Super Otaku Brawl - Round One: Traverse Town

Anger Crabman woke up from his nap much as you'd expect: with a explosion of hoarse expletives about how he was missing boners for this shit., standing in the middle of the street. It felt like he'd been asleep for months.
The first thing the Deathless One did upon awakening was wander aimlessly around the town square in a circle, shouting at passers-by.
Waddling through the city streets was getting to crabman. The whole place seemed to be like one of those postmodern art projects, or something. All surreal and crazy. Crabman loathed it. It offended his sensibilities- as someone who spent his whole life on the pursuit of the tedious, it was simply too interesting for him.
"Stop loiterin', ya nasty fukin cartoon animals, don't you have nothin better ta do?", said crabman to whichever goofy cartoon animals were listening. He didn't care. "Back in Trol Miami, none of you hecked up slime was all gettin in my way loiterin, they weren't there at all, because Trol Miami's my private resort, n' only i live there. It's just golf courses and cabana jazz bars all the way ya know? Nonea you whippersnappers hangin about. Just atmosphere." He said that last word with the kind of bitter satisfaction only a mean old man can muster.

...

Nancy nodded hesitantly at the man's assurance as she crept from below the table. Disorienting was one way to put it. Still, there must be some way out of this mess that didn't involve a duel to the death... She shuddered. It wasn't an option. There must be some way out of this...
She hefted her typewriter onto the table. As unbelievable as this was, perhaps keeping a diary or log of sorts would help to clear things up. Jake cocked his head between mouthfuls of crackers as she began to type, quick fingers clicking across the black keyboard.

Foreward:
This is a diary. That much, I'm sure you have guessed. What you probab-
ly have not is the circumstances from which it was born. They are not
exactly the standard conditions which one starts a diary. Neither are
they exactly the circumstances which are normally conducive to diary
writing, but I shall endure.

I am writing this from the tearoom of a man with an inordinate number of
dogs, located within a village apparently called Traverse Town, having
been drafted into what I'm told is

Nancy paused a little. Trying to think of a less melodramatic way to put this.
She couldn't think of one.

a fight to the death.

With that, she was startled by a sound like an old grey man bashing a pane of glass with a cane made of bricks and the face of James Purefoy as Solomon Kane.
She nearly jumped out of her seat, glanced to the window.
Sure enough, there was an old grey man bashing the window with cane made of bricks and the face of James Purefoy as Solomon Kane.
"Ey whassap", he inarticulately emoted, gesturing wildly at her typewriter. "Dozzat thingamajig get cable? I'll buy it fromya."

Hours in the past.


The garden shed of the high palace of Her ArcMajesty Doomshine O'Bloodington had long since fallen into decay. Roughly ten thousand years had passed since her brief reign, and this outhouse was all that was left of it, all that had not crumbled to dust.
Well, that and the garden.

The gardener saw to that. A self-repairing hedge-trimmer drone which had kept the place, a lush oasis of beauty amidst the desert, clear. The verdant lawn shone against the mirrored walls of the crevasse where the garden was now situated; a few thousand years of sand had built up and become quite a gorge around the garden, which was carefully maintained to be exactly where it was back then, exactly how it was back then.

Crabman had always found the place tasteless. Staying somewhere like this, somewhere that never changed? He was surprised the robot wasn't mad yet. The trick to not hating immortality was to embrace change, not painstakingly undo every grain of it. Well, apart from the ever-decreasing trend of whippersnapper behaviour, of course. That was a pretty frustrating kind of change.
That, crabman supposed, was why the man in the moon was irked so by the state of the world. The colour green wears on the eyes after a while.
He kicked a piece of dirt. The drone beeped angrily at him.

The sky seemed to cloud over. A gust of wind buffeted Crabman's hair. Looking up, he was graced by the familiar star shape of a Trolternian Army Navy corps Eaglefucker.
It landed in the duck pond, crushing the mummified ducks. The drone hurried over to rebuild them as a figure stepped out of the troop carrier.
A four legged figure with a gatling gun mounted on its back. Two other trols followed.

Gruffdad Soupgal II smiled a gap-toothed¹ smile. His power armour shone in the reflected sunlight.

"So," he barked in his quietest scream, "You did read the letter, I see. I wasn't expecting you to show up."
"ya promised thered be free roast beef sammiches n punch nshit." Crabman replied.
"Right. Privates! Bring the picni-"

He was cut off by one of the trols next to him, a tall, lithe woman with the universal socket staff and technotrench coat of a Cybermancer. Her horns were hooked, drowning amid black hair which framed features sharp enough to stab someone to death. A metallic eye darted left to right, scanning the scene.

"Mister Crabman.", she stuttered. It wasn't a nervous stutter. It was one of the unsettling ones. Weird enunciations flowed through those syllables, like someone who is unused to having physical vocal cords trying to speak.

"My apologies for requesting you make such a long journey. I would have offered to give you a lift, but I know how you prefer walking to other forms of transport such as the one in which I have arrived in along with my compatriots."
"yeh.", said Crabman.
"I shall introduce myself, then, for you must be wondering precisely who I am?"
"yeh.", said Crabman.
"I am Tinkle Bellis Le Von Jehovette Kroger, ex-Cybermancer of the Fifteenth Blood-Firewall and Saviour of Email. It is a pleasure to finally meet you."
"yeh."

She scowled, brow furrowing around the bulbous clown nose that was uniform for a Cybermancer. The Grand Marshmallord Leftennent Rightennant Drill Saregent Pope Of The Great Trolternian Army Navy Corps' Private Privates finished setting the picnic.

"Shall we discuss the reasons for our conference over lunch."
"Yeh."



¹ it is common practice to give fake suicide teeth to the Grand Marshmallord Leftennent Rightennant Drill Saregent Pope Of The Great Trolternian Army Navy Corps. These are filled with poison gas and are used in the event that the Grand Marshmallord Leftennent Rightennant Drill Saregent Pope Of The Great Trolternian Army Navy Corps is captured by enemies; a rare occurrence. Due to being a horrifying genetically modified centaur monstrosity, the Grand Marshmallord Leftennent Rightennant Drill Saregent Pope Of The Great Trolternian Army Navy Corps is immune to all poisons, so the gaseous toxin released from the tooth instead just kills whoever is holding the Grand Marshmallord Leftennent Rightennant Drill Saregent Pope Of The Great Trolternian Army Navy Corps captive.

Nancy's fingers twitched, tapped against the familiar hardness of her typewriter. She'd rolled herself up into a bundle of nerves in preparation for something stressful and terrifying. Instead she'd found herself sitting in a living room amid a cacophony of dogs, drinking a seemingly infinite supply of tea.
All the while, Crabman had droned on about ancient dynasties and whippersnappers, lost jungle temples and the stock market.
All that did was give her no easy way to release the pent up terror. She needed to get out of here, find somewhere quiet, and think things over.

Anger Crabman spoke of times long gone, times which seemed frankly absurd. He was either very old, very mad, or both. Still, she'd typed out some notes. Maybe they'd come in handy some time.
She doubted it. Who cared about the legacy of Largenose III or Doc Coulton. Especially as they were probably entirely fictitious.
She glanced at Jake, preoccupied with the crackers. Anger Crabman, blustering about a secret meeting with some kind of magic IT consultant and a talking horse. Mr. Radcliffe, making the face of someone whose guests have outstayed their welcome but is too polite to ask them to leave. Jake, fidgeting on the back of a chair. He chirped softly to her.
"What is this guy's deal? Half of this doesn't even make any sense."
"I don't know. Nothing here makes any sense. The whole idea of a crazy battle and everything. I mean, this whole town is full of... Talking animals!"
She paused for a second after the outburst, aware that she'd interrupted the ancient Trol's droning. He didn't seem to care. A nervous smile crept across her lips. "...No offense, I mean."

Tobias cocked his head. If he had any recognisable body language he'd be displaying all the signs of worry. He didn't know precisely who Nancy was just yet, but she was clearly in over her head. If she was in over her head, then he was in deeper, after all, his head was technically a lot closer to the ground. She also seemed least likely to turn on him, maybe after Crabman by virtue of having no real motivation to do so, other than just being generally ill-tempered.
"It's no problem.", he squawked. "Would you like to find somewhere with less dogs?"


She stopped to consider it; Jake seemed to be the nicest person so far, for a very unspecific definition of 'person'. One more inclusive to feathers.
She fidgeted with the gun in her pocket, something he probably wouldn't miss. Birds were essentially eyes with wings, after all.
After some thought, she spoke.

"Yes," she said. "As a matter of fact, I think I would."

***

Crabman had been sceptical as to the intentions of the cadre. Revolutions happened all the time, and the two he had spoken to had all the signs.
He tried not to involve himself in revolutions now-a-days. Best to leave things to run their natural course. He always had a bit of a soft spot for the underdog, but if he started taking sides again, people would remember he existed other than as one of those abstract footnotes in the Guinness Book of Trol World Records.
Last time, he'd ended up being fired in a rocket into the sun. It had taken him almost six thousand years to get home to exact his revenge. By the time he returned, empires had risen and fallen, and the Trol race had returned to a hunter-gatherer state.
That had sucked. Hunter-gatherers were boring as hell.

He helped himself to a croissant that had all the texture and palette of cardboard.
"You are of course here because you were invited," said Tinkle Bellis, "but the reason you were invited is this; As you are no doubt aware, Baron Von Wasteland isn't actually the real prime minister!"
Yep, revolution.
"He is in fact guided by some unseen force, the same force who commands the enigmatic and very mysterious unit we have identified as the Salyer."
Crabman nodded. He didn't really know where they got their information from, but he genuinely didn't care. He was missing Boners for this.
"The prophet of mya," -that piqued his interest- "has said that this force may be inextricably connected to you in ways even he cannot fathom."
Crabman piped up. "whozza proffit? th olly one I kno is... well shes too busy for that seein malarkey nowadays nshit."
It took a moment for Tinkle Bellis to interpret that. She scowled. "What?"
"all im sayin is that shes way busy yeh whozza proffit?"
The woman gestured to the third troll. He was wearing a tinfoil hat and was vibrating like a hamster fed nothing but dr pepper and vitamin C tablets for its entire life.
As if hearing the other two talking about him, he juddered over.
"hey wat up", said Crabman.
The man doubled over backwards and whispered, lips black and cracked; "As The First One's Lemniscate Spool Unwinds, So Shall The Thread Fray And With It Shall All Worlds, For The Pulley Is Adjoined Unto Creation Itself. The First And Last, Decider Of All. Also Your Cable Subscription Is Due Renewal."
"id betre do that then thanks pal"
"No Problem."
Soupgal grimaced, every disgusting muscle in his face tensing up.
It was horrible.

***

In the present, Crabman shook his head, finding himself in a room deserted but for far too many dogs and their particularly irate owners. "aw whertheheckd those guys go? I was gonna tell em about seasson 4 of trol eastenders. them hackey writey gal bird sack kids. sure cant trust em bout anything these days", he muttered.