to move or do something so that he didn't go blasting off into the stratosphere. He was agnostic in regards to an afterlife and the existence of a higher power, but when an angel come to convey a message, a wordless message of quiddity and sanguineness, he had his answer. As the angel delivered its foot to the makeshift rocket, Hershey was certain now more than ever that God...
...was a total jerk.
The boulder disintegrated and fell to the city as pebbles and dust, and Hershey went soaring over the rooftops and streets. So graceful, so elegant. A sight to behold for those below who spotted the glimmer of light reflecting off of Dohsoon. This wasn't how he had intended, but he had at long last achieved his lifelong dream of becoming a shooting star. He could, after all these years, die happy.
Shine on, you crazy fool. Shine on.
ns 15.158.61.51da2
