Board Thread:What Would You Do?/@comment-28718853-20200220150152/@comment-38691345-20200223154305

I looked at the cave, her home and a very obvious trap, the outer edges of the entrance decorated with red sticks of dynamite like Christmas lights on a rich show offs home. Then I looked back to the manticore, my eyes slowly gazing over the flat plain of my ‘hiding spot’, a simple perch on a large rock in the center of a group of hibernating trees, surrounded by cold, dry, dead leaves, the type that would go up if a Hinezumi came nearby.

Honestly, I’d thought this was idiotic. The mayor had said that he’d heard of my many ‘exploits’, and said I’d be perfect for the job, then proceeded to pack me with explosives. I’d actually almost laughed in his face; this had to be a joke. If he’d heard of my exploits, he knew explosives and I, while close friends, didn’t exactly get along. But I played along with the ‘joke’, and by the time I realized that it wasn’t a joke, I was a bit too dedicated to it.

I finally looked at the manticore, drinking in her presence and calculating what I could do with this. I fidgeted with the small detcord that led to the cave, slipping beneath the leaves in a feeble effort to hide itself.

“Uhh”, I said, my eyes flicking around her for an extra hesitant moment. “What the H-E-Double Fuck does it look like I’m doing?”

The manticore was obviously surprised by this response, and recoiled as though she’d been punched.

“I’m surprised you found me”, I complained. “I thought I had a pretty good hiding spot.”

As I mourned the loss of my plan (or lack thereof), the manticore stared at me.

“A good hiding spot? What?”

She flinched at a flash of silver, ready to retaliate to an attack from my silver dagger that I’d pulled out.

“I was going to hide over-“

“What?”

“I said I-“

“No, what’s with the knife? I thought you would stab me.”

“Don’t tempt me”, I said. I gestured with it, pointing to a small hole in the rock wall of the cliff that surrounded her cave, cloaked in shadows from the curve of the cliff, the inside marked with shadows so dark that were someone to slip within you would never see them. She looked towards it.

“Was gonna hide in there, but that’d be too obvious.”

“What?”

“I was gonna-“

“I would have never seen you! That’s a perfect hiding spot!”

“It’d be the first place you’d look.”

“If I knew it was there, sure!”

I sighed and stood up, skipping away from the stone. She followed, fluttering onto the stone.

“Whatever, you got me.”

“Oh, you’re a submissive one; I’ll have fun with you...”

“Alright just let me-“

As I began to turn, a box of matches to detonate the detcord fell from my pocket. In a panic I dodged down, trying to catch them. I got the box, and one match was caught by the detcord, which was quickly tangled on my arm. With the hand holding both the dagger and the matchbox, I sliced at the detcord right below my hand and right above the match.

The manticore was doubled over in laughter at my supposed idiocy, so didn’t get to see exactly what my master plan was. As I slashed the detcord, the matchbox grated on the match, igniting it. The flame quickly shot downward thanks to me having filled the matchbox with oil earlier on that day, and shot down the detcord. It didn’t actually lead to the explosions; it simply led beneath the leaves. The leaves ignited, allowing me to pull a trick I’d learned as a child.

If the leaves were dry enough (which they were) and and there was a reliable ignition source, said leaves would go up like an explosion. I had already coated my clothing in a flame retardant element a while ago that I had made as a byproduct of a bleaching element for mustard gas, so the blast of fire didn’t much affect me at the moment; even if it did, I was too pumped with adrenaline for me to feel anything other than my excitement and hear anything above my heartbeat, the roar of the fire, and the abrupt halt to my enemies laughter. I slashed at her with my silver dagger, a weapon that disguised itself as Demon Realm silver, though was not. I slashed at her strategically as she regained her bearings, having a very small window of opportunity to do this before she realized what was going on and the flame retardant element began to fail (it wasn’t the greatest, and my face wasn’t covered in it).

After hitting her knees, an ankle, her right shoulder, and in between her shoulder blades, I booked it. The bottom of my boots had almost melted, and made a shlicking noise as they tried to stick to the ground. The manticore flew after me as I ran for the hole I’d pointed out earlier. The reason she didn’t know it was there before was because I’d made it.

I leapt for it, expertly throwing my dagger into a slat in the stone and tripping a mechanism inside as I fell. The manticore blinked in horror, watching a silver flash within the hole and hearing a concussive blast as the cannon inside exploded, releasing an iron cannonball right into her chest. The next moment, she found herself flying across the gap between the two cliffs surrounding her home, slamming into the opposite wall, nearby her cave home. The force of the manticore slamming the cliff side caused a minor rockslide, making one rather large rock bound down the cliff like an excited puppy that weighed nearly a ton.

This boulder struck a stick of dynamite. Dynamite was a rather touchy explosive; if a stick was knocked over it was liable to go off. So a gigantic rock slapping it like an angry girlfriend was definitely enough to ignite that dynamite. The cave went up, and so did a pillar of dust. I raised my hands to protect my face as rock shards shot around the area, slicing and cutting into my skin and armor. I waited a good minute or so before finally peeking out of my arms, painfully cut like I’d played with an army of cats.

Where the manticore had been sat a giant pile of stone. I felt a twinge of guilt; I hadn’t totally intended to kill her, only rough her up and convince her to relocate. I slowly got up, taking my dagger from the rocks and walking to the stones.

“Hey”, I said to the corpse beneath them. “Sorry ‘bout killing you. Didn’t think you’d die; I didn’t mean for the dynamite to go off. Please don’t haunt me, two ghosts has been enough for my whole life. Have a nice life on the other side.”

The village welcomed me rather happily, leading me right to the mayor. They’d seen the smoke and dust and heard the explosion, so it was rather obvious what had happened. The mayor welcomed me inside his office, paying me with a sack of gold coins.

“Thank you. I think you need immediate medical attention”, he said, pointing to my wounds. I waved him off as he insisted, aware of what he was trying to do. He’d charge me all of my gold he’d just paid and more for healing, a week or so in an inn, and repairing my equipment. I’d come in and done what I needed, so proceeded to leave. As I left, I dropped decent quantities of food and gold into the begging homeless’ pockets, hopefully they’d notice them soon, and as I entered the forest, I opened my coat. I pulled a small, enchanted sack from it, pulling one of the healing potions he’d tried to sell me out and chugging it. What kind of idiot had a cabinet full of expensive potions on display without even locking the door of it? The guy had just been asking to be robbed of everything he owned.

He was a douchebag. I’d gone through his records on my way to the manticore; he used his ridiculously high taxes for personal expenses, had killed two of his wives, and raped one of his daughters, leading her to suicide. I’d obviously circulated this information, pickpocketing it onto the right people. He’d quickly be killed. Besides accidentally killing the manticore, I felt pretty good about myself.

I was awoken by the usual.

“Are you going to keep running?” Came the cheerful tittering of the Cheshire Cat that had been following me for a week. As most heroes did, I’d allowed quite a few monsters to get away out of my own guilty conscience, and as usual, most of these monsters had Ganges up to follow me across the world and make me their ‘husband’. The Cheshire Cat was one of the more recent ones, right in front of (in order) the dragon, the pair of miniature horse centaur twins (they were too adorable to kill, and they’d been the reason I actually started to realize not all monsters were evil) and a lamia.

“You just keep collecting more girls”, the lamia hissed. “Eventually, I’m going to get awfully jealous.”

“Yeah, asshole!”

I blinked as the manticore stomped over. I grinned cockily at them. At this point this was almost a game, and a game which I enjoyed.

“How’re you alive?”

“These psychos dig me out and helped me. Now I’m gonna punish you for that little slip up.”

“Nah.”

I ignited a small smoke bomb, grabbed my stuff, and booked it, laughing the whole way. This game would continue for a few years, as I inadvertently collected more and more of these monster suitors, until I would finally be caught by a kobold (she was just too cute to run from), and live my days out after as a rich, former hero, living a life of luxury and happiness with my numerous wives, and even more numerous children.