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Post by Avery on Jul 24, 2013 22:52:48 GMT -5
Hey Dan I was thinking maybe we should Memory Lane this thing so it doesn't get buried in Forum Events? It was memorable to me!
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Post by Dan on Jul 24, 2013 23:09:53 GMT -5
Certainly. ^^ Just wanted to post Err Behr's origin story, as requested, and then I shall move the thread. Err Behr's Origin in Three Parts The water splashed on Azalea's hand as she sat on the edge of the fountain. Her hair was wet from the mist, but she didn't mind; it felt nice to keep cool in this extreme heat they'd been having. Footsteps broke the gentle burbling sound of the fountain, and she looked up quickly. There was a woman looking around, a woman Azzie had never seen before. She jumped up.
"Hi there!" she said brightly. "Nice to meet you!" She held out her hand to shake. The woman shook it sheepishly.
"Ah, hi. Uh, this is embarrassing. I came here to sell things, but there's nobody else here."
"Oh! Well, I'm sure people are around. It's early yet." Azzie replied. "Can I see what you're selling?"
The woman brightened. "Absolutely!" She opened her bags and pulled out a small painting wrapped in a baggie. "It's artworks done by local artisans." She squatted down and set them gently on the cobbles.
"Ooh!" Azzie said, admiring them.
"It's a shame. There'd be more, but the city's suddenly come up on a paint shortage due to the corporate paint war," mused the saleswoman.
Azzie's head shot up. "Paint war?"
"Yeah. There are a bunch of paint companies competing and Tabloid Town's become a complete mess already." She shook her head.
"Odd," Azzie said. She kept looking at the paintings for a while, but eventually had to tell the saleswoman she didn't have enough shinies to buy anything. The saleswoman sighed, deciding to stay awhile longer. Perhaps she'd been right, and the suburb's other residents would be out and about soon enough.
Azzie didn't even think about it. She flew straight home and reached into her tree, scribbled a note and pinned it to the hammock- Gone to T-Town, will be back in a couple days probably. And then she flew to Tabloid Town. The city wasn't remotely far away from the suburb where she spent most of her time; the suburb was technically a part of it, though it had grown and expanded so much it was almost its own town by now. But Azalea's home was quite a distance from both suburb and city, and at any rate Tabloid Town had always been so large that it was easy to get lost in. She flapped along on her way, and before long it was easy to see that the saleswoman had been right. Houses and buildings were painted bright colours, and the smell of latex was heavy in the air.
She grinned.
She landed once she reached a street she recognized and examined the nearest building, which was painted jet-black. She made a face; if people were going to paint buildings odd colours, at least they should be pretty colours! She sat on the steps, trying to catch her breath, when she saw a very fluffy pink pony approaching with a grin.
"What the heck are you doing out here?! Get back to Netwaffle where you belong!" The pony bowed and scampered off. "Sorry about that. She runs all over the place. Erm...can I help you?" The woman with the frizzy hair stepped outside and noticed through her peripheral vision that her house wasn't as bright as it used to be. She turned around...and screamed various swear words inappropriate for the forum.
"It's the paint war that's going on..." Azzie tried to explain, feeling more than a little embarrassed at seeing a grown woman throwing a tantrum over her house. She calmed down after a minute or so. " Paint war? ? Does it come with revenge?" she asked. Azzie nodded, even though she wasn't entirely sure. "Sweet! I'm coming with you! I'm more of a NTWF Mafia fan than anything else, but revenge sounds awesome. Especially if it's...." she fell silent.
Azzie didn't even say that she wanted this ball of energy on the team. But she didn't want to disagree with someone so bent on revenge. She sighed. "There's a shortage of paint supplies in town right now--how about we go someplace no one really visits?" she suggested.
Cassie beamed. "I know just the place."
People said the ruined place outside the old Mafia II sub-board was haunted. Strange moans echoed from between its empty buildings, there were signs of odd activity, and any traveler who passed through was bound to be harassed.
But when people said haunted, they said it in an annoyed sort of way, often with a rolling of eyes. The moaned words were often along the lines of "the roleplay is overrrrrr" and "I wanna write a post but there's nothing else to wriiiiiiiite!" The people harassed came home annoyed and sprinkled with orange and black fur.
Cassie and Azzie ventured cautiously into the shadowy streets. For now, they could only hear the wind whipping through the empty buildings where forumers had once convened and plotted.
They found her in the especially shadowy building where the mafia had once debated their grisly murders of everyone on their side and never the detective. There was a bar in the building that served the mafioso's favorite drinks on tap; the coke tap dripped with brown liquid.
"Well - h'llo there." The forumer sat in as dramatic a position as possible, at a table in the darkest corner of the restaurant. Azzie propped open the door and a beam of light struck the speaker in the face.
"Ow!" Tiger complained, squinting. Her fur and clothes was dirty and her glasses smudged. The table practically gleamed with rings from glasses of empty cola. "More forumers trying to drag me back, eh? Well, you can't make me leave! I'm staying!"
"What, forever?" Cassie asked skeptically as she groped in the darkness for the blinds.
"That's right! Or at least until the next Mafia roleplay!"
"Tiger," Azzie said, while Cassie opened the blinds, "This is ridiculous. You can't stay here all alone. Not to mention, you're bothering the 'Bloiders."
"Says who?"
"Everyone," Cassie interjected.
"No, I mean, who says I can't stay here? I have my rights!"
"We say you can't stay here," Azzie said. "It's really sad. And. Uhm...
"It's maybe a little pathetic," Cassie finished.
Tiger pounded the table with a fist. "So's the mafia roleplay being over!"
Cassie glanced at Azzie and swirled her finger beside her ear, whistling the sound of a coo-coo clock. Azzie nudged her with an elbow, and Cassie sighed and said, "Well, maybe, instead of hiding out in the mafia headquarters - why're you here, anyway? Mick was the least mafia-y of the mafia - Anyway, we have a better idea. You should get invested in a new game."
On cue Azzie pulled a flyer out of her pocket and held it out in front of Tiger, afraid of ruining it by placing it on the soaked table.
Tiger squinted. "Color Clash? Some sort of painting game....What does this have to do with me?"
"We need a third person for our team," Azzie said.
"We'd really appreciate it," Cassie added.
"So it's a favor, eh?" Tiger leaned back in her chair, bonking her head against the wall. "Ow. Hmm. Well...I suppose I owe you, Cassie. And you're one of the nicest people on the forum, Azzie, I'm sure there's a law against disappointing you. ...And to be honest, the coke is getting a little flat." She took a sip and grimaced. "Why do I keep /doing/ that!?"
Azzie and Cassie remained silent, suddenly not certain they wanted this crazy striped lady to say yes.
"...Will there be roleplaying?"
Cassie gave Azzie a wide-eyed "oh shoot" look. Azzie bit her lip. "Uhm...I'm sure I can talk Dan into something,"
Tiger grinned and drained the last of her glass. Slamming it down on the table, she declared, "Well then, ladies - you have yourself a third team-mate!"
Cassie shuffled to Azzie's hammock, her dread increasing with each step she took on the nearly white sidewalk. She walked slowly, not wanting either of her teammates to see her like this, immobile, injured, useless. She sighed. The way things had gone yesterday, it had seemed as though nothing bad could happen.
--- "Then it's settled." Cassie slammed her hands on her desk, like she had seen a famous lawyer do hundreds of times. "As team Err Behr, we shall trick the other teams; make them think we are nothing! Are we nothing?!"
"No!" Tiger roared.
"Are we going to give them the slip and use the classic wifom technique?!"
"Yes!" Azzie squealed.
"Fantastic!" Cassie stood up. "We'd better get some rest, for tomorrow we'll paint the town red! Literally!" Cassie pulled back the My Little Pony and Samoyed covers of the two spare beds, respectively.
Tiger and Azzie exchanged glances. Who would get which bed...?
" This is just like a sleepover, only we're planning the demise of other paint companies!" Azzie squealed, settling on the bed covered in ponies.
"Uhm - shouldn't we go over our strategy...or watch a movie?" Tiger's tail flicked hopefully.
"Okay--the plan is this: tomorrow morning we meet at Azzie's."
Both girls began to protest, but Cassie cut them off. "Let's just meet there tomorrow morning and everything will be fine." She breathed, curling up on the pink, fluffy carpet.
--- Azzie saw her first and started running towards her. "What--how?! Where were you?! We didn't see you last n--" Azzie sniffed, and her voice faltered. "Cassie...you didn't..."
Tiger leaped off of the hammock, grimacing at the sight of the slings. "What's going on?" She growled. Tiger's whiskers twitched. "Root beer?!" she hissed in disgust, with a sound like someone would make after stepping on a slug while barefoot.
"I tried to talk with the other teams last night." Cassie said quietly.
Azzie's eyes grew large. "You mean they hurt you?!" She whispered.
"Yes--no--Well, kind of."
"Out with it!" Both girls stared at Cassie incredulously, awaiting her escapades from the night before.
The brunette's head throbbed from both the pain of too much sarsaparilla and the pain from trying to remember through the haze of blurred figures and events.
"All I can remember is...the bar, challenging someone...then another person...then another person...there were dishes and bricks and puns and textwalls of death flying this way and that...but mostly puns and bricks. " She paused to take a deep breath and rub her aching temples while her teammates stared in horror. "When I came to...Professor Birch was wrapping my arms up and shaking his head. He didn't say anything when he saw that I woke up, but he didn't look too happy..." her voice trailed off and she cringed, waiting for her punishment.
"It's going to be a few months before your arms start getting better, huh..." Tiger murmured.
"Aw, Cass," Azzie crooned. "Starting a bar fight for the sake of Err Behr...what were you thinking?" Azzie chided.
"Yeah, and who's going to take your place?" Tiger added. Cassie shivered. She'd forgotten about the most important thing: Color Clash would be starting soon.
"Let me think," she pondered, racking her brains for characters to use.
“Guys. Get your bus money ready. We’re going to Netwaffle.”
---
Anxiety chipped away at Fluffle’s mind like a chisel on plaster. She shook her head, trying desperately not to think. An arrow zoomed over a roof and pierced a chicken, and Fluffle gasped. That would be great for the new waffle-wing special, but it wasn’t her target! Fluffle shook her head violently, trying to clear her head as she floated toward her chicken. Perhaps she could make a sort of headdress out of the feathers.
“Fluffle.” A familiar voice called out weakly.
The pony turned around to face the three odd women, one of which could kill her at will, one of which had the same aura as….no, she couldn’t think of him!, and one who looked down on her with love. Fluffle smiled at Azzie, who returned it. “We need your help—“ she started. “Or else,” Cassie threatened quietly.
Fluffle’s ears flattened. “Pbbblpblbpt?” she asked.
“We just need you to paint with us,” Azzie continued.
“I’ll make sure Mick is okay. It’ll help take your mind off of him.” Tiger tried to put a hand on Fluffle’s furry shoulder, but her arm phased through.
“Or else.” Cassie muttered under her breath.
Fluffle’s ears pricked up at Tiger’s words. She nodded. She’d pack up all her paintbrushes and take a bus to Tabloid Town.
Aiden would take care of the bakery.
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