Hacks’n’Slash #9: The END DAY: A Tale of Love

1997, October 1, The END DAY. The day the cult classic NES RPG Crystalis predicted would be the end of civilization as we knew it. We here at GameCola have made it a point to celebrate the anniversary of the absent apocalypse: in 2012, we played a Crystalis-themed Dungeons & Dragons campaign; in 2013, we recorded playthroughs of the NES and GBC versions of Crystalis; in 2014, we hosted a six-way blind race of Crystalis. This year, we may have gotten carried away.

Celebrating The END DAY with an episode of “Hacks’n’Slash” was inevitable, really. Customarily, we read other people’s awesomely bad fanfiction out loud. Except…in the case of a semi-obscure game like Crystalis, there’s not much fanfiction to read at all, let alone anything worth giving the “Hacks’n’Slash” treatment to. So…we had no choice but to write our own deliberately terrible fanfiction.

Artwork by Shannon Hoover. Click for full size!

The story you are about to hear is a collaboration involving the entire GameCola staff, each of us taking turns fleshing out the narrative a few lines at a time. Some of the writers have even played the game. It is said that an end is merely a beginning in disguise, and so it is with this tale of love, which begins at the conclusion of Crystalis. So, without further ado, I present to you our humble reading of this loving parody that we are totally posting on Fanfiction.net. The story is also reprinted in its horrifying entirety below if you’d like to follow along. Enjoy!

CHAPTER 1

As Mesia and our hero stood at the edge of the cliff, watching the wondrous floating tower sink into the horizon, their minds were flooded by thoughts of everything that had transpired in the last several days: Our hero had awakened from a century of cryosleep, learned the magic of the four Wise Men, and acquired the elemental swords that combined into the mighty Crystalis; he had defeated the corrupt Emperor, along with his four top generals, throwing the Empire into chaos—but he couldn’t have done it without the help and sacrifice of so many others, least of all Mesia.

As if sensing each other’s thoughts, they turned their gaze away from the tower, locking eyes with each other. This was the moment they had both been waiting for, a moment of calm to finally do what had been burning inside of them all this time:

“HOUSE PARTY!!” they exclaimed in unison.

The pair of young wizard robots ran down the hill, jumping and laughing, excited to finally have some time off from saving the world. “I’ll use telepathy to call all the Wise Men and tell them to get everyone they know—we can’t forget the dwarves from Oak or the girls from Amazones! If we use the castle in Portoa, we’ll have plenty of room for everybody!”

Mesia was nerves because even though every lady in the universe adored his swishing purple hair and rockin sunglasses he was nervous because he was humble and people thought it was cool that he was humble but he thought being humble was lame because he was awesome. Our hero said “dont be nerves Mesia because I now for a fact that this will have be the best house party and you will get a good time and fun.” Mesai were not very sure.

Who could be sure? Why would they be sure? Was “sureness” a thing that eixsted in this world–or was that someting that belong to the world he left behind? Only with a party, could he know for suretain.

While our hero was pondering these existential questions, Mesia jabbed him in the ribs. “He-llo? Were you even like listening to me…sia (lol, see what I did there)?” No one laughed. Mesia coughed, then continued. “We gotta get some food for this crazy par-tay. Also, some of the alcohol becuase we require alcohol for a good time, right dude?”

“Alcohol?” Mesia asked, concerned. “But what if bad people show up?”

“You’re right,” said Our Hero “But also alchol is not nearly as magic enough for such a grand party. We must first quest to the ancient lands of Athupoque to claim the magic party elixer of which no villian has the ability to partake. We may also meet my robot 2nd cousin who is a master of all partying and even more powerful than I am on max level when he is level 1 and his name is a middle schooler named Steve but he is above all dumb middle schoold drama.”

They reached the gate to whever they’re going and, as usual, Our Hero pulled out his sword. “URGH!!!” he shouted, bashing the locked door over and over again, probly like fifty times at least. “Why won’t it ever open?!”

“Oh, come on,” said Mesia, rolling his robot wizard eyes under his sunglasses. “You just need to have the key equipped and then walk in the general vicinity of the door. Like this!” Then, Mesia walked up to the door which then disappeared allowing Mesia to enter.

Meantime, the hero walked round behind the hose and kicked down the other door with his sword foot. Standing on the other side was General Kelbest! “I’ll be t you thought I was dead” said General Keblets, who was dead, “but I knew you were having a party? So I have come to crash your party! HA AH HA HA HA! Also, I am not really dead, because of reasons that are too complicated to get into right now, but let’s just say it involves a handkerchief and some timey-wimey stuff.” [Author’s Note: Doctor Who reference! They are so funny.]

“Use the HORSE, Luke!!” screamed Mersa and lolled. (That’s all I got now. I’ll probably edit this part later lol [[and maybe add a horse]])

General Kelbeast stared judgingly at the hero and Mesai. “Look, I have no fudging idea what you two think you’re doing with that horse, but the main thing here is y’all are not getting any alcohol for your party because it’s all in this pile behind me. And I’m about to blow it up. Now. Like literally now, you should probably leave.” General Kelbest really hoped that the kids would leave so they wouldn’t find out he was throwing his own party which (provided he had ALL the alcohol) be the Kel-BEST party anyone had ever seen. (I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist).

Now Our Hero and Mesia were actually robots on a wizard quest for magic elixer alchohol, but they certainly didn’t like General Kerblast’s attitude toward the parties so they decided that it was time for a good bop. Our hero took his sord and he threw it while Mesia ran toward the good (bad) general and shouted “THIS IS FOR ALL THE BEANS IN THE PUDDING. (lol that’s just something me and my bestie like to say ;););)

General Kelbest was all, “Oh, no, you di-n’t!” and pulled out his across-bow. He pointed it at our hero, and……..

{Author’s note: CLIFFHANGER! You’ll have to read the next chapter to find out what happens next!]

CHAPTER TWO

General Kelbest’s across-bow shimmered dramatically for a moment, then drooped like a wet napkin with a totally not an 8-bit soundfont of BWYOOINGYOOINGYOING. Before General Kelbest could summon a “WHATTTTT?”, Our Hero’s sword went whoosing into his foot. What an uncool party it would be for him now! Mesia was no help, who tripped over a badly placed handcart. General Kielbasa [AUTO CORRECT!!!!! hahahha it was so funny i thought id leave it in] dropped the across-bow in a fit of shock and pain and it rolled along the ground all wiggly like until it turned into a puddle and then suddenly grew up and turned into the form of a human (I mean, hes a robot but he’s shaped like a human, you know what I mean). “STEVE!!!!!1” shouted Meisa. Steve just stood their and adjusted hid sunglasses. “Cool it, bro, your cramping my style.”

Meanwhile the horse tromped up and stepped on Kielbasa’s head and probably crushed his head. It make a sickening crushing sound. Everybody thought this was funny, even Steve, who waved with his skeleton-arm for everyone to get on the horse.

Everyone got in the horse. Stever (only his friends could call him that) slapped the horse and they rode off into the glorious sunset. Beautiful music started to play, but there was one of those record scratchy sounds and it stopped. “WAIT!” Mesia interrupted. “We TOTES Forgot the alcohol.”

CHAPTER THREE

Steve, Mesia, and the Ourhero got out of the horse in front of the castle in Portoa, and everyone in town was there! The teal guy, the teal girl, the pink guy, the pink girl, the guards, both shop keepers, the inn keeper, the boat owner, the boat owner’s daughter—literally everyone from town was there. “The Wise Men and everybody else must still be on their way ,” said the young robot wizard robot. Everyone was worried that the wise men might be late except for Steve who leaned against the corner of the shop and scoffed while rolling his eyes remembering how he was to mature for this crap. Hour Ero then took his sword out of Kelbests’s foot and dialed the wise men on his sword magic phone. “x-cuse me but wise men are you coming to the aprty and also to do you have an some alcohol?”

“STO0000000000000000000PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!
“Huh?” said that townspeople.
“What is going on?” said Ourhero.

The Queen of the Amazones–who are sometimes called the AMAZINGones, because they’re amazing and stuff–ran into town. “Our Hero!” she said. “We have an emergecny! Someone has stolen all teh alcohol and stuff!”

“THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTING,” shouted our Hero. No wonder we can’tn’t find alcohal because someone must have stolen it. I wonder what was the person which stole it though?”

“IT WAS ME!!!!” shouted Barry (lol see Barry I told you I’d work you in, thanks for the great review!!) as he downed 1 alcohol. Everyone gasped at the same time, except for Barry, who did not gasp, because he wasn’t surprised. He was literally covered with alcohols.

“OMG, Barry, why????” Mesia was exceedingly upset. All he wanted was some alcholo for the party, gosh darn it. And now there wasn’t any left because freaking Barry had stolen it all. “Dude, what do we do now, I’m totally out of ideas,” he said, turning to OUR HERO.

“Well, I do not know,” stated Our Hero, “but perhaps if we ascertain Barry’s response to our previous query, we might be able to not only discover his motivation for enacting a theft of all alcoholic beverages, but additionally the location of said beverages and how we might acquire them.” Mesia had to admit that it was a fairly logical conclusion that Our Hero had put forth, and he set upon himself to wonder why he had not simply demonstrated patience with regards to Barry’s response. Forthwith, Mesia resolved to attempt to improve his personal communication and socialization skills as well as to reduce his interruptions of conversations in the future.

Barry jumped down from a parapet and did a sweet backflip, landing on the bridge in front of the castle in front of everyone in town. “I did it so that I could have an even COOLER party with my friends, Bob the Echidna and xXxdarkerthenblackxXx! And were not going to give it up without a fight!” The ground started shaking and Bob the Echidna exploded out of a hole, flying into the sky before landing on the ground next to Bary. Bob was wearing a They Might Be Giants shirt. [Author’s not: Bob thinks They Might Be Giants is the COOLEST band ever. And he says that they played Crystalis, since they have that one song about a dude who lives on a floating island, and that’s basically the same thing as a floating tower.]

xXxdarkerthenblackxXx slowly solidified out of a shadow on the ground. He was an enigma, without real shape or form. In the hero’s opinion, he was low key a bamf, but OBVI he wasn’t gonna admit that. (xXxdarkerthenblackxXx, you didn’t really give me a whole lot of details about what you even wanted, so I kinda made it up. I can totally change it if you don’t like it, just let me know, dude?)

All three (Barry, Bob the Echidna and xXxdarkerthenblackxXx) then bumped fists and shouted their war crime: “ALCHOOOOOOOHOLLLLLLLLL!!!”

Sparks flew out of their eyes and lightening struck the horse, nd then they formed out of thin airs….

THE CRYSTALIS.

(the sword not the game lol)

(it’s powered by alcohol)

DON’T FORGET TO RATE AND REVIEW!! But no flames, okay?! If you dont’ like this story, then DON’T READ IT, PauliePie01. And just for the record, I DO have a life!!!

CHAPTER FOUR

“Whoa, didn’t see that coming,” said Mesia, an electric guitar twanging in the background to illustrate his confustion. “I guess we will have to fight them, huh Herour also and also Steve?” OURE HERo readied himself for battle, but steve wasn’t worried so he didn’t even look up from his potetry that he had been writing.

“Oh yeah, well two can play at that game!” Saying that, The our Hero held the Sword of Wind in one hand, the Sword of Fire in the other hand, the Sword of Water in another hand, and the Sword of Thunder in his last hand. The sowrds all flew up into the sky and glowed pretty bright and then turned also into Crystalis, but the real Crystalis and not the alcohol one.

“It’s pronounced CRYSTALIS you idiot!!!!” screamed Barry!! “And their cant be two of them, one of them must be a fake.” “I already said that!!” said the narrater, and low and behold, he fake one explodes into a million sand. But this was part of Our Hero’s plan because everyone who wasn’t wearing glasses got sand all in their eyes, which left only Mesia and Steve able to fight, as well as xXxdarkerthanblackxXx because his body being made of shadow was sorta like having sunglasses all over himself. Mesia took his robot fist and tried to slam it into xXxdarkerthanblackxXx, but xXxdarkerthanblackxXx was made of shadow that was xxx darker than black xxx and so all physical attackes were unless. But then steve closed his book and shouted “lighticus penetratus darkus!” And behold, Steve’s clothes became dazzling white, and he floated up into the sky, and everyone was blinded.

“Steve, it’s good you’re here,” Barry said. “We can make three tents: One for you, one four OurHero, and one for Mesia.” Barry didn’t know what he was saying; he was so confused by the dazzling light. “Now let’s get this fight started?!!!!!” said Steve and Mesia andD our Hero in unison as they all jumped with swords in hand at Barry and Bob and xXxdarkerthenblackxXx.

~half an hour later~

“Whew, that was tough!” said Our Hero. He went over to Barry to ask what had really happened to the alcohol, but Barry had a sword in his leg which made it difficult to talk. Our Hero decided that maybe some of this friends like XxXdarkerthanbobxxx might know what was happening in the hiz-ouse.

XXXXXdarkerthanbobxxx was writhing on the floor in pain. Our Hero put a boot-clad foot on his chest and looked super scary. “WHERE IS THE BOOZE,” he yelled, trying to not sound totes desperate at the point at which we are in this thing. “I don’t know” Bob cried, his tears were turning him from a super sweet shadow into a kind of lame looking dude. “Maybe that other guy knows, now I need to have an identity crisis because I’m not a shadow any more.” He sobbed hysterically as our hero walked away, rolling his eyes.

Our hero slapped Bob the Enchilada. “WHERe. IS. THE. BOOZE?” she shouted loudly. “I did not go through talking to the wise men, saving the world, and swapping out different sword powers like A MILLION TIMES, just so I could have an alcohol free, Prohibition-era party!”

“I HAVE THE BOOZ” shouted Mado from atop on top of the cats hahaha i meant catsle. He rolled into a ball and crashed into things like he was also crashing the party. “NOT IF I STOP YOU FIRST” expunged the boat guy with his lamp. “Nay!!!” Screamed the horse recovering from the lightening.

Our Hero definately remembered which one Mado was. After all he was master of the Crystalis. In fact, he was about to explain everything he knew about Mado right now, this very moment. All who were present would totally have all the information that was important about Mado just as soon as Our Hero opened his all knowing mouth.

CHAPTER 5

Our Hero opened his mouth and let out the biggest burp that anyone had ever heard ever. Everyone just kind of gave him really disgusted looks, except Barry who was still on the ground with a sword in his leg and also that shadow guy whose identity crisis was ongoing. “Sorry, NOW I will explain EVERYTHING.”

“Mado is my son…FROM THE FUTURE! He is from the far-off, futuristic year of 2012. He has come here to the past, in order to take over the world and find love and also ruin our party in the process.”

“Find love?” asked the horse. (lol I bet you guys thought I’d never get around to that huh.) Mado’s eyes became literally hearts as he responded, “yes and the person I love is hear in this room now.”

“Yes,” Mado expositioned, “ever since my father, whose real name is 007PHOENIXEDGEWORTH4EVA2015 (but that’s way too clumbersome to keep saying, so we’ll stick with Our Hero), showed me a picture of Mesia in cryostasis, I’ve been overcome with longing for his long purple hair and eligant frame. Time is no boundary for the pureness of robot wizard love, and eventually, years from now, we will commence our relationship and boldly proclaim our mutual affection, but my father has fought again and again to keep us apart. Now I have used the power of alcohol to travel back to this moment and ruin my father’s party in noble retaliation for his close-minded cruelty!”

[Author’s Note: I love DragonBall Z, especially Mirai Trunks, who is my FAV! He has purple hair and can time travel, so I’m making it a rule that only people with purple hair can time travel. It’s my fanfic, so I can do what I want!

CHAPTER VI

[Author’s Note: Sorry guys! THings got really crazy and I had to spot writing for a while – you know how it is. Anyways, I forgot where I was going with the story, so let’s jump right to when the party starts!]

“Woooooooop!!” said everyone at the party pumping there fists in unison. “This is indiscribably great!!”

The party was happening and so was drinking.The horse, who was a Norse Horse, composed this epic galdralag skal in praise of Our Hero:

“Frozen man, Mado’s bane,
cloaked in salmon scale,
cloaked in magic mail,
awake and rise! well-spurn Lif,
mead-spoke destiny dawns.

Oak-kin piper, pyramid’s Blaine,
hear! he countered Karmine,
hear! he dusted Draygon
with storming scallion of seasons’ temper,
now let the liquor flow!”

“That was a pretty sick rap, bro-diddley,” said Steve as he brushed his fingers through his flowing hair. “I’ve been known to bust a rhyme or two myself.”

The blond haired scoffed while the horse faced gave a glare, while the sunglasses one simply shook his head in disappointement. The Heroed one simply sat in the back sipping his alchohol drink, satified with what they had accomplished this day. He stood up and tapped his the glass one to initiate a toast. Lesson number #1: don’t tap glasses with swords. It shattered and broke (the glass, lol). So instead, Our Hero started to speechify without a glass, but just then, a loud noise interrupted the party, which was already pretty loud.

He entered with the fervour of a thousand fangirls spotting their prey. “How dare you bypass my superiorly compelling plotline!,” Mado bellowed, as he samus-araned into the room like a humanoid pinball. He rolled up onto the table and stood up in human form instead of ball form. “Mesia!” He pointed as powerfully as one could point a finger. “I am here to confess my love for you!”
“lol” said Our Hero, Steve, Barry, Bob the Echidna, xXxdarkerthenblackxXx, the horse, Harry and Hermione Potter (CROSS-OVER!!), , other party guests, and General Kelbeast who was not dead and decided to come to this party because it was the best party after all. But not Messa. Mesia just smiled eviley. “Sorry time-traveller, but I am actually your mother from the future, so I cannot date you! Plus, you’re not very nice. LOOOOSERS!!!!” With that Mesia puffed into a cloud of purple smoke and disappeard he probalby time traveled. Mesia threw his hand up in frustration “How could this happen to me?” shouted him.

CHAPTER 7even

Author’s Note: Ok guys look this is my fanfiction and if you don’t like that Harry and Hermonica are married than you can just buzz off because this is my fanfiction and i can change things if I wante to anyways blease enjoy chapie 7!!!!

“We need to have a wizard meeting!” said the our her Hero to the Wise Men and also Harry and Hermione who were visiting Portoa on there honymoon. The young wizard robot lead the group away from the party and into the secret door that went to the secret tunnel passage from the part of the game where you find out that the queen was actually Asina and also the fortune teller. “OK guys I think at least four of us have been in love before so what’s going on I’m looking at you Asina and Kensu and Harry and Hermoine seriously what do we do about Mado and Mesisa what do you think.”

“As one of the four Wise Men, and the only girl,” Asina womaned, “I think we should give Meisa some time alone. Besides, Mado blew up because we stabbed him with magic for interrupting our party and making a guest time-travel away.”

“…But *I* didn’t blow up!” exploded the sorceress Sabera out of nowhere.

“Woah, you are super hot!” Harry said. His wife slapped him. “No, that’s not what I meant!” he said. His patted out the flames on his shirt sleeve as he was the closest to Sabera when she showed up.

“Sabera! Why are you interrupting our secret wizard meeting?! I mean, yeah, you’re a wizard I think and also maybe a robot I don’t really know but you weren’t invited!” said our the hero Wizard.

“Because,” Sabera subordinate-claused, “you need a woman’s perspective, and I am the only non-familial woman who has ever spent a significant amount of time with Mado. In fact, we used to date, but I was just too hot for him to handle. ::hint, hint, nudge, nudge, know-what-I-mean, know-what-I-mean:: … (I mean he got burned)”

Everyone gasped a collective sigh. “Well, I guess we should apologize for blowing up your ex-boyfriend,” our hero marked, “and for blowing you up the last time when I thought I killed you,” he remarked.

“That’s ok for the 2th thing,” Sabrina said. Honestly it looks like no one that you killed stated killed except for the ones who are dead, so I guess it isn’t really that big a deal. I am still peeved about the 1th thing tho.” Sabera looked around at the Wise Men and the young robot wizard and the young human wizards (remember Harry and Hermoine are there still because they came along to) who were all standing around awkwardly and decided to continue. “Yeah so anyway Mado has trouble expressing his feelings which can make things difficult. You’ll think things are going great and then he just goes quiet and balls up like something’s wrong and then he starts rolling around and throwing ninja stars which does NOT help the situation.”

“Reminds me of Mido, from Legend of Zelda: It’s Ocarina Time,” said someone.

“We need to help Mado express his feelings, through art therapy!” Sabera said, slamming a platelet down on the table. (That is to say, she hit the table so hard she left a cellular imprint.) “To help synch his mind, body, and feels, our only option is… interpretive dance. Well, either that or macaroni collages…”

Hermione huffed, “And just how do you propose we help Mado express his feelings if the party guests are still covered in his exploded pixels!?” That didn’t come out right, so Harrymione (that’s Harry and Hermione, like Brangelina is Angelina Jolie with a bran muffin), left the room in embarrassedmint.

Just then, Deo the rabbit stumbled in from the party with a lampshade on his head and said, “Dudes,, you have got to come see this,” except he’s a rabbit, so everyone just heard “kyu, kyu”. I think he wants ut to see something” said Our Hero who could speak rabite. So they all (lol I forget whose even in here) went back to the party and gaped in aww at the site that they saw.

[Author’s Note: Wonder what they saw? Read the next chapter to find out!!!!!!]]|

Chpater Eight is Super Great

[Author’s Note: Thanks for all the great reviews guys haha!!! and yeah I know that thE Hero uses telepathy to talk to the rabbits but i like to think that he also learned to speak the Rabbit language in the process because that’s just the kind of guy he is ANYWAy on with the show!]

Noone could believe their eyes as they gazed up in the sky but the flying castle that they had just destroyed was back and better than ever!

“Castle?”
“Yes a castle?”
“White Castle?
“No.”

“Look,” said someone who was there. “It even has a moat! How does a floating castle even have a moat?”

As the castle flew overheard, the water from the moat suddenly stopped defying gravity and fell right on their heads (lol how unexpected). “Well, we don’t know how it had a moat,” said another persona, totally different from the first person, who was in turn different from the third person, “but we sure as h-e-double hockey stick know why!”

“…Because SOMEONE wants to rain all over our party!” exclamed Asina literally and metaphorically. “We had to go on a quest just to find the booze, we keep losing party guests, and NO ONE OUR HERO KILLS STAYS DEAD, not even the floating tower…and to top it all off, now everyone is wet! This was supposed to be a love story!”

“It could still be a love story,” Ourhero said, putting his arm around Asina in a very romantic way. “But we need to save the world first!”

[Author’s Nope: That’s enough romance to make this count as a love story, right? Because people were complaining this story doesn’t deserve the “romance” tag, or the “western” tag, either. I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to remove tags, so…]

Chapter 8.5: The Chappening

“Well, if I listen to my hero gut, we need to get back up to that tower to bring it down again,” our Hero sayed. Everone nodded off in agreement. Then, as like the tower was listening to them, it suddenly fell out of the sky and crushed Harry and Hermirone and xXxdarkerthanblackxXx and everybody else who didn’t need to be in the story anymore. Then a big drawbridge escalator came out of the tower and landed right in fromt of our hero, who could not believe who was standing at the top, and clearly responsible for the whole fiesco (which is a fiesta fiasco, i’m so cleveR).

Chapter VIIII

Our hero staired up the escalator at the person who was coming down and could faintly make out a pinkish purplish kind of figure off in the distance, wearing sunglasses and riding the railing down in a slow but steady decent. “I couldnt take it” said a familiar and cool voice. “We spent so much time together fighting side by side you and I we were like brothers. But you never looked at me and then Mado had the audacity to step in where you feared to tred. So I’ve brought the tower back and I’m ending it all here and now.”

“CAPTAIN BARTHOLEMEW! I ALWAYS KNEW YOU WOULD BE THE BAG GUY!” erupted Our Hero. The newly turned villain stood questioningly, as this was not his moniker, but decided against explaining it since this was the eve of battle and he figured his foreshadowing was good enough for any readers to figure out who he was. Captain Bartholemew, meanwhile, dropped all the bags he was holding and ran back inside the castle (the Portoa castle not the flying one which was technically actually a tower and it was no longer flying at the moment).

“Turn around, young wizard robot! Mesia is right over there coming out of the castle that was flying again but crashed twice now!” said Asina to the young robot wizard. Our Hero turned around and saw Mesia coming finally reaching the bottom of the escalator and hopping off the railing.

“Bad news! Bad news!” Mesia said. “I just got off the telephone with the four wise men! They said that…”

Explosions happened. Pow Pow Pow Pow Pow. Pew Pew Pew.

“Well, I guess that wasn’t matter anymore,” Mesia said, looking at the explosions with all of the alarm. “We need to make another plan, quickly! To the horse!” They started to run back to the field, but then they were hit by a piece of shrapnel. “CHARGE!” Mesia shouted, hauling himself to his feet and charging toward the hose. Mesia began charging up his sword, but without the bracelet equipped so he wouldn’t waste his MP.

Our Hero was confused by the sudden change of topic. It was all happening so fast that he could barely grasp his own feelings.

“I can help you grasp your feelings—your feelings of depsair and powerlessness!” shouted Karmine the sorcerer, who was waiting until just this moment to prove that he, too, hadn’t been killed hard enough by Our Hero in the actual game. But then the floating tower, which was the thing that was exploding a few sentences ago, obviously, got back up in the air just long enough to float over Karmine and then fall again and crush him to depth.

“Now no one can interrupt my conflicted love story of vengeance,” said Mesia!

Our Hero shrugged, and decided to just go along with the flow of the story. He took another long drink from his alcohol bottle, and asked, “So, Mesia, whatsupwithchoo?”

Mesia cast Paralyze on a passing flying pineapple tentacle monster and sat down on it with a pensive look. “I just feel like, after all we’ve been through what with destroying the world and coming back to life 100 years later and saving the world from the evil we created and looking like heros because nobody was alive to remember that we were the ones who did it in the first place, I just thought that maybe…maybe we could have been a little closer.”

“What do you mean you’ve been like a brother to me all this time” said thE Hero?

“No…I mean…I want to be even closer than brothers,” whispered Mensa.

As the sun was setting behind the burning and exploding castle in the sunset for the second time that day, the two young robot wizards were back where they started as they stared deeply into each others eyes sparkling in the sunset. One hundred years after they sealed the world’s fate, they had finally sealed…there hearts.

There was a big silence. “You mean, superglue?” said Our Idiot.

“Let’s use our Change magic and make passionate romance as Akahana or evil soldiers or something,” PG-thirteened Mesia.

Gulp.

Chapter VIIIII

It was awesome.

The END