Episode XII- HELL ON EARTH (Part 1)
Intro
It was the very next day, and construction workers had already began to work away at what would soon become the greatest amusement park in history. The captured Harvest Goddess lazed around in her cage and watched as the people passed by, unable to escape her prison no matter how much magic she used. Steel bars were a little out of her area of expertise.
<HAHAHAHAHA!> A voice arose from the pond and out came the evil twin sister Goddess from Mineral town. The workers stopped dead in their tracks, staring in awe of her beauty, and then running for their lives as she lunged at her first victim. Holding a man by the throat, she squealed in delight, <If any of you ever return, you shall share his fate!>. The man disappeared into thin air.
<Wonderful…> the caged Harvest Goddess moaned.
<Ohohohoh, sister, you are really just too much!> the evil goddess laughed uncontrollably. <Betrayed by the villagers you’ve sworn to protect, really! I don’t think I’ve ever been so amused in my entire existence!>
<Oh, do shut up,>
<Ahahaha! And now the Village is mine! Mine to do with as I please! And no, I do not feel as though I will be friendly to these villagers. I feel they are inferior to those I am bound to protect, and I shall prove it by destroying this place!>
<Fine,> the captured goddess resolved. <Do as you must, just let me out of here. I made the mistake of trusting these people, and I was wrong. I admit it. Please, just let me out of here so I can move on to the underworld where I belong.>
<Hmm,> the evil goddess considered the proposition carefully. <No, I’d rather watch you suffer. You did, afterall, attempt to lock me away in the underworld forever. It is only fair, dear sister, that I am allowed the same chance,> she smiled ruefully.
<LET ME OUT!>
<Ohohohohoh! Never! We could have had lots of fun together, destroying this place, but now the glory shall be mine and mine alone,> with a wave of her hand, the evil goddess raised the inhabitants of the underworld from the pond. One by one, vile and wretched creatures arose from its depths and were welcomed into their new home, and beautiful place that would soon become a place of misery and destruction. <Go, my pets, and wreak havoc upon these people and their land! The time has come for us to have some fun!>
Yes, my dear friends, as it turns out, the goddesses come from a world that is quite unlike our own. As a birth right, the goddesses are granted above ground lands in which they are bound to protect, but if they gain access to another goddess’ lands, they are free to do whatever they want with it. Unfortunately for the Village citizens, Mineral Town’s goddess has been just dying to wreak hell on earth for years and years. In fact, it all began with Jack III’s ancestor, the one who drove her completely mad… but that is a different story altogether. The important thing that you must know, is that from this point on, the people of the Village were doomed.
Act 1
“Okay, okay, okay! We’ll call your parents as we promised and ask them if they will come to bring you home,” Nic gave in to the frowny-faced boy holding the telephone in front of him. Jack III, of course, could not understand him, and was growing quite impatient with the sprites.
“Remember to speak really loudly so they can hear you,” Nac instructed his older brother.
“I KNOW! I’m not a dimwit like you two bozos.”
“I’m not a bozo…” Flak toyed with the concept.
“Alright,” Nic climbed up on the counter and readied himself for the call. Jack III began to dial the number when Nic saw something quite peculiar out the window. “Is there a fire in the sky?” the sprites ran to the window to get a closer glimpse. Frankly, this pissed Jack III off, and he threw the telephone at Nac, knocking him unconscious.
“Are those monsters heading towards us?” Flak began to panic.
“What in hell could have…” Nic’s mind began to race. “The Harvest Goddess of Mineral Town! With our goddess incapacitated, she must have claimed rule to the entranceway!”
“What do we do!?” Flak began to shake uncontrollably.
“The only thing we can do, Flak. RUN!” the two sprites ran screaming out of the house in a panic, leaving both Nac and Jack III alone in the house.
Curious now, Jack III walked to the window and peered out to see what all the commotion was about. Trolls, and zombies, orcs, and monsters, leviathans, and many other deranged creatures could be seen heading his way. The skies burned in orangey-red fires, and black clouds forged close behind them.
Oh, I see. The sprites were just excited to see some old friends come into town, Jack III surmised. He decided that he should also go outside and meet them.
Upon seeing him, the monsters became very angry and focused their attention on the single, solitary figure in the distance.
Jack III stopped a safe distance away from his visitors and looked around for Nic and Flak, but there was no sight of either of them. Could these nasty creatures have eaten his poor friends?
“Booga booga” a crazed old woman jumped ahead of the monster brigade. It was quite evident to Jack III by the look in her eyes that this lady was insane. “Halt!” she called to her followers. They did as she instructed. She slowly and calmly walked up to the youth and inspected him from head to toe. “Big… brother?” she cocked an eyebrow at him.
Jack III grinned stupidly.
“Big brother!” the old woman rejoiced and jumped into his arms.
Jack III was quite confused by her actions, but it was quite apparent to him that this crazy old lady was intent on marrying him. This was awkward, to say the least.
“I had to go to the underworld and got monsters and stuff and now I can control fires and I kept telling the harvest goddess let big brother come down and she said no and then I asked her again and she said no again and then again and again and I told her someday I’d find you and bring you and she said no I woudn’t and then I said yes I would and then nothing happened for a long time but now I found you and…” the old woman rambled on, unaware that the lucky boy had been deaf.
She is very excited to see me… Vile women and their damned biological tickers, he thought to himself.
“And now I hafta take you and show you to her so she knows I’m right and she’s wrong so I can take over the underworld ‘cause she isn’t allowed to be wrong like that!” she huffed and puffed to gain back some air. “Let’s go!” she led him by the hand through the crowd of scary creatures and began the trek back to the Harvest pond.
Nic and Flak had been watching the scene unfold from the bushes.
“Jack’s related to that devil queen?” Flak asked incredulously.
“Are you really that surprised?” Nic retorted. “I wonder where Nac went…”
“Does this mean we have to free the Harvest Goddess again?” Flak’s question would go unanswered.
“Say, what do you think about moving to ForgetMeNot Valley?” Nic contemplated.
“Nic!” Flak was growing more agitated.
“Well, why don’t you start coming up with ideas?”
“I wanna save Jack!” Flak whined.
“Save Jack from who?” Nac appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, dazed and confused.
“Where the hell were you?” Nic demanded.
“Um… inside? What happened?”
“The evil Harvest goddess has brought about the apocalypse…”
Nac thought about this for a moment, “I really did hit my head hard.”
Act 2
“Hago! Hey, Hago!” the old woman yelled when the monster army had reached the goddess pond.
<Jill, quit calling me that. Taking the first two letters of my names and putting them together does not make you clever!> the goddess grunted in annoyance.
“Huh?” Jill blinked in confusion. “You’re a hag. ‘O’”.
<Shut up you little twerp! Go wreak havoc with your mongrels! I don’t have time for you, I’m planning a worldwide apocalypse.>
“I got Jackie backie!” Jill jumped for joy.
<You WHAT?!> the goddess panicked momentarily. She had known ‘Jack’ as Jill’s grandfather, and she had banished him from the underworld forever. The very name made her cringe in disgust.
“See?!” Jill presented the deaf boy happily.
The goddess looked him over, breathing a sigh of relief as she did so. <Ah, you are referring to your long dead brother. That is not him.>
“It is so!” Jill stomped angrily.
<No, you wretched beast. That is your brother’s great grandchild, or so I would presume. He does resemble him quite a bit.>
<YOU!> the caged Harvest goddess suddenly yelled from her prison. All eyes turned to her, except for Jack III, who had heard nothing. <You did this! You brought this misery upon these people! It’s all your fault, you deaf little son of a…>
<This boy? You mean to tell me that he is the reason you’re locked up in that horrible jail?> the evil goddess laughed. <And deaf, you say? My, my, he is looking tastier by the moment, isn’t he? I’ll never understand how such a dreadful line could produce one so well put together and… well, perfect,> she smiled.
This woman was extremely beautiful, Jack III reflected, He would much rather she jumped into his arms than this ugly old psycho woman.
“Hsssss!’ Jill hissed in warning at the goddess.
<Oh, do quit being so overdramatic, Jill,> the goddess sighed. <I could very well banish you to the dungeons below for eternity!>
“Echo, echo, echo,echo!” Jill practiced for her punishment.
<You are impossible!> the goddess raged.
Jack III watched the scene before him unfold, but could not decipher anything that was happening. It would seem that this nice woman had taken over the town and unleashed the forces of hell, but that could not be accurate. She was too pretty for that.
<Wouldn’t it be just fabulous if I took the savior of the town as my king? It’s so ironic I could just die! Of course he’d have to watch past loves and friends burn eternally in hell, but I’m sure he’d soon get over it…> the goddess thought.
<Ugh, you deserve each other,> the caged goddess spat.
<Well it’s more than you deserve, dear. Jill, I want you to organize a wedding. I shall take my king of the underworld, and we shall live happily ever after in a world of fire and darkness and death. And I suppose when it is all over I will allow you to go to the kingdom in the clouds.>
“Is that where REAL big brother is?”
<Purgatory, most likely. He was kind of a dick. But who knows, it has been quite a while. Chop chop! I want this wedding soon!>
Jack III watched as the crowd swarmed about. No one seemed sure of what they were doing or where they were going, but they seemed very serious about what needed to be done.
<Come to me, my darling,> the goddess held out her hand to Jack III.
Smiling, the youth walked right into her evil embrace and she kissed him deeply.
“Stop right this instant!” a peeping voice could be heard. It was Nic, Nac, and Flak, and they had come to face the nightmare queen face to face.
<Are these your worthless sidekicks?> the evil goddess asked her imprisoned sister.
<No,> she shied away sheepishly.
<Lucky for them, I suppose,> the evil woman snapped her fingers and the sprites turned to stone.
Jack III stared at the awful thing that had just happened, and he knew now that the fate of the world now rested on his frail and bony shoulders.
To be continued….
(Rrrrgh, school has been killing me. It just seems to be getting worse and worse. Maybe I can get this done over the holidays, I’ll have a month off in the coming weeks so I intend to work on this and the HMTV video game. Cheers,)
