Third Heist: Jewelry Store Japes (Pt. 3): Escaping The Evile Tides of Fluff

  --- Joshua Durand ---

  “Alright, I’ll admit… this is a little freaky.” Bill confessed, finally seeing the light.

  “Thank you!” Joshua shouted, hands in the air as he took in the evil tides of fluff that surrounded him on all sides. (Right, okay… I don’t think Blobby is actually enough to handle all of this.)

  He didn’t want to count his little blob out, but he also wasn’t going to lie to himself.

  (So, exit stage left?)

  He considered it for a moment, before deciding, (No. Not yet, this show is still feeling a bit short all things considered. Let’s draw things out a touch and then we can make our exit ‘stage back’.)

  With the intent of milking the crowd for just a bit more Madness he went ahead and coughed into his hand before yelling that, “You’ve summoned more than six minions! That’s cheating and it means that I win by default!”

  “Hey you cheated first!” Stella stamped her foot with a pout before pointing at him. “This is just our shonen friendship powers beating yours!”

  “I’m the charming rogue, meaning I’m allowed to cheat! In fact it’s expected!” He shot back before giving his own foot stamp and pointing a finger at her. “Besides, you’re a magical girl so clearly you’re operating on mahou shoujo friendship bullshit!”

  “Why can’t I use shonen friendship magic?!” Stella stamped again.

  “Because you are literally a mahou shoujo!” He stamped once more before sweeping his finger across the Flufflepuffs. “See you’ve even got an evil mascot conning you and everything!”

  “But shonen anime has cooler powers and shoujo is all gross romance stuff!” Stella argued with another stamped foot.

  “There are exceptions, again see: Mahou Shoujo!” He stamped yet again for he would have the last foot stamp!

  “You are weirdly obsessed with Mahou Shoujo!” Stamp.

  “I haven’t actually watched any, I just refuse to lose an argument to one!” Louder stamp!

  “Then you don’t actually know if it’s better!” Counter stamp.

  “True, but I know historically speaking Sailor Moon revolutionized anime while also being a symbol of feminism and girl power thus I assume that it would be good for you to watch given your whole schtick!” He finished with a double stamp.

  Stella stared at him with a confused look. “Why’d you just jump in the air?”

  He blinked. “Uh, we were doing a bit?”

  “What bit?” Stella blinked back.

  “The stamping thing.” He blinked a couple times.

  “What stamping thing?” Stella blinked just the once.

  They both blinked at each other for a moment. An extremely awkward moment that quickly began to drag on in silence.

  “You uh… You want to get back to the whole uh, superhero battle thing?” He asked when that moment became just a little too long of a break. (And we are not getting paid for the commercials on here.)

  “Uh, sure- Um, what were we doing again?” Stella frowned, clearly having lost the plot.

  (She’s a kid, she’s still learning. You got to help the younger stars.)

  “Uh, give me a moment…” He reached into his jacket and pulled out the spiral notebook he kept his notes in. “Let’s see here… Putting on the ritz… Rob the jewelry store… Confront the hero… Mad lib some stuff there depending on the dice roll… Pick a fight where I get my teeth kicked in. Always hate that part… Drag the hero or heroes into an asinine argument of some kind that wears down their sanity for my own amusement. Love that part…” He grinned, slowly nodding as his finger traced the page before tapping the current line. “Meaning we are at the second fight where I actually win, before making my dramatic and daring escape while taunting you on my way out.”

  “You mean the second fight where I beat you with the power of friendship and you realize the error of your ways when I give you a super cool speech?” Stella corrected with narrowed eyes.

  He took another look at the book before shaking his head. “Nope, nope. That’s not in the script. After all,” He gave her a grin as he clapped the book closed. “This is not that kind of cartoon.”

  With that declaration he began to shift his Toon Field, spreading it out as far as he could before whistling as he drew out Buddy the baseball bat. “Blobby, tee me up!”

  His little blob nodded before shooting several tendrils towards the nearest Flufflepuff and promptly chucking it at Joshua.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Snowball!” Stella cried, just before Buddy sent the eldritch fluffball crashing into the sea of fluff.

  Under the influence of his Madness field the dozens of Flufflepuffs went flying into the air. Their masochistic smiles never leaving as they flew with cold lifeless eyes, tongues wagging through the air.

  Rather than taking this as a warning that he was about to get serious, Stella instead rallied and told the Flufflepuffs, “He wants a hug!”

  He gave the kid hero a look as if she was as mad as he was, with a simple statement of, “What.”

  As one all of the Flufflepuffs turned to him, including the ones still spinning through the air, their soulless black eyes enough to make him take a step back.

  (Oh, no…)

  All of the Flufflepuffs took a step forward.

  “No.” He frowned at them.

  The eldritch fluffballs took another step.

  “No. No. No.” He waved his fingers as if trying to ward off the eldritch horde.

  A Flufflepuff shot off the ground like a bullet before latching onto his face and smothering him with its fluff.

  “Get off! Get off of me!” He yelled in between desperate breaths of air as he pried the parasitic pillow off of his face, an effort that took far too much of his Toon Strength to get off given how small the little lamprey was.

  Unfortunately this was only the first as a second tackled his stomach before latching on just as tightly as the first. Then a third, and a fourth, and a fifth.

  “Stop!”

  Then a third…

  “No!”

  And a fourth, and a fifth…

  “Bad touch!”

  And so many more than that…

  “I do not consent to this!” He yelled at the furry fuckers violating his personal autonomy, a dozen of them ganging up on him as they tugged at his clothes, burying him under their fluffy weight. “I do not consent!”

  Trapped in the dark place beneath a growing pile of fluff he desperately latched onto the flow of madness around him, flowing out from the pile of Flufflepuffs and reforming on all fours next to Blobby.

  He let out a shuddering breath, “So much fluff…”

  Blobby reached out and patted him consolingly on the shoulder.

  A patting that quickly became far more alarmed.

  He gave his little dream a curious look, before noticing the wide eyes staring in horror at something behind him. Following the gaze he found the pile of fluff he’d been trapped under seemingly growing in size. And most horrifyingly of all… those soulless black eyes still wanted him.

  “You know what?” He swallowed with another shuddering breath as he climbed to his feet, determination filling his gaze as he stared the evil before him down. “The right thing to do here would be to fight off this eldritch tide of fluff, to protect the denizens of this mall from those who would use free hugs as a method of both biological and psychologically traumatizing warfare.”

  Joshua picked up Blobby who was staring at him with an admiring gaze as a beam of light fell upon the Wonderlander from the mall skylight above.

  “Good thing I’m the villain.” He smiled before promptly running away. “Peace out bitches!”

  “Don’t let him get away!” Stella shouted, which did absolutely nothing to motivate the Flufflepuffs. “Uh, he’s sad and needs another hug!”

  As one the tide of fluff moved, rushing after their prey.

  “Oh, no…” He whimpered upon seeing the tide leap over the audiences and rush after him, nothing impeding their desire to hug him whether he liked it or not.

  Thinking quick he used his ink flow to rush forward as fast as he could, before ducking behind a corner and using a Toon Pen to rapidly summon Doodle into the world.

  “Scare them!” He hissed before once more taking off, uncaring of the curious -and mildly concerned- look Doodle was giving him.

  Despite not seeing it he could still feel the exact moment Doodle leapt off the wall to jumpscare the vile Fluffy tides pursuing him.

  Unfortunately, since he decided to look over his shoulder to see how well it worked, he got a first hand look at his dream drowning under a tide of fluff, hugging the doodle into submission even as the tide continued to surge after him.

  A frantic tugging on his coat collar had him glancing down at a panicking Blobby, who in a very timid jiggled, told him, (“I think I want to go back to the cabaret now…”)

  “Yeah, no…” He shook his head before explaining that, “I might need you to make a valiant sacrifice to protect me from more nonconsensual hugging.”

  Blobby stared at him for a moment before summoning an ink knife and stabbing himself, causing the little ink blob to pop.

  “What?” He couldn’t help but blink at his now empty arms. “You ditched me you dick!”

  Before he could wallow too deeply on this his danger sense pinged, and he quickly flowed straight up into the air, letting the evil tides of fluff crash beneath him.

  “Okay, yeah… This is getting to be a bit much.” He decided as he hung in the air for a moment. “I think it’s time to call this show.”

  (If it means we’re done with the Flufflepuffs then yes. Roll credits.)

  Grasping onto the ink flow he rushed into one of the nearby stores, not bothering to care about what exactly the store had as he sprinted for the back, vaguely aware of the fact that the tide of fluff was struggling to get through the door. None of them willing to give up on being the first to hug him.

  “Shit, shit.” He cursed, realizing he couldn’t actually find this store’s entrance to the back halls. “Oh, don’t tell me I ran into the one store not connected to the maintenance tunnels…”

  (I won’t, but please tell me we have an evac. I’ve been hugged more than enough for one lifetime let alone two.)

  “Well, if there’s no exit, then we’ll just make one.” He figured, slamming both of his hands into the furthest back wall and beginning to push his ink into it. “Come on, come on…”

  His ink crept and crawled through the matter of reality as a hole slowly began to form.

  The tides of fluff exploded through the store entrance.

  “Okay, that’s good enough!” He decided, quickly diving through the half formed hole and landing in the maintenance tunnels face first. “Fuck… That was close…”

  He groaned, flipping onto his back, only to find himself staring at a pair of soulless black eyes. One of the Flufflepuffs having been caught in the middle of the collapsing hole in the wall.

  “Um…” He didn’t know what to do about this.

  The Flufflepuff began to shake before a second fluffy face appeared next to it, the tides of fluff refusing to let something as simple as a wall or the laws of physics get between them and a good hug.

  (Run. Very far. Very fast.)

  By the time the third face appeared he was already half way down the tunnel, with a cry of, “Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope!”

  End of Show Report

  Show Breakdown

  -Gained 1XP to Slyness and Ink Blob for show prepwork.

  -For putting on the Ritz, gained 2 Exciting Madness, 1 Laughing Madness, 1 Liberating Madness, and 1 Stunning Madness

  -Gained 1XP to Mobility for dancing through the mall.

  -Gained 1 Terrifying Madness for the sudden tonal shift.

  -Gained 1XP to Thievery for robbing the jewelry store.

  -Gained 1 Deceptive Madness for distracting the security guard with your antics.

  -Gained 1XP to Thievery for continuing to rob the place while distracting the security guard.

  -Gained 1 Raging Madness due to certain misconceptions about your target.

  -Gained 1 Confusing Madness for thinking that Flufflepuffs are evil for some reason.

  -Gained 1XP to Taunting for getting a hero to agree to a mon battle.

  -Gained 1XP to Ink Blob for summoning Blobby in front of a crowd.

  -Gained 1 Confusing Madness, 1 Laughing Madness, and 1 Worrying Madness for your argument with Blobby.

  -Gained 3XP to Ink Blob for using Blobby in a one on one battle.

  Gained 1XP to Taunt for luring Stella into an anime debate mid-heroics.

  -Gained 1XP to Madness Field for exaggerating a baseball bat.

  -Gained 1 Laughing Madness and 1 Horrifying Madness for ‘the hug’.

  -Gained 1XP to Ink Flow for using it to escape the fluff.

  -Gained 1XP to Mobility for outrunning the tide o’ fluff

  -Gained 1XP to Doodle for trying to scare the tide.

  -Gained 1XP to Enhanced Acrobatics for avoiding the tide’s onslaught.

  -Gained 1XP to Hole In The Wall for using it to escape the tide.

  XP Gains

  -5XP to Ink Blob

  --Currently: Lv. 2 (5/6)

  -2XP to Taunting

  --Currently: Lv. 3 (2/8)

  -1XP to Doodle

  --Currently: Lv. 2 (4/6)

  -1XP to Enhanced Acrobatics

  --Currently: Lv 4 (1/10)

  -1XP to Hole In The Wall

  --Currently: Lv. 4 (1/10)

  -1XP to Ink Flow

  --Currently: Lv. 4 (4/10)

  -1XP to Mobility

  --Currently: Lv. 5 (1/12)

  -1XP to Slyness

  --Currently: Lv. 4 (2/10)

  Total XP Gains: 13 XP

  Madness Gains

  -2 Confusing

  -2 Exciting

  -2 Laughing

  -1 Deceptive

  -1 Liberating

  -1 Raging

  -1 Stunning

  -1 Terrifying

  -1 Worrying

  Total Madness Gains: 12

  Lastly as far as heist money goes we are rolling: High Value = 6D6*100 Dollars.

  Last, and perhaps most importantly:

  -Gained Arch-Enemy: Stella Star, The Star Child Hero