Scene #9788: Half Minute Hero

Owner	Pose
Kale Hearthward	The Kingdom of Crescent is one of several little kingdoms throughout this region. They all seem to follow the typical 'postage stamp kingdom' pattern - someone raises a little army and a little castle (more like a fort) and starts calling themself King or Queen, 'negotiates' borders with their neighbors, and then starts taxing whatever little villages are around. There's something else that springs up. Either by societal pressure, existing structures, or maybe just spontaneously existing (by some sort of sporogenesis, maybe) in each and every kingdom there is an Evil Fortress, helmed by a Dark Lord. Typically in these kingdoms, there's not any real sort of trouble happening beyond the sort of background 'countries the adventuring party isn't paying attention to' evil activity, so don't worry too hard about it. Well, okay, maybe do worry a bit about it, but what the forces of assorted are actually here for is diplomacy. It's pretty routine - show up, exchange some token gifts, have a tour of the kingdom, have a formal dinner, then hop on the ship or caravan to the next stop. Right now they're on the tour part. "This is our farming village," says King Crescent, gesturing to it. "Here is the inn. Here is the shop that sells healing herbs. Here is our shrine to the Time Goddess." https://i.ibb.co/Y7HpZX4H/SUDA-MEGAMI.webp It's a marble statue about one and a half times the typical person's height, depicting a goddess holding a huge hourglass and a beautiful blue bird on her shoulder. There's a stone bowl at the statue's feet with a handful of gold coins in it. "Here's the dark forest full of evil monsters. Maybe don't go in there." "Here's our coastal harbor town. There's the shop that sells specialty silver swords." "There's the barrier that separates the Dark Lord's castle. You can't cross it without the magical prism key - which we've misplaced, not that it matters." "And now we're back at the castle!" The royal tour montage ends. Maybe this was all very mundane but it's also basically the most interesting things here, so it's what gets shown off as the pride of the kingdom. "If there aren't any questions, then I'll call in the feast!" says King Crescent.
Ru Li	The tour is so blisteringly fast that even Ru Li's enhanced senses have trouble keeping up. And it's so odd for a bar-...for a foreign king to give their own little tour. But then, Ru Li supposes, something as inconstant as kingdoms like these must by necessity not have time for the bureaucracy needed to run a real kingdom, right? And a...a dark lord just sort of shows up? A constant for these people? What? Ru Li is bewildered the whole time. He does at least pause momentarily to examine the goddess. He decides that she is very pretty, and that he would perhaps like to talk to her god-to-god about this whole situation, but that he is not arrogant enough to demand it and that she clearly is a Maintainer and therefore outranks him. "You. Misplaced?" "The. Forest full of evil monsters?" "...what?"
Team Timekeeper	Ever since the resolution of the Storm Reformation Bill, Team Timekeeper has supplanted the FDMO as the Foundation's outreach program to the multiverse. Sonetto is, officially, a diplomat and ceremonial ambassador, as well as Vertin's right hand assistant, so it's basically her job! She doesn't really mind. If a paper is put in front of her, then she's briefly mind controlled into fulfilling the task until it's completed. She is accompanied by, for whatever reason, the least diplomatically-suited member of Team Timekeeper, even worse than the hulking scarecrow who's incapable of speaking. Poltergeist, a short girl draped in a white bedsheet that completely obscures her body, with eyes cut out like a ghost costume, shuffles along behind her during the tour as if at any moment it'll end with her being brought up to the gallows for her execution. "This is our farming village," "Okay." "Here is the inn." "Okay." "Here is the shop that sells healing herbs." "Okay." "Here is our shrine to the Time Goddess." "Oh, she's pretty!" Polly blurts out, hiding behind Sonetto. Sonetto looks over her shoulder, then back up at the statue, thawing from her polite diplomatic haze to actually aesthetically observe something in the environment. "Oh. She is. Thank you for showing us." "Maybe don't go in there." "Alright. I am a trained field agent, so if we are attacked, rest assured that I am capable of combat.")] "If there aren't any questions, then I'll call in the feast!" "Your kingdom is very beautiful, Your Majesty." Sonetto, who mostly exists as a face to put to the name of 'the St. Pavlov Foundation', just sort of smiles and dispenses niceties until the mission is complete. "I don't believe I have any questions."
Ru Li	"She is very pretty," Ru Li agrees with a bit of a quicksilver flush to his cheeks. "A very pretty goddess."
Team Timekeeper	"The. Forest full of evil monsters?" Sonetto, like an encyclopedia, dispenses helpful information to Ru Li at the drop of a hat. "Critters that are sequestered away from civilization within dangerous wilds are often more hostile to individuals that come across them, due to their relative unfamiliarity. Thirty five percent of all critter-related fatalities among Foundation personnel in 1999+12 occured in forests." "A very pretty goddess." "Yes." Sonetto smiles about something to herself, patiently waiting for the King to call the feast. "Like Mrs. Tamamo."
Kale Hearthward	"Yes - are there not evil monster forests where you come from? How odd." "We are trying to find it, but well, it's not like anyone will need to go over there ever, and it keeps the Dark Lord out, so it all works out!" King Crescent claps his hands together. "Alright! On to the dinner! If everyone will take a seat-" "King Crescent! Your tiresomely peaceful kingdom ends today!" The booming, magically amplified voice came from somewhere far off to the east side of the kingdom, where the barrier and Evil Fortress are. Conveniently, there's a telescope up on the roof, if someone wants to get a look at the Evil Fortress, where a snake demon is standing on the roof of the Evil Fortress shouting across the divide. "Your quaint farming kingdom has offended me for the last time! For I have been given the ultimate weapon with which to deal with you: the Spell of Destruction!" The snake demon unfurls a large scroll. "Oh wow this is long. It'll take me thirty seconds to cast it - I mean, I've decided to destroy your pathetic kingdom in thirty seconds, to give you just enough time to quake in fear!" "The Spell of Destruction!" King Crescent pales. "That'll destroy everything! Quickly heroes! You must stop the Demon Lord!"
Ru Li	Ru Li is about to say something about the feast when, well. The Evil Overlord literally appears out of nowhere on top of their fortress and shouts that it'll take them thirty seconds to recite the Spell of Destruction. Ru Li takes exactly one second to wonder if he's being pranked again before he decides that he'll risk it some other time. He nods politely to the Timekeepers. "Would you like me to shatter the barrier?" He doesn't really wait for an answer. Instead he simply leaps off the castle, hard enough to shake the whole structure (and leave a pair of footprints in the stone). He lands next to the barrier, reels back, and slams both hands into it hard enough to quake the area. Behind the barrier, the Belial Riser appears, and, on that side, smashes against the barrier with crackling red lightning. If this doesn't work then, hey, the Timekeepers are probably better suited to finding the key than he is! Good to have backups!
Team Timekeeper	"King Crescent! Your tiresomely peaceful kingdom ends today!" "...?!" Sonetto gasps and wheels around, spotting the Evil Overlord atop his castle. As she whips out her ornate glass stylus as if it's a gun, Poltergeist shrieks and sinks halfway into the ground, sheeted-hands covering up her face. "Ah-! Your Majesty, please be careful! Stay in place and I will conjure a barrier!" Ribbons of light trail out of the tip of her glasfeder to scrawl beautiful glowing cursive across the air, in time with her rapid chant of, "Uguale raggio mi chiude in un centro di buio." It twists itself into a cord, settling in a perfect circle that encompasses her, Polly, and the King as Ru Li leaps out to contest with the Dark Castle's barrier. "Would you like me to shatter the barrier?" "If you are successful, I will disarm the scroll! We do not have much time!" Meanwhile, Polly has taken a mere fraction of the thirty seconds of casting to come to terms with her own imminent (second) death, burbling and crying and generally making a bunch of noise. "Noooooo--! I don't want to be killed by the Evil Overlord! I liked the farming village! I haaaate snakes!"
Kale Hearthward	How long is thirty seconds, anyway? Humans are bad at keeping time (gods of bureaucracy maybe less so) and tend to do things like write 'the silence stretched on for several minutes' without stopping to really think about how long a minute actually is, and thus how incredibly awkward a multi-minute conversational pause (or kiss, or scream, or etc) would actually be to play out in real life. But at the same time they also vastly underestimate time. How long does it take to get up, go to the kitchen, pour a drink, come back, and sit down? The seconds tick by far faster than predicted. Every little motion, every bit of hesitation or indecision, every little intermediate step that one doesn't think of when planning out their route. The phrase "Would you like me to shatter the barrier" takes about three seconds to say, for example. A few seconds of travel time. A second to reel back and slam his hands into the barrier. Several more to break it. Several more to reach the Evil Fortress, by whatever means. Another few (but only a few, it's small) to navigate it and reach the Evil Lord. Maybe time for a few attacks - not enough for a whole boss fight. And then it's over. The Spell of Destruction finishes, and spreading out from it in a rapidly expanding radius, everything starts exploding, a wave of destruction violently evaporating the very land, with all above it following- --- --- "Oi. You're not the usual lot." The Time Goddess descends to Sonetto's protective circle, which managed to hold fast while everything around it is gone. Along with her, in a protective bubble, is Ru Li. "Bugger me, there's usually another guy here to take care of things when this stuff happens. You lot shouldn't have gotten caught up in all of this." She claps her hands together once the bubble's deposited Ru Li on the only remaining existing ground in the whole kingdom. "Okay. Short version, these rat bastards have been doing this Spell of Destruction business constantly and I've had to step in to give the heroes do-overs."
Ru Li	Well, that goes sideways. The Spell of Destruction goes off, and- There they are, in front of the very pretty goddess. Ru Li looks at her as he falls backwards, his balance heavily shaken by the sudden jerking of time and space. He really needs to stop getting caught up in these pocket dimension things. It would be very nice if he could stop having these regular, debilitating headaches. "You are very pretty," he says as he puts a hand to his head, because it's the first thing he could think to say and he's really not much in the 'I can say a lot of complex things' right now. He tries his best to listen, he really does. He really really does. At last, he manages a, "...why?" He probably means 'why do they keep doing this'.
Team Timekeeper	A long time ago, Sonetto confided in Lilian that the greatest weakness of her arcane skill is the time it takes for her to recite her poetry to incant. It's something she practices diligently, but there's only so quickly she can repeat a full sentence or two of Italian in order to convert the charged arcane energy of her shield into a bolt that would blast the scroll out of the villain's hands. So when everything explodes and then goes silent, Sonetto slowly lowers her glasfeder, breathing heavily. Polly gingerly lifts up her head and burbles, "Oh god. Is this what Hell looked like? I don't rememberrrr..." "Please don't speak like that, Miss Poltergeist. We are still alive." "Oi. You're not the usual lot." "Hello." A little numb, floating on her shielded island in the ocean of blackness, Sonetto's first feeling is disappointment in the goddess's voice. Blinking that away and shaking her head, she reaches down to give Ru Li a helping hand up when he's deposited on the ground. "Okay. What do we need to do?" "... Really? Um, isn't this crazy? Wasn't that, like, a crazy powerful spell? I think-- how do we know this isn't all a part of the spell of destruction?! And now we're trapped in this horrible nothingness forever until we give up and stop breathing and--" "Ah, Miss Poltergeist, this is the goddess from earlier." Polly, having hidden her face in her hands during her little tantrum, raises her sheeted-eyes up to look. There's a short pause, where one could imagine her jaw hanging slackly. "Oh. Hi ma'am. Sorry."
Kale Hearthward	> "You are very pretty," "Yes. I know." "So, why? They've all got these shitty petty reasons. The kingdom's too beautiful and it must be destroyed. The kingdom isn't beautiful enough so it must be destroyed. The people love money too much. The people don't love money enough." She counts on her fingers. "One of them was mad because there was too much water. The little shits all blend together, really." "The real head-scratcher is who it is that keeps giving the Spell of Destruction to these bastards, and why they're doing it. Yuusha - he's the other guy - and I are trying to track them down." "And now we're trapped in this horrible nothingness forever until we give up and stop breathing and--" The Time Goddess coughs. "It's not that sort of adventure. You're safe. Made my job easier, really, I'd probably have pulled a muscle trying to protect all three of you otherwise." "So! Do-over time. I'll reset the clock for you lot, and if you need more time you can just go visit that shrine in the town and I'll reset the countdown while leaving most everything else the same. Basically infinite time, long as you can keep up with the offerings." "Speaking of offerings!" She holds out both hands, palms up, and makes a rubbing motion between her finger and thumb. "Go ahead and make with the tithe business, and we can get this show on the road."
Ru Li	Ru Li looks at the Time Goddess as she makes a rubbing motion with her fingers. "I...am also a god? I cannot, erm, I legally cannot make offerings to you. It would be a breach of etiquette and Yinghuan law. It would be considered, er...a bribe." "Is there...possibly a way around that?"
Team Timekeeper	"Made my job easier, really, I'd probably have pulled a muscle trying to protect all three of you otherwise." "Oh, phew. Thank goodness." Poltergeist shudders, then looks around at the entire rest of the vaporized landscape. "... Y-yep, us three, that's right. Three... heroes... of... oh, god. Did you save me instead of anyone else?" "Go ahead and make with the tithe business, and we can get this show on the road." Sonetto stares blankly at her awaiting palm, then glaces aside at Ru Li. She doesn't have a similar excuse, though it does feel a bit weird to pay tithe to a goddess she doesn't worship. Still, it seems rude to deny her when she did save their lives? Sonetto withdraws a sharpodonty from her tiny purse and places it into the goddess's hand, whereupon the little lion mouth in the center of the coin proceeds to open up and bite her. "Okay. Um, I do not have a large amount of sharpodonty on me currently, as I was not prepared for this when arriving at my diplomatic mission."
Kale Hearthward	> "Three... heroes... of... oh, god. Did you save me instead of anyone else?" "That's your job. I don't save the world, you don't manage the timestream, we all stay in our lane. Alright?" The Time Goddess narrows her eyes at Ru Li. "I guess I can give you a freebie and call it professional courtesy," she says to Ru Li, reluctantly. The coin bites her. "Ouch!" She holds it gingerly by two fingers, staring at it. "Was hoping for gold, but I'll take what I can get. Alright!" She snaps her fingers. "Your quaint farming kingdom has offended me for the last time! For I have been given the ultimate weapon with which to deal with you: the Spell of Destruction!" The snake demon unfurls a large scroll. "Oh wow this is long. It'll take me thirty seconds to cast it - I mean, I've decided to destroy your pathetic kingdom in thirty seconds, to give you just enough time to quake in fear!" "The Spell of Destruction!" King Crescent pales. "That'll destroy everything! Quickly heroes! You must stop the Demon Lord!"
Ru Li	"Thank you! I am very sorry about this!" Ru Li bows a full forty degrees to her, just like he would his own siblings. He genuinely sounds upset. He'd really like to give her something as a professional courtesy, too. Maybe...maybe next time he'll give her a gift. Gifts are not technically bribes as long as you aren't asking for anything. Right? That's some bureaucratic shit he can wrangle. Oh, wait. Professional courtesy. Of course, he can work with that next time around. OK, so what do they do? What do they need to do? How do they stop a spell from going off in thirty seconds? Even before the King is speaking Ru Li is leaping from the castle to the forest. There may be something in there, and his senses are radial, after all. He might be able to find something they can bring back with them to help solve the problem. And if not maybe he can get a sense of the lay of the land so they can try it again. And again. And again. He's already decided he's going to help save this place. And he doesn't break his word.
Team Timekeeper	"Was hoping for gold, but I'll take what I can get. Alright!" Helpfully, Sonetto explains, "Sharpodonty are made of over seventy percent gold. The modern formula for their alchemization produces identical material results to the oldest excavated examples of arcane currency from the early days of the Roman Republic, though the design on the face has changed over centuries." Poltergeist tilts her head to look aside at her, blankly disbelieving at her attitude. But then, it's right back to where they were! Poltergeist immediately freaks out, which could appear jarring from a linearly temporal point of view if she hadn't basically been doing that this whole time. "--Oh god, we're back already?! I thought we'd have time to prepare! Wait, wait, what do we even need to--" She's doing that for the entire thirty seconds until the world ends again. Meanwhile, Sonetto is extremely efficient at doing the exact same thing she did the first time around but faster. Only a handful of seconds after the loop resets, an array blooms into being on the side of the transparent barrier shielding the castle, and Sonetto slicesher glasfeder down through the air like a knife. "Ed e subito sera!" Giant magical crystal shards push out into the air, then slam in sequence against the barrier to shatter it and themselves, scattering short-lived stars away from the impact.
Kale Hearthward	Ru Li's frantic radial searching finds - the barrier's prism key! Except it's broken, the silver clasp holding the two pieces together has been broken apart. Maybe there's some shop somewhere in the kingdom specializing in silver work that could repair it? The sequence of required events seems to be as follows: Get the broken key, run it to the harbor town, get it repaired (possibly involving another mini fetch quest for materials), run it to the barrier, open the barrier, find and fight the boss. It turns out not to matter this loop because Sonetto's busted open the barrier, but at least the non-gordian-knot solution has been found. Things go faster this time. Ru Li and Sonetto both reach the Dark Lord's chambers with seven entire seconds to spare - an incredibly short amount of time to many, but after dealing with the thirty second loop, it feels like a simply luxurious amount of time now. "You're too late!" yells the serpentine Dark Lord, the eldritch letters on the scroll lighting up one by one as the Spell of Destruction nears completion...
Ru Li	Sonetto does a perfect job. Next time around they'll be able to handle this faster. But Ru Li knows there will be a next time. He can already tell. The Dark Lord is right - they're too late. So, instead, he breaks into a very very very fast run. Seven seconds. Six. Five. He busts down the door of the temple without even thinking about it. Four. He digs his hand into his pocket. Three. He grabs a single credit and slams it on the altar as he shouts "PROFESS-" Two. "IONAL COU-" One. "RTESY!"
Team Timekeeper	"You're too late!" Poltergeist would, in theory, be incredibly useful for cutting through every barrier to grab the key, but she's completely occupied with freaking out for thirty seconds. Sonetto, at the Evil Overlord's chambers, raises up her glasfeder, but gathering her arcane energy after expending so much of it to blast the barrier open is just too slow. "Fainter, dimmer, stiller each moment, now--"
Kale Hearthward	clink "Your quaint farming kingdom has offended me for the last time!" The Spell of Destruction has only now started casting, with only the very first runes of the very first line of the scroll lit up. Sonetto's still in the boss's chamber, right next to the serpentine Evil Lord. Her glasfeder is still powering up. "Professional courtesy, and maybe a date sometime," says a voice near Ru Li as the coin vanishes.
Ru Li	Oh. Ru Li's face takes on a silver hue at that. He takes off at a run again to find a way to rebuild the key, but as he does, he says, "I may or may not have a significant other so please allow me to sort that situation first because it is very complicated!" Yes, he can run and talk at the same time. Alright, how to rebuild the key. How to rebuild the key. He bolts to the farming village. Farmers. Blacksmiths. They'd have a way to rebuild the key. Sonetto's in the barrier so they can buy a few more seconds of delay. Rebuild the key and it might do something other than just open the gate. They might need it for something else.
Team Timekeeper	"Professional courtesy, and maybe a date sometime," Bracing, Sonetto grits her teeth in expectation for the spell to go off, and stumbles when time rewinds around her because of Ru Li's tithe. "--...Night?" The spell stutters, but ultimately has the time to complete. At the very beginning of the scrollcasting, immediately after declaring his enmity towards quaint farming villages, the Evil Overlord is assaulted by a swooping storm of shining white bolts that arc to slam into him. Catching up to her own actions having completed belated, Sonetto recovers and brandishes her glasfeder anew. "Ah-! Stand down, villain! Pacale siste!" Her cursive artwork twists into a tangle of light, darting towards the arm holding the scroll to tangle it and prevent it from keeping a grip on any weapon. Meanwhile, Poltergeist has finally opened one of her eyes after thirty five seconds, noticing the still-extant state of things. "... Sonetto? Where'd you go? Um, Mister God? Oh no. A-aahhhhhh--! I'm not helping at all!" Poltergeist phases through the ground to pop up all around the kingdom, leaving little damp puddles of seawater everywhere she goes while searching for Ru Li. "Mister God? Er, Mister God?"
Kale Hearthward	"Worried about your ess-oh? Hasn't stopped most gods I know." She frowns a little bit at the unintentional rhyme. "Anyway, you can slow down a little bit. I think your friend has things handled. So. Let's pick out somewhere expensive for the date. I'm thinking we start with surf and turf and top-shelf wines at the- ah!" The Time Goddess, startled, flies away when Sonetto pops up right next to her. Sonetto's offensive art style disrupts the casting, and the scroll disintegrates. Maybe it was single use? Or possibly it just self-destructed so that nobody could examine it for clues about its origin. One of the two. "Ah! Um, ah," the serpentine Dark Lord stares at the pile of ash that used to be his ultimate weapon. "I'm sorry and it'll never happen again?"
Ru Li	"Well clearly I am not most gods you know!" "I have a sense of propriety!" "Wait, wait-" And then the Dark Lord's scroll turns to ash as Ru Li stops at the blacksmith, ready to have another go-around. -alright, he was wrong! Fair enough. "Oh, erm," he says to Poltergeist as she looks for him, "Hello. You may call me Ru Li. It will be faster than 'Mister God'. A whole syllable shorter, ha ha." "I believe...well...I believe your friend did it. For now. There will probably be another Dark Lord soon enough, yes? If, erm, the," pushy "Time Goddess cannot find the source of the scrolls before that."
Team Timekeeper	"I believe...well...I believe your friend did it." "Ah!! Mister Ru Li!" It's longer now. Poltergeist gasps and practically lunges upwards out of the ground, turning opaque again when she sees him. Despite clearly being a ghost, she's panting with a ragged edge to her breaths, somewhere between exhaustion and a crying panic attack. "Okay. Okay! I'm here! I'm here, so sorry! So, what, we gotta... find some kinda-- oh god, I've never had to do any field missions before, I thought I was gonna-- I couldn't even do my homework on time, what's thirty seconds going to-?! Okay, focus Polly, there's a key-?" "Huh?" She looks up at him and her sheet-eyes blink, damp around the bottom edge. "Oh. She did? Wow, that's Sonetto for you, ahaha...." "I'm sorry and it'll never happen again?" "My apologies. You are under arrest under the authority of the St. Pavlov Foundation for violating safe and reasonable guidelines for usage of unidentified arcanum or arcane items and for arcane assault and widespread damages." Sonetto, politely, lowers her glasfeder but keeps it braced between her two fingers as she approaches the dark lord. She pulls out a pair of handcuffs and adds it onto her peacebonding spell. "I am Chief Investigator Sonetto, employee ID SF38000000801102Y. Please come quietly and peacefully."
Kale Hearthward	Things settle down. To those not blessed by the Time Goddess, it appears as if the visiting heroes vanished and reappeared when the countdown reset, which people just assume is some sort of teleportation and don't question it further. The arrest is made. The Dark Lord comes quietly - well, not quietly, he's still complaining about how much peaceful farming villages offend him. There might not be much personality there. And that seems to be the end of this little adventure, at least until Ru Li later finds a card in his pocket with a phone number on it.