NOVEL NEXT Ch.26: Rumble in Small Town
Belle led me to over to two yellow rubbery trees that as we got closer which began to cross each other into and odd arching X. that was crazy! Magic could do-
Before I could finish that thought Belle pulled me between the two trees which glowed and shimmered like the water’s surface. The next moment we found ourselves in a mellow sunset violet room? It looked like a room with a large hill and a little stream trickling through a corner but at the same time it looked expansive. Something about it just felt off, like I was off three degrees at an angle, maybe this room in something artificially made with magic or mana?
“Welcome to the little place of rest! This is our loading grounds for the mini town and a nice place for cuties to rest their pretty heads!” Belle said as he spread his arms out. But as he said cutie he looked at me and winked. Belle! PLEASE! Forget it! I angrily blushed at him, trying to intimidate him but all I got was a laugh. The gull! I am not cute, not one bit! “Steph was right compliments were the best way to tease people!” Belle said as he fist pumped. “Come over here my lost soul! We need to start to our loading process.” He added right as I opened my mouth.
I followed the cheeky cat to field of trees where people were sleeping. I guess everyone needs to relax sometime but they were making faces, some smiled while others pouted. I was tempted to snap a photo of a guy who looked like he ate a rotten dipper, his face was green and twisted in a cartoonish grimace. They all reminded me those videos of people playing VR games….. Belle said loading and these people are reacting in their sleep, does that mean this is some dreaming version of VR? Thinking about it, I looked at the incarnation I made were we goi-
“Over here! There’s a free tree!” Belle called to me, waving his free hand. I walked over but my thought slipped out of my hands, I’ll figure it out soon….. I think? “Just lay here against the tree and close your eyes.” He said as he sat down.
I slowly sat down, looking at my incarnation which looked nice in my opinion, as I blinked my eyes didn’t open up.
‘Beginning upload’
Who’s that? The voice sounded like a bored British girl that had other things to do.
‘Loading Loading Loading Loading Loading’
Ok I ge- I began before the voice rudely cut me off.
‘Loading, please wait’
You might have a cheery British accent but please let me fini-
‘Annoying. Please shut up as I load’
I- I’ll let you work. It sound like the voice was having a hard time so I decided to be patient with it. With her?
‘…….’
…… was she expecting me to give her more problems? Jeez! How hard have they been working this voice!
‘Good’
‘Loading complete. Please enjoy your time in, A Little Piece of Home. SIGH….’
I wanted to tell her she was doing a good job but I felt that might be a little patronizing to her. Instead I tried to give her a smile, hopefully she could see my face.
Then my eyes shot open, it was nice and sunny outside and very breezy. Suddenly a giant leaf flew past me, I almost jumped before realizing what it was, a really big leaf. Okay…. I looked down at my hand, wondering if I was shrunk or something, only to see a human hand in a red glove. I would’ve freaked out if I didn’t converge already and before that start again in this world. So I looked at my hand, I’m human again!? I wanted to smile and jump like I was a kid again but at the same time, I kinda miss the dragon strength. I wouldn’t be called cute anymore….
“Hey Oliver!” Came Belle’s voice. Looking to my left I saw a cute girl with short blond hair leaning forward to look at me. She smiled cutely while tilting her head. “How’s my clothes look now?” she asked with Belle’s voice, giving me a twirl. Wait the girl was wearing the same clothes Belle’s incarnation had.
“Belle?” I asked trying to better figure the situation out.
She stopped twirling and leaned to the left while tapping her chin with her finger. “mmmm not here. Here I’m Phoebe! The cutest girl!” she said stretching her arms out in a V shape. “So what’s your incarnation called?” Phoebe/Belle asked me with a happy voice. He/she seemed to be really happy here, it’s really sweet, I think I’ll play along with her?
“It’s Pinepen.” I said giving her a thumbs up.
“Well it is great to make your acquaintance sir Pinepen.” She said giving me a gallant bow, it was pulled off almost perfectly that butlers would be jealous. “I have come to escort you around our humble town, kind sir.” She said as she swung her arm out to present the town in the distance.
Looking in direction she presented to, I saw a dirt road leading to trees grown into buildings, others were made of sticks or rocks while, some had moss or dried grass as roofing. One building was a collection of mushrooms with glass like beads embedded into it and another looked like a mansion made up completely of webbing and wood.
“This is really cool! I think I’ll take you up on your offer Bel- I mean phoebe!” I said as I tried to walk only to fall down, face planting rather painfully? “Ow…? Wait that didn’t hurt?” I said in confusion.
“Nope! You could fall from the height of the world and ‘walk’ away like you just tripped.” Phoebe said as she gave me a hand to get up.
“Thanks, it’s good to know I can’t get hurt here but I guess it’s hard to walk with normal human legs…” I said sounding kinda disappointed.
“Yeah it takes a while to adjust if you use different leg types. An arachne tried a human build too and the moment they moved they face planted. All they did was lean but now situations like this or similar are called leans.” Phoebe said with a laugh.
Great, first day in a possible new community and I’m labeled leaner now, at least Belle wasn’t the mean type, so I should be safe from people giving me sass on my apparent leaning-ness. But Phoebe did something odd, instead of letting me go, she held my by the waist.
“Come on, I’ll be your support until you get used to it.” She said looking towards the path into town. Her arm holding my waist tightened slightly like a hug. Wow… this version of Belle is, pretty bold.
As we walked getting closer to town, I eventually got used to human legs again, it was weird to re-familiarize myself with how normal legs were supposed to work. If anything I miss the padding my dino feet had, it felt like a really well supported shoe, now that I think about it. Well anyway, I didn’t have to lean on Phoebe anymore, in the corner of my eye it seemed she was pouting. But she walked forward with a big smile on her face, leading me the rest of the way.
We passed several bunches of grass that stood as tall as bushes or trees, even small rocks looked like medium boulders. The dirt making up the path looked more like little pebbles of chocolate chips and kinda sounded like crunchy cookies as we walked on it. On the right side of the path was huge ball shaped flowers where a fluttering fairy (?) flew next to. It had large purple and red butterfly wings which kept it bobbing in the air as they collected a light blue powder from the flower. The fairy (?) made it into a ball shape before winding up a pitch and tossing it at another butterfly fairy, the ball exploding into a puff of powder which covered the other fairy in the powder. This other fairy grabbed their own ball of red pollen and tossed it in retaliation which missed the first fairy by mere inches.
Seeing these butterfly fairies left me wondering if these fairies were also incarnations because in where ever here was, I found that my body looked and even felt like the real thing instead of some bead toy. Even Belle’s incarnation, Phoebe looked like a real human girl and there were different body types too. But there these could easily be normal fairies too, still how did they get in here? There wasn’t anyone in that little town when me and Belle looked it over… hmmm.
“Welcome to a little piece of home!” she said as she presented the town to me. I didn’t even realize we were already here, that I lost my train of thought as Belle called out.
The town had several different people walking around, some were manning stalls attached to nearby buildings. I saw an archine and a weird white girl in a white dress with blue frills walking together, the white girl only had two eyes on her smooth white face. She skipped as she walked, every time she touched the dirt she would happily make peep noises.
There was a lithe guy whose body looked like was made of curled leaves to look humanoid, he had long pointed red transparent cones where the ears would be on a human. His legs ended in points while he hovered above the ground moving like he was skating. The strangest thing was a pot floated behind him with a bundle of four flowers growing from it, these flowers looked like monkeys and a few even had two petals tied up like a bowtie. The leaf guy hovered over to a building and the potted monkeys floated down to the floor. “Thanks a ton chap.”, “Yes it was quite kind of you to help us get around.”, “I will sing you a song later kind Mari!”, “I would rather eat toast right now.”
The three of the four heads all talked in a friendly approachable tone but the forth sounded like a teen that wanted to play a video game instead of being outside. The flower man they called Mari floated up into the air in a sort of hop before making a chattering sound and leaving.
Overhead a group of three fairies (?), one with orange and black butterfly wings, another with hornet wings and one with long wings like a beetle zoomed by. The butterfly called them too slow while the hornet called to give back their pouch and the beetle just giggled like they knew something the others didn’t.
As we walked further into town Phoebe said we had to greet her friend first because something special was being planned. She led me to a bush with several circular windows, one swung open as a skinny woman dived out of it. I was shocked as I saw her fall, was anyone going to save her! But then she lit up like an orange light as glassy wings formed behind her back. She then zoomed over to us in a crazed rush.
“Hi Mae-“ Phoebe started to call but was instantly tackled as the glowing girl hugged her to the ground.
“Phoebe! I missed you so much! Why didn’t you fly here!” Asked the girl. But before Phoebe could answer, the girl started kissing every inch of Phoebe’s face, leaving glowing glittery kiss marks all over that slowly faded. “There! You should be able to fly even faster!” reassured the girl with big smile, only an inch away from Phoebe’s face.
“Thanks for the blessings but that’s not why I took so long, I brought my friend along. I wanted to introduce you guys to one another.” Phoebe said, rolling her eyes with a smirk.
The girl sat up straddling Phoebe between her legs and looked at me. “OOOOOOH! They’re a hero!” she said before flying off Phoebe and cupping my hands in her’s. “You're sooooo coooool!” she said with sparkling eyes.
seeing her close up, she wore a white long sleeve crop top that hugged her modest breasts, while the sleeves opened up like pointed bellbottoms. Her top was also embroidered with a blue swirling fern design along her arms and chest. she also wore a odd gray almost white skirt that opened up in the front and looked like a trench coat that ended past the back of her knees with two pouches sewed to either side. The opening reveled a pair of light blue shorts held up in a white belt, the shorts ending an inch above the knees. Her pale orange hair was shoulder length but styled like hairspray model, a good portion combed to side and looking like the wind blew through it. She had a somewhat androgynous face and wore glittery sliver makeup on her eye lids which made her brown eyes look piercing like an eagle's eyes.
Well of course I’m cool, thank you for noticing! Feeling oddly smug and my mind happily laughing like a proud rich girl, I decided to show off a little, only Belle knew who I was, so I felt like playing along. Stepping back from the girl I began to pose for her, widening my stance and making an upside down V with my hands together.
“OHHH!” cheered the girl as she clapped her hands. I gave her another pose, I leaned forward while arching my back, crossing one arm up to my shoulder with my pointer finger pointing up while my other arm crossed over with my hand with a peace sign rest on my elbow. “AHHH! You’re so cool!” she said before looking at Phoebe who was also clapping. She then flew over to me and whispered something to me which I thought was a good idea so I nodded in agreement.
We both posed back to back holding up finger guns both looking at Phoebe. I then crouched facing Phoebe with one leg stretched out, holding out my arm like I was sending a blast. At the same time the girl faced Phoebe too, lining up with me and floated an inch off the floor and shot both her hands out like she was shooting a blast too. The finishing touch was two little explosions on our sides followed by a third larger one behind us.
Phoebe was blown away as she clapped like a maniac and even whistled at our awesome stunt. “Oh My Goddesses! I’m so lucky to have such amazing friends!” She shouted loud enough I’m sure the whole town heard her. That was actually really fun! I can defiantly see the appeal of having a separate identity.
“We make a good team, Hero person guy or gal! I’m Maeve.” Said Maeve presenting her fist with her knuckles facing me. I think she wants a fist bump?
“Ol-uh, I’m Pinepin. It was pretty fun to act out that.” I said trying to give her a fist bump. But she repelled my fist like a magnet, almost like Jaque’s barrier. She had a smile on her face but her eyes told me she was challenging me, to what I wasn’t sure but I REALLY wasn’t going to be showing any weakness.
I gave her a slow nod as my eyes leered my acceptance of her challenge, her own smile flashed teeth in anticipation.
“Uh Maeve! Pinepin just converged!”
I began building mana into my body, warming up significantly, I WON’T be a pushover. Maeve’s eyes became serious as our fists were now pushing against each other’s mana, it was like two rapidly spinning tops colliding with each other, coming in slow but batting the other away the moment they touched. The air around us slowly started to spin into a wild draft as we put more mana into our pushing fists, again the draft became a battering gust as we pushed harder. She wasn’t letting me in but neither was she getting any closer to my fist. Her mana would jab forward like a sword while mine would surge from her side, slamming her’s away. It was her pension vs my power and I could tell we were just starting up as Maeve started to glow orange, her wings appearing behind her and her hair began floating and turned a dark orange. Her jabbing mana started to speed up as if she had a machine gun peppering me every courter second. My mana being pushed back made me build up more mana as my body started to glow like a flickering flame, the wind turned into a maniac bluster which made all the plants shake violently from the force. Our mana pulled back as we eyed each other, my body shuddering as my muscles flexed and her face became as wicked as an insane demon, laughing with a huge smile.
We both bulldozed our mana at each other but before our mana could pummel into one another, both our hands were pushed up to the sky. Rocketing our mana high into the air like flaming fireworks which exploded after the two streams of mana touched. The whole area shook as a shock wave rushed across the area, pining people to the floor and sending whatever wasn’t nailed down, flying in different directions.
Once the shock wave dispersed and the dust settled there were only three people left standing. Me, Maeve and Phoebe.
“Whoa! No one could stand up to my magic before, you’re way cooler than you let on!” said Maeve in pure glee. She was definitely a wild girl but I felt oddly satisfied to have crossed mana with her, my heart was thumping and my muscles were twitching as if I had a good run. I really wanted to keep going but I quickly realized reason why I wouldn’t back down as my mind cheered like a wild and drunk fan at a sports event.
“What were you guys doing! You almost became a devil bomb!” Shouted an angry Phoebe. She looked pretty peeved and ready to blast us with her own mana and something told me it wouldn’t be gentle.
“She’s not wrong my little trouble makers.” Came a cold voice. All I could see was a purple blinding light, I think we pissed off the boss.
