Isekai Terry: Tropes of Doom (An Isekai Adventure Comedy)

Terry stared at the hole in the ground that had opened up and swallowed Kelima whole. He could only think of one way to truly express his feelings about that particular turn of events.

"Well, fuck," he grumbled, and kicked a stone pillar that promptly collapsed under the unintentional force of the blow

Your eloquence remains, as ever, your defining feature, observed other-Terry.

"So helpful," said Terry, almost on reflex.

That's my defining feature, replied the magical construct cheerfully.

"Of course, it is."

He'd just known that things were going too smoothly. The last few days had been almost entirely free from monsters, violence, or fires emitting a hellstench from slowly carbonizing goblin blood. He'd even managed to get in some practice using his qi to make enough fire to be useful in fighting monsters. There had even been a little advancement in his use of qi to do things with water. However, condensing a ball of water the size of a jawbreaker hadn't felt like a particular breakthrough to him, regardless of what other-Terry might have thought. No, even that bit of progress should have been enough to put him on high alert that some terribly inconvenient trope was incoming. Hell, he'd even told Kelima that they should expect at least one or two more unexpected encounters.

Yet, even Terry hadn't expected it when a bus-sized, fire-breathing boar with metal tusks came crashing through the trees. He'd frozen for a second or two, which had given Kelima's panic time to overwhelm her better sense. She'd taken off running. Terry hadn't because he wasn't sure what the hell the giant monster was going to do. For all he knew, it was going to immediately chase Kelima since she'd been screaming like a banshee and run off. That was the kind of thing that seemed to set some of these creatures off. It had taken a few precious seconds to figure out that the thing was just heading to the river.

That had put Terry into a different bind. He didn't know for sure that he could absorb that thing's core, but it seemed like a wasted opportunity to just let it go. It was literally right there in front of him. The damn thing was practically begging to be killed. Of course, if he took the time to kill it, there was no telling how far Kelima would run or what kind of disaster she'd bring down on their heads. Since the boar wasn't hunting them so much as just being a moving catastrophe zone, Terry decided to leave it be. He hated himself a little for that choice, but something—his conscious, maybe—told him it was the right move.

Instead, he'd gone chasing after Kelima. That entire sequence of events had taken perhaps thirty seconds to a minute. It didn't sound like a long time. Objectively, under normal circumstances, it probably wasn't a long time. Unfortunately, it was a very damn long time when the person you needed to find had panic-bolted into the dense, almost-primordial forest. He had seen which direction she'd fled, so he wasn't starting from scratch. However, it seemed that fear had given her legs wings. He'd lost her trail a few times, only to bring down mockery from other-Terry.

Way to run in rescue the girl, big guy, said the magical construct.

Oh, screw you, Terry thought back. You've seen my memories. I'm goddamn certain that there's nothing in them that would make anyone think I'm some kind of master hunter.

Stop screwing up my jokes with your facts.

"Yeah. Yeah," muttered Terry.

He managed to find the spot where Kelima had veered off onto a new course for, well, reasons, apparently. Terry couldn't discern those reasons, but he was giving her the benefit of the doubt that they existed. Probably. It took him longer than it should have to finally catch up with her. When he did, he found her staring around at what appeared to be some kind of stone ruins. They looked like something out of a 40s adventure serial. Or maybe that Charlton Heston movie that inspired a couple of guys named Steven and George to make a movie about a globetrotting archeologist.

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Terry tried to remember the name of that film. It had something to do with the Incas. He was almost certain of it. That entire train of thought was derailed as he watched Kelima reach out to touch a big symbol carved into a rock pillar. The exact type of big symbol that could only mean one thing. Some kind of booby trap was about to go off. Anyone who had ever seen an adventure movie from the 80s would have known better, but Kelima had never seen those movies. She'd also clearly never heard any horror stories from other adventurers about why you don't touch things willy-nilly in ancient ruins.

"Stop!" shouted Terry.

But it was too late. She turned her head to look at him as her hand touched the symbol. It immediately retracted into the pillar. Terry made a desperate lunge to either try to grab Kelima or push her out of the way. The rocks beneath her dropped away, taking her with them, and Terry's hand closed around air a half-second too late. That had led him to his current thoughts on the matter.

"Well, fuck."

He was genuinely at a loss about what to do, because there was no way to escape the trope-trap he found himself in. In one version of events, he went down into the hole to rescue the damsel. That was a well-established trope. In another version of events, he grimly carried on with the mission and trusted that Kelima would make her way to safety. Another well-established trope. If she was the main character in the story, he'd assume that she was going to grow stupidly powerful by overcoming all kinds of nightmarish horrors down in the hole. Except the hole would be some kind of labyrinth that would eventually take her to a secret door that opened into the lair of whatever monster was waiting on the mountain. If things were true to form, she'd arrive just in time to save him from a stock dire situation.

Except, he was at least half-convinced that she wasn't a main character. That didn't mean she'd die down in the hole or labyrinth. It just meant she wouldn't come out of it as an OP monster. She'd come out of it having narrowly escaped death a dozen times and with lifelong emotional trauma. Admittedly, that wasn't his problem, but it would be a problem. A problem that would undoubtedly make his life shittier if he let it come to pass. Yet, while he'd treated her like a sidekick or the stray dog tagalong, he'd also been powering her up as they went. She was more a student or disciple than a sidekick. Sidekicks tended to do better in the Unfortunately Separated trope scenario. As long as they didn't die.

"Goddammit!" shouted Terry.

No matter what he did, he was walking into a trope, and that was almost never a good plan. Except, he couldn't see a way out of it. It was a real-life example of the trope-22. You're troped if you do, and you're troped if you don't. Unless, thought Terry slowly, I just abandon the fetch quest. I won't get my swords, which will one hundred percent suck, but I could evade the tropes. He wavered there on the edge of that hole, trying to decide what to do.

Why are you lying to yourself like this, demanded other-Terry. You aren't going to give up on getting the unobtanium. Not when we're this close. You can see the fucking mountain from here. We also both know you aren't going to leave her down there to die, afraid and alone, in the dark.

Aren't you the one who said I was the biggest asshole ever?

Aren't you the one who was all worried about becoming a homicide vagrant?

"Just say murderh—" Terry started to say aloud, only to be cut off.

I'm never going to call it that, Terry, shouted other-Terry. Never! The heat death and collapse into a singularity of this universe will come and go. The expansion and heat death of the next universe will come, and I'll still never call it that!

Terry blinked rapidly as he tried to unpack everything the magical construct had just said.

"Wait," he said, "is that how it really works?"

Red No. 40 is the most common food dye used in America, said other-Terry in a complete non sequitur.

"What does that have to do with anything?" demanded Terry.

That useless piece of information was lodged in your meat storage, which means it's now lodged in my magical mindscape. So, when you ask me why I won't answer your question, it's because you made me know that.

Terry thought it over for a moment before he asked, "How did I know that?"

You fell asleep on your couch, and a documentary on candy production played on the TV. You don't remember it, but I can't forget. You bastard. Now jump down in the hole and save the jailbait.

"You really shouldn't call her—"

Just get in the hole!

"Fine. Fine. Jesus, what a stupid thing to get worked up about," grumbled Terry before he stepped off the edge of the hole and let gravity do what gravity does best.