Chapter 217: 218: Ooh

“You IDIOT!” yells Jubilee up at her. Fresh is only barely able to hear Jubilee’s voice, which is being overpowered by the growl of the giant-ape sub-boss that they had found on floor ten. More aptly said, it had found her. “I told you to stay back!” they shout, their tone clearly one of vexation.

Fresh’s hair moves from side to side as the wind, caused by her sudden upward movement through the air, pushes past her face. Jubilee looks so small from up here, then again, so do the others. She lifts her hand, waving to her friends. “Sorry!” she calls down, trying to grip herself free from the clutches of the giant hand that is holding her aloft. She places her hands down on the top of the massive index-finger, which is the size of her entire body, and tries to push herself up and out of its gentle grip. But she finds little success. “I’m okay!”

Turning her head back around, she looks at the giant, sub-boss ape-thing that is holding her with one hand, beating its chest with the other.

They had entered floor eight of the eastern-dungeon and Jubilee had warned them that this would be a sub-boss floor. The eastern-dungeon does them every eight floors, apparently. Anyways, she was told to stay back and to let the three of them handle it and Fresh did exactly that, listening very intently to her friend’s warnings. She was determined to not mess it up this time, like she did their first boss fight together, back in the northern-dungeon.

Well, one thing led to another, as they tend to do. She saw some very shiny sea-shells that she wanted to give to her friends, to help them feel better. In her pursuit of what apparently were tiny, rare-spawn crab-creatures, she got swiped off of the beach by a giant hand that had shot out from the jungle, just on the edge of the ‘room’.

Now here she is, hanging up in the air like some kind of prize being dangled above her party. The sub-boss didn’t seem to want to hurt her, it just kind of… wanted to take her as a hostage. Maybe this is some kind of boss-mechanic? She supposes that if this is the case, then this is the best scenario. Better her than one of her friends, right? She wouldn’t be missed in a fight, like one of them would.

Fresh sighs, crossing her arms and looking up at the giant ape. “Hey, Mr. Monkey? Can you put me down, please?” she asks.

Mr. Monkey does not respond, opting instead to continue snarling at her friends.

Fresh tilts her head. Apparently her ability to talk to forest-monsters doesn’t carry over to ‘tropical forest monsters’ and what are they, if not just monsters from particularly wet forests? Oh well, what does she know? She looks back down. It’s a good thing she isn’t afraid of heights. Hmm… well, maybe she can at least curse the thing, to make the fight easier? Fresh lifts a finger, touching the tip of it against the rough skin of the sub-boss. She stops…

Then again, the fight doesn’t seem to have been ‘triggered’ yet. Sure, she’s been foisted away. But so far, that’s all that’s happened. Her friends are down there talking amongst themselves and she’s up here, just hanging around. It might be best to wait, so that she doesn’t start the fight. Fresh looks out towards the shoreline, trying to see if she can see those shiny crabs from here. She hopes that they didn’t get away. Their shells were really pretty.

Her eyes wander back down as she sees a blur of motion. She blinks, leaning over the finger to look down at the beach. Basil and Shamrock are leaving.

“Hey!” yells Fresh, but she doesn’t think her voice reaches them anymore, now that she’s been lifted higher up. They’re leaving? Surely the loving Basil and the loyal Shamrock would never just… abandon her, right? Distraught, she looks and watches as the two of them walk back out through the gate to the last floor, clearly and undeniably leaving. “Guys!” shouts Fresh, looking around in confusion.

Nothing comes in response, except the frantic beating of her own heart and a welling of wet in her eyes. This is happening because she’s a bad friend, right? She should have seen this coming, they all have become such good friends with each other and she was always just being a clingy, grabby burden. Of course they’d leave her behind. What do they need her for? She’s just making their lives difficult. This situation right now is the perfect example. Fresh cries, looking around for Jubilee, but she can’t see them either. Now she howls, lost to her always overflowing emotions.

Something large and heavy presses itself down against her head and she looks at the giant sub-boss. “Ooh,” says the sub-boss, its voice booming around the floor, as the bottom of its free, massive index-finger rubs the top of her head, like she were some kind of doll being gently played with. Annoyed, she lifts her arms and tries to push the finger away. But it’s far too heavy and strong for her to move even an inch.

Maybe if she’s lucky, it’s just going to crush her to death now and she can respawn somewhere and run after her friends to apologize and to promise to be less of a pain in the future.

An hour passes. Fresh has run out of tears at this point and simply sits there, her front half flopped over the top of the large hand holding her in the same exact spot in the air as before. “Ooh,” she says in defeat, her spirit having been broken by the incredible solitude that she finds herself wallowing in. The dead look in her eyes reflects her incredible misery.

“Ooh,” says the giant-ape, sounding overjoyed. It beats its chest with its free hand.

Another hour passes.

Fresh has decided to make the best of this new life of hers. She may have ruined her second chance at being alive, just like her first one, but maybe this third one… maybe this third chance at a new life is going to be the one? She sniffles, rubbing her red eyes on her shoulder as she sits there on the now open giant-palm, still in the air, running her hands through the tufts of fur on the giant sub-boss's shoulder to groom it.

It’s not like there’s anything else to do.

Another hour passes.

Fresh has become like the sub-boss, she has learned from its ways, learned from its mannerisms, she is now like the ape and the ape is now like her.

“Ooh!” says Fresh, her mouth still full of coconut, beating against her chest with her free hands before then pointing at a spot in the sand on the beach below.

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“OOH!” replies Mr. Monkey, following her instructions. He runs a massive finger through the sand, drawing the next line in the sand-portrait. Fresh smiles, seeing the beautiful picture that Mr. Monkey is drawing of herself and him, standing together on a sunny beach. Both of them are smiling.

The sand turns red.

Fresh blinks. The finger falls down from his drawing hand, landing on top of the portrait. “MR. MONKEY!” yells Fresh as the creature starts to howl in pain, pulling back its hand from the oddly shimmering beach. It rises up, screaming, but despite its pain, it’s always careful with the hand she is in. Fresh looks back down, seeing the glimmers of a thousand crystals catching her eyes. Glass. The entire beach, all at once, has been transformed into one giant, jagged pane of glass that is already moving their way.

There isn’t time for a combat-menu to appear. There isn’t time for Fresh to warn Mr. Monkey, there isn’t even time for her to swallow the last of the coconut before the world below them explodes. The entire beach seems to move, as if the crashing waves had found a way to rise up the shore and then further still. But it isn’t water, in an instant, like a guillotine falling down to its apex, a massive sheet of glass which seems to span across the entire floor, for the entire length of the beach, shoots through the room in the blink of an eye.

Fresh only feels a slight lurch. Her head turns around and she sees the red glass behind them, reaching all the way across the jungle where it starts to shatter and splinter into jagged crystals.

The top half of Mr. Monkey begins to slide forward, down the upwards-angled pane of glass, while his bottom half slides the other way.

“OOOH!” yells Fresh, crying anew now as she reaches for his giant, worried eyes. Her hands, stretching out for him, are suddenly yanked to the side along with the rest of her body as something grabs her. Fresh yells, flying through the air.

Shamrock, sitting on their anqa, Thyme, who has navigated its way up the sheet of glass, hoists her off of the hand and the three of them make their way down, the anqa squawking in protest at the things being asked of it, Fresh is screaming, reaching back for Mr. Monkey, whose shadow begins to fall their way.

A massive bubble, made up out of shimmering, radiant white-magic, appears all around them, just in time as something massive, dead and bloody falls down on top of it.

Razmatazz

-) *N64 donkey-kong rap intensifies*

-) If you've read Respawn, these are the same kind of dire-ape that were present there. Useless, but fun fact

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