When Alpants was satisfied that the two girls were Okay he turned to Akira.
“Please make sure they don’t go doing anything stupid,” was all he said before he launched himself into the air headed towards one of the remaining groups of [Dribers].
“OH HO HO HO! We showed that food who the boss was. Although we can’t eat it now…” said Bora looking at the charred remains of the two [Dribers].
“Well… yeah, but I think Alpants did most of the work for us,” said Fleur.
She looked away from the dead creatures and returned to her spot at the top of the mountain of junk treasure so she could watch the last of the fighting.
Akira and Mileena continued to climb up the mountain of junk treasure while Borra continued to snoop around the base of the Junk mountain.
“Hey, Fleur! I found one of the holes they came from. It’s huge,” said Borra.
“Really?” asked Fleur. She jumped down from the top of the junk mountain landing next to Borra and out of Akira and Mileena’s view.
“Let’s see where it goes!” said Borra.
Fleur shrugged her shoulders, not really caring.
Before Akira or Mileena could say or do anything to stop them, the two jumped inside the hole.
“Come on Fluffball, we’ve got to drag those two back here,” said Akira while jumping off of the junk pile.
“What about me?” asked Mileena.
“Stay here. If we’re not back by the time the [Dribers] are killed, then you need to tell Alpants where we went!” said Akira.
He waved to Mileena and then jumped into the hole to chase after the two trouble makers.
Mileena was not happy with just standing around and stomped her foot in frustration.
But she still followed what he asked her to do since she didn’t want there to be a misunderstanding with the disappearance of everyone.
***
The rock tunnel grew darker as Akira jogged down the tunnel and moved away from the entrance the light quickly disappeared turning to pitch black.
With his enhanced vision he was able to catch a glimpse of a dark figure turning down a tunnel ahead of him. With such poor vision, he was unable to tell if it was one of the girls… or something else.
Akira activated the skill [Life Detection], his eyes let out a flash of yellow as he chased after the two girls down the tunnel he thought they went down.
As he turned the corner of the tunnel his skill was still activated and he saw two bodies outlined in a yellow glowing light. The two bodies were as bright as torches and were now running down the far end of the dark tunnel.
“Fleur! Borra! Come back here!” shouted Akira.
His growling voice echoed off the tunnel walls but the two yellow glowing bodies did not stop and continued to run down the tunnel and disappeared from his vision when the [Life Detection] skill ended.
As he ran down the tunnel he placed his hand on the wall to help keep his balance in case he stepped on anything that might trip him.
The wall underneath his hand was surprisingly extremely smooth even though it had been drilled out by the nose of one of the [Dribers].
When Akira reached a 4-way branch in the stone tunnel, he stopped and focused his ears on the distant echoing footsteps. It was little use as the echoing footsteps seemed to come from each of the tunnels making it near impossible to find the right path the two girls had taken by sound alone.
He sniffed the air to try and get a better idea.
“What do you think Fluffball?” asked Akira.
Fluffball walked to each of the 4 tunnel entrances and sniffed the ground and the air.
“Yap!” said Fluffball after finishing his sniffspection.
“I thought so too,” said Akira, nodding his head.
They picked the farthest right tunnel and again started to blindly run down the tunnel.
The walls of the tunnel grew smaller and shorter the farther they moved and soon Akira was forced to stay in front with Fluffball following behind him.
Their wandering in silence only lasted for a few more minutes before they started to hear the sound of battle ahead of them.
Akira put more strength into his legs as he ran even faster down the cramped tunnel.
The tunnel once again started to widen and inclined up to an exit which was glowing with a bright white light nearly blinding him due to his eyes being used to the darkness of the tunnel.
“You damn Thieves!” shouted Fleur.
“Taste some of my fiery ice breath of justice!” shouted Borra.
“Fwuu… Cough, Cough, Cough… uhh… I feel like I’m going to be sick… Bluuuurghhhh!”
“Why are you getting sick in the middle of a fight, Borra!?”
Akira exited the tunnel and entered into a large cave that was covered in glowing white snow-moss which lit up the entire cavern.
Near a large pile of ‘treasure’, Fleur was fighting with two small flying creatures trying to protect Borra who was bent over holding her stomach. She was getting smacked around and hit in the head with their wings.
[Theef Brying Munki lvl 100]
Akira activated the skill [Shield slam] and rocketed forward to slam into the two [Theef Brying Munkies] that were trying to scratch Fleur’s face with their claws.
They were knocked flying and slammed into the snow-moss-covered wall, knocking them senseless for a few seconds.
Before they could flap their wings and get out of danger Fluffball shot past Akira and let out two blue ice attacks which slammed into the [Theef Brying Munkies] bodies freezing their wings.
Akira sent two blue [Cross attacks] flying towards the frozen [Theef Brying Munkies] and severed them into four parts.
“Yap…” Fluffball was sad that he had not been able to land the final blow and walked back over to Akira sulking.
The remaining 20 to 30 [Theef Brying Munkies] screeched and chattered from the safety of the ceiling as they hid behind the stalactites.
“Borra are you OK?” asked Akira walking over to the two girls.
“I’m fine… Bleeeeeeh….”
Akira took a step back as a freezing liquid spewed out of Borra’s mouth.
“Really, I am fine. The fire just came out wrong. I think I may have swallowed some of it… BLLEEEEEEEH!”
Fleur stood as far away as she could while still being able to pat Borra on the back with the tips of her scaled fingers.
“How’d you end up in a fight with those things? Wait, why did you two just jump into the hole?” asked Akira. “It’s dangerous to do stuff like that!”
“When we got here we found those mini fast food trying to steal the junk that the big food had stolen,” said Fleur ignoring Akira’s other questions.
“That’s right! We stopped those thieves cold,” said Borra, who was now wiping her mouth with her scaled arm.
As if to prove her point one of the [Theef Brying Munkie] popped its head out from behind the stalactite and threw a piece of junk at Fleur.
The blue rock bounced off her forehead and fell to the ground.
Fleur clutched her head as she looked up at the [Theef Brying Munkie]. Red fire flared up as her anger grew.
“You damned fast food! I’ll…” before she could jump into the air to start fighting the group, Akira grabbed her shoulder and slammed her back down.
“Hot hot hot!” said Akira waving his armored hand trying to cool it.
Fwosh! Fluffball tried to help by letting out a frost breath that created a layer of ice on the outside.
“Fluffball… thanks but…” Akira was forced to smack the frozen armored hand on his leg to break off the ice.
“There’s too many of them for you to handle,” said Akira looking at Fleur.
Fleur still fuming picked up a piece of junk and threw it at the [Theef Brying Munkie]… which it caught.
Nearly ten other [Theef Brying Munkies] jumped at the first to try and steal the treasure. They fought before one of them was able to fight off the others and kept the treasure for itself.
The 20-30 plus [Theef Brying Munkies] all looked to Fleur with pleading eyes, waiting for her to throw something to them as well.
This only made Fleur angrier so she decided to just ignore them.
Akira walked over to the two dead [Theef Brying Munkies] and found one of the severed frozen arms was still holding onto something it had tried to take from the pile of junk treasure.
He pried open the frozen hand breaking off a few fingers before he was able to pull out a yellow gem.
Ding!
-
A very important gem for the very unimportant [Super normal bracelet].
Akira was jolted with the memory of the gems and [Super normal bracelet]. With all that was going on he had entirely forgotten about it.
“Fleur… Is it alright if I take this?” asked Akira.
Fleur looked up from inspecting the pile of junk treasure.
“Eh? You like junk rocks like that?” asked Fleur.
“Not particularly, I just thought it would be nice to have this,” said Akira.
“Sure,” said Fleur with a wave of her hand. She continued to throw pieces of junk treasure into different piles as she sorted everything.
Borra walked over to Fluffball and began to thoroughly inspect him. She even started to pat him, causing Fluffball to give an annoyed look towards Akira.
“You are quite skilled with ice, I am very impressed,” said Borra.
Fluffball only responded by swatting her hand away with his tail.
“OH HO HO HO! I have decided that I will allow you to be my minion!”
Hearing this Fluffball snorted and turned his head away from her.
“Hey! Are you listening?”
Fluffball ran over to Akira and hid behind him separating himself from her and stared at her from between Akira’s legs.
“Look I have food~!” said Borra, pulling out a stick of cold mystery meat.
“Borra stop that. If you want a minion like that, just go find one yourself,” said Fleur as she continued to sort the junk treasure.
“Fine~. What type of minion is he?” asked Borra.
“Fluffball is not a minion, he is my companion. He is an Ice wolf and they can be found in great numbers up north. But Fluffball… is quite special. Plus I have trained him since he was a small pup.”
“Yap!” said Fluffball.
“Alright! I will go north and get me a minion companion as well!” said Borra.
“I won’t allow that,” came a stern voice from behind them near the tunnel entrance.
Akira turned to see Alpants and Mileena entering the tunnel with a few of the other guards.
“What! Why?” asked a pouting Borra.
“The north is far too dangerous right now,” said Alpants.
“But they live there!” said Borra pointing at Akira.
“And we are constantly in danger. The reason we came here with you was to get material to try and create a cure for the dangerous Molten Onyx Plague that is affecting a large portion of the north,” said Akira.
“Thank you for your help in keeping them safe. I will see to it that you receive the minerals that you need,” said Alpants.
