Monster Island: Explore - Act 1

While the mysterious being's conversation does seem interesting, you should probably find Frei before you get yourself into any more trouble.

You flex your Beecep, and as the bees fly into the furnace they disappear much like Frei did. Shortly after they return, so you figure you should be able to do the same. You hope so, anyway.

Crawling face first into the furnace, the world flips upside down as you enter a portal. Your first feelings are that of nausea, in this fiery orange plane between planes. The sight is dizzying, and you can't quite make heads or tails of it before you begin falling to the ground. You land on your face, on a lump of red dirt. Surprisingly ashen, for dirt.

You cough it out, looking out at your... lack of surroundings. You are on another island, this one much smaller. It has a straight dirt path leading ahead into a shack seemingly crafted from large charcoal which you can hear... presumably, Frei, working on something. Aside from that... There is no water, or sky, or anything outside the island. You can't look at it because there's nothing there. Nothing. No color.

It frightens you.

In a hurry, you run towards the shack, and burst in to see Frei hammering away at an incredibly strange-looking implement. She notices you, but doesn't look away for more than a second.

"Oh... hey there Bumble.... What's up?"

>"What is this place? What are you making? How do I get back?"
Alternately,
>Steal the implement and run!

>Frei why the fuck do you have a portal in your furnace

"I am, concern? Confuse? A lot of stuff just happened- where are we? Why sky? Why no sky? Why no things?"

>"The void of vision outside robs me of courage. The lack of color, hue, and existence of a familiar sight that fill the empty spaces of my sight such as the sea and sky, terrifies me. Coming here might have been a mistake."

Questions race through your mind, you stutter and start before she looks at you with an unusually surprised face.

"Wait, don't tell me you've never seen a Pocket before? Oh, wow... You really are lost, huh? Alright, well, we can go back up top for a bit so you don't freak out too much."

She halts her work, throwing the implement up towards the roof where it lands in a pool of water hanging completely upside down. Gravity doesn't seem to apply here, to some extent at least.

You're taken back outside by Frei, as she leaps up the many feet between the shack and the portal, and suddenly with another wave of dizziness you are back on your original plane.

You vomit immediately.

"Aw... There there buddy."

She hands you a drink and you sip at it slowly. It cures your nausea in an instant, even making you feel lighter than before.

"Hehe, that there's ambrosia. Cures the side-effects of portals, and helps you stay healthy! Not a lot around though, so don't drink it all!"

She snatches it from your grasp as you almost take another sip.

Just then, a figure bursts into the house. They appear to be a tall, broad figure, wearing a clean black suit with incredibly large shoulders, a tie with an odd symbol that seems to depict an eye within a hand, and they have three cartoonishly large gloves.

One for each hand, and one covering their entire head. The head glove's fingers flop around with any slight movement, but the large cyclopean eye looks at you with a paralyzing stare.

"Hello there. You are Frei, correct?" They dismissively motion at Frei.

"Yeah yeah that's me. What do you want?" Her voice seems to take on a newfound aggressiveness towards this strange figure.

"You have not issued your scheduled payment."

Frei stands in silence, clenching her fists. A cold breeze blows in.

"Very well. I will close off Pocket access from now on the-"

"NO! P-Please wait, I can pay you, I just need to finish one last job, and then I-I'll have the payment, I swear." Sweat runs down her brow.

The figure stands in silence, before adjusting their tie and turning their back to you. "Very well then. I will return in 3 days time."

As he says this, a black cloud engulfs him from beneath, and he disappears.

Frei falls to the floor, defeated. You can see the figure from before, now. He's an abnormally normal human man, seemingly in his mid-thirties, wearing a bedraggled suit. He puts his phone away, and looks you dead in the eyes through the now-open door.

"...What are you doing here?"

Is what you think he tried to say, before the Snapjaw took a large bite out of his torso, causing him to collapse, dead. Now it is the one staring you down, and it is much more foreboding.

Still bearing a large bruise on its head, it roars, and charges towards the house, breaking the doorframe and towering over you and Frei in the enclosed space.

"Come on, seriously?"

Frei is now standing beside you, with a two-handed sledgehammer in her hands. It seems to be an extended form of her traditional blacksmith's one.

-BATTLE... CONTINUE?-

Bumble:
Status - CONFUSED

Frei:
Status - EXHAUSTED

Snapjaw:
Status - BRUISED, ENRAGED

Show Content

Inventory
Items
PDA [E]
ID Card [E]

Equipment:
Tattered Clothes [E]
Beecep [E] - Bee Construct allows you to manipulate summoned bees by buzzing and shaping them into objects.
Cap [E]

Name: Bumble 'Hatty' B.
D.O.B.: ˤ/ϗϗ/ЖД
Serial No.: 00-13

Activate Bee Construct; Bee Gattling Gun; Fill 'em With Holes and those Holes with Honey. Song To Hum; https://youtu.be/RPMTZfNSXYQ?t=461

Ask Frei, When you get a Spare Hot Second, what the heck is up with everything in this crazy place?

Activate Bee Construct; Bee Gattling Gun; Fill 'em With Holes and those Holes with Honey. Song To Hum; https://youtu.be/RPMTZfNSXYQ?t=461

This is what I thought right away! I was thinking of a bee gun but this is so much better.

Trick it so it charges into the furnace. That way, it'll be trapped and harmless.

The snapjaw roars loud, but you still start to hum. A flex summons a stream of bees that you shape and twist with a jazzy melody, forming into a gun...

But not just any gun, no. As the bees fill out a large round ammo wheel and a traditional stock, you are left with a Bee Tommy Gun, and you begin to fire rapidly.

The bees pierce the beast's fur, but don't exactly go through it. However, they do leave red spots from their stingers, and the beast scratches all around it's body in an attempt to rid itself of the pain but to no avail.

However, you think this might've just made it even angrier, as it's eyes become pure red and it charges violently towards you.

Just before it reaches you, it catches Frei's sledgehammer in it's fist, snapping it in half.

This gives you just enough time to rush in front of the furnace, goading it. It didn't need the goading really, you just felt like being a dick. It charges at you, and you duck out of the way with only a small incision on the back of your head to pay for it. The beast's lengthy maw gets stuck in the portal, and you see it's body flail around, unsure of what world it lies in.

It begins to violently twist and turn, it's joints at sickening angles and it's flesh warping with an otherworldly shape, before it bursts in a gush of gore.

Ew.

Frei gets up and looks at the house.

"Seriously? Today is not my day, huh...." She almost smiles, before she sees that you killed the beast by portal. She gulps.

"You... You... Oh, I guess I can't blame you. You don't really understand what's going on, huh?"

What the heck is up with everything in this crazy place?

Frei takes a seat and motions for you to do the same, which you do.

"I can't explain everything now, because we really don't have the time... But for starters, I'll explain portals. Portals are the connections between worlds, if you hadn't figured that out already. They're a violent, tumultuous zone, like the raging sea between two islands. Trying to cross between worlds on your own is impossible. When you stuck that Snapjaw in there, it got stuck in between worlds, which isn't the natural state for anything, really. As you could tell, when you went through the portal, you were nauseous and vomiting. After a while you get used to travelling between portals, but if you get stuck in one, or part-way between this world and a portal, you'll... well, you'll end up like the Snapjaw most likely. Splattered on someone's walls. I don't really understand the specifics of why this happens, it just does. Anyway, while I'd love to teach you more, I gotta clean up and then we gotta go!" She pats you on the back as she presses a button on the table, and the gore on the walls is sucked through the furnace, except it doesn't go through the portal, and just burns.

"Oh yeah, that's one more thing. If you don't have the intent of going through a portal, you can't travel through it. Portals aren't visible and only work if you know they're there, really. Or you believe they are."

She goes outside for a moment, before bringing a change of clothes for you to wear.

"Might be a little big, but I'm sure you'd prefer that than what you've got on now."

She goes out into the outhouse, presumably washing up.

You get out of your... well, bloody rags, at this point, and you put on the clothes. They don't fit very well, as expected, but you feel much more comfortable in the blacksmith's garb than bloody strips of cloth. They also seem to improve your defensive capabilities, if only marginally.

You wait outside for a while before Frei exits the outhouse, having cleaned off her clothes. She grabs her splintered hammer from inside, frowns, but ends up just taking the top half, because it has the actual hammer piece on it.

"Alright, let's get going!" A spring in her step, she heads to the north, deeper into the island, and you follow her.

The horizon is foreboding, with a large volcano residing in the center, and what seems like a dead forest lying all around it. The jungle turns more woods-like here, and in the distance you spot a large castle, off to the east. But you keep heading north, following Frei.

...

...

You've arrived at the dead forest. Blackened trees all around, not a particularly pleasant sight. There is no grass here either, just hard black soil.

Frei begins digging around in it, and after a moment pulls out a large black nugget.

"Here we are! Just what I needed. Now we can go back home and I'll be finished in no ti-"

Frei is cut off by a large shrieking sound. A creature falls in front of you, and screams again, but you manage to grab a look at it before it shrieks again. It seems to almost be a pterodactyl, yet has a large bat head, with an elongated beak lined with serrated edges.

It keeps screaming, slowly approaching as it does so.

Seems like you're in for it now.

-BATTLE START-

Bumble:
Status - DAZED, OK

Frei:
Status - DAZED, OK

???:
Status - FINE

Show Content

Inventory
Items
PDA [E]
ID Card [E]

Equipment:
Blacksmith's Garb [E] - +Minor Defense
Beecep [E] - Bee Construct allows you to manipulate summoned bees by buzzing and shaping them into objects.
Cap [E]

Name: Bumble 'Hatty' B.
D.O.B.: ˤ/ϗϗ/ЖД
Serial No.: 00-13

>Frei: Better start killing it softly with your tongs.

Activate Bee Construct Combotech; I wanna Bee Your Sledgehammer
Song To Hum; https://youtu.be/g93mz_eZ5N4