#I just saw a photo of a ferret sleeping with half their body in a hammock their head resting in a platform and the remaining body just...

[shiawasekai]

After the last Pathfinder 2e rulebook, whenever I see a ferret doing something absolutely ridiculous, I wonder how would a ferret Awakened Animal work.

On that line of thought, I need a 2e campaign exclusively for tiny races (Leshy, poppet, potentially awakened animal...). There is also the funny alternative of all tiny races less, say, one member of a large race. The minotaurs for example.

One huge ass minotaur (bonus if they're the cleric or something like that) and their Tiny Squad

[magic5ball]

Nature Trail to Hell Arc III: The Blood Curse of Tako Shak (7)

Chapter 7: Tako Shak Part III: The Shak is Whack

           It was a Sunday when it happened. At least, I think it was a Sunday. Tako Shak, at least the back part, seemed to exist in its’ own little time bubble apart from the rest of the universe. Even Father Time has to wait in line for his extra churro sauce, it seemed. Say what you will about the Shak, it is a jerk to everyone and everything equally and indiscriminately. But really, we all know you’d come back for that five takos for $5 deal. Everyone does.

           ANYWAY as my soul was being grinded away by monotiny I started dreaming my fairy Godmother would come, turn a Tako into a carriage, and take me away from the stupid place forever. ‘Course, with the Blood Curse and all, I couldn’t step ten feet out of the restaurant without getting the sensation of ten thousand cattle prods burning into my skin. So steel wool in hand, I scrubbed that stupid floor until I could see my reflection it, took customer orders so fast I gave out change for guys who wouldn’t be arriving until next week, washed the dishes so spotless I could have sold them as diamonds, and several other things that by all means should have killed me from exhaustion. But I could not die, because I was still bound to the stupid Blood Curse. All the while, I found myself singing the old camp songs, having finally found something that made them look darn near like heaven by comparison. Also took my mind off my Mom, who would probably be none too pleased her firstborn ran off to join the fryboy life. Better than being a gangster, I guess, but still, I wished SOMETHING would happen. And you know what they say about being careful what you wish for…

I was mopping the back, on account of a fry spill while Howard handled the front. Knowing he liked to slack off, I peeked through the door splitting the front of the store from the back, just in time to see an all too familiar face cross those automatic sliding doors.

“Bienvenido from Tako Shak, Senor!” Howard greeted with a voice so deadpan it practically lurched out of his mouth. “What can I get for you today, Mr…”

“Silverstein. My name is Shel. Shel Motherf*cking Silverstein.”

Then Howard did the worst thing of all: He breached company protocol and started chatting with the customer! With fifty people behind him in line!

“Oh! Famous guy! So, Mr. Silverstein, what brings you to our humble little tako town?”

From behind the door, I saw the bald man glower, eyes dark as coals in his face.

“Demotion, that’s what! There’s this dumb kid I sent to the Underworld, but NOW, he’s escaped.”

“So what’s the big dealio? Guys escape Hell all the time.”

“Because that’s my job as a seraph: leading souls to the afterlife. But now that I BOTCHED that, the Angelic Council has decided it’s my responsibility to track him down since I sent him there!”

Despite it being over a hundred degrees in the back, a slight shiver ran down my spine.

“And until I do, I’ve been demoted from Seraph to Magical Girl! MAGICAL GIRL!” He turned his head skyward “Do you forks not know who I am?! I’m Shel Motherf*cking’ Silverstein, and I will reclaim my rightful place as a seraph!”

As if my day couldn’t get any worse, Howard just had to drop this line:

“So who is this fugitive, anyway? I’m all ears.”

“Some punk kid named Wuterdon or Watson or something. ‘Bout this high.” He held his palm flat beside his body, he around exactly what my height.

My mind began racing with a single thought: Please don’t tell please don’t tell please don’t tell…

“As a matter of fact, I think I do know a kid like that.”

F**k you, Howard. 

For a moment I considering throwing myself in the deep fryer. Might be less painful than being dragged back to the Underworld.

“-But that costs 50 cents extra. Would you still like to add that information to your order, sir?”

Silverstein wasted no time slamming two shiny silver quarters on the counter.

“Okay. He has black hair.”

The great poet stared, realizing just what a bad purchase he made.

“What?! But I thought-“

“Listen Mr. If you want to get good info, you have to pay for good info.”

Silverstein slid a $500 dollar Canadian Nickel down the counter.

Howard lifted a hand to his chin, grinning all smug-like. “I dunno… If you want the real good stuff…”

It was then I caught on the Howard’s game. There was a rumor among us Tako boys that if you managed to make an order of over $10,000 and became employee of the month, you would get you freedom. And dour as Howard was, it looked as if he was holding onto a glimmer of that hope after all. At the moment though, as a shouting bargaining broke out between Howard and the customer, I didn’t know if whether to call him a low lying snitch or my savior. Either way, I snuck back to do dishes, so full of despair I’d started singing camp sham  songs. Forking Camp Sham songs!

At least, until someone nabbed my shoulder.

“Hey, nice singing. Did you attend Camp Sham, by any chance?” Whoever was holding me, they had a smug, cheeky tone that could only be the Manager’s.

Steadily, I looked behind me, expecting to face my doom. What I saw instead was a familiar face. Sure, he was now wearing a blonde wig and three piece suit with a tag labeled ‘Manager’, but his face was unmistakable.

“Freddie the Ferret?!” I said.

“Watterson?” He answered back.

“HOLY CRAP!” We cried together, followed by “How’ve you been?!”

           We struck up conversation real quick after that, me having to take the occasional break to make sure the dishes in the sink got cleaned. (We might have been old acquaintances, but he was my boss, after all.) Basically, I told him everything I’ve written until now between him giving me bits of survival advice (“Don’t just throw knifes in the sink, kid, you’ll scratch your hand and it will hurt, really, really bad. Most painful thing in America.”) By the time I’d finished, Howard was still trying to squeeze more money out of Silverstein.

           As for old Freds, it turned out he really DID flee to the butterfly farm and didn’t, y’know, die. And while he was there…

“I struck this oil deposit. A big one. We’re talking YUGE! I had the whole place paved over and employed all the butterflies. Made the most profitable oil rig in the state. We made so much money and created so many jobs. It was great, you should have seen it. Truly, amazing.”

He sold the rig for a tidy trillion dollar profit and from there, it was just a hop, skip, and jump to becoming the district manager of Tako Shak. Of course, being manager wasn’t all perks. For some reason, he now had a weird obsession with firing people and wearing crappy blonde wigs.

“So, have you been to camp recently?” I asked.

“Yeah. Hilda turned it into a Siberian Gulag.”

Around me, time seemed to freeze as I processed what Freddie had just said.

“What?”

“Hilda turned the camp into a SIBERIAN GULAG. I don’t know what’s so hard to understand. I said it smartly, like a smart ferret. Which I am. Smartest Ferret in America.”

“She WHAT?!”

Once I’d taken a good half hour to cool my jets, Freddie explained in more detail.

“Alright kid, this is gonna sound crazy, but you know all that stuff Hilds said about freeing the camp? That was what the people in my business call a fact: something that’s only half true. See, she wanted to free the camp… but only so she could take it over and rule it with an iron fist! Really powerful, dignified stuff. That involved her Dad or something. Very interesting. . .You should ask her yourself sometime.”

“Show me.” I demanded. Something had stabbed me in the heart, but not the killer death sort. No, this stab had sent a life, a burning passion inta me I hadn’t felt since getting to the final boss in Super Luigi Bros. II.

The ferret shrugged. “Watt, I’m contractually obligated to only tell you half-truths at most, but if you insist….”

He pulled out his wallet. Opening it, a ladder of pictures tumbled out, depicting such scenes of inhuman horror that it had not been for my rigorous training at Tako Shak, most likely would have driven me mad. Also made me throw up a bit in my mouth.

Freddie looked at the photos “Well shoot! Those aren’t photos of csmp! Those are of my Aunt Carol’s 4th of July party! Word to the wise kid: never put more than four ferrets in the same place or things go downhill real fast. Terrible, not good, very bad things happen then.” He fished out more photos from the wallet (which I was starting to suspect he didn’t actually keep money in). “Here’s the Camp photos.”

Even though the photos showed scenes of gaunt, hollow eyed kids laboring away at some sort of quarry while soot covered their backs, even though these kids were shown so beaten down they no longer had tears to cry over their sawdust-loaf breakfasts, I’d been so broken down by the things I saw at the Shak the most emotion I could muster was a single, passive

“Huh.”

            Because as far as I was concerned, camp really wasn’t much worse than when I left. But beneath the dark, grey canyons of despair, beneath the cabins, completely gutted to create firewood to burn those who misbehaved, there was a picture of me, or to be more specific, my sleeping body, stuck in a case like Snow White waiting for her prince. Despite there being a guardrail, Freddie was leading his shoulder on the case, mugging the camera so hard I wouldn’t have been surprised if it gave him all its money.

“But wha-? How?! I’m right here!” I cried, too shocked to form proper sentences.

Freddie waggled a finger at me. “Correction: That’s your body. Right now, you’re not really in Pennsylvania. At least, not totally. See, this right here is limbo, where all the ghosts and elves and stuff live. The fact you can see me in my true form is proof of that you are at least as dead as my rap career. Which, by the way, was a great rap career. Really fantastic!”

“And why am I in Limbo?”

“Because you died, you moron!”

I thought back to that time I ate the millipede in the woods. Yeah, that made sense.  Sorta. 

“So, what exactly is Hilda doing with my body?” For some reason, I did not like having someone else having control over my body like that.

“Oh, you’re just the founder of Communism.”

Communism. That word echoed around my head like a stone falling into a well.

Communism.

See, it might not seem it, but my Mom had raised me well. And the most important thing she ever taught me was

“Sweetie, no matter what you do, I will always love you. Unless you turn out to be a commie, then we are no longer related.” It was a lesson that stuck with me to this day. And with that, the latent passion within me erupted into a furious desire to get my body back.

“I need to get fired.”

The ferret looked at me all funny like for a second before realizing what I was saying.

“Look kid, if you’re thinking of escaping, its’ NEVER going to happen. You’re a valuable employee. And by that I mean I’ve seen seagull poop worth more than you, but that just means we can pay you whatever we want! It’s a great, wonderful, absolutely terrific deal that works out for everyone!”

“You can do that?”

“Of course, you moron! The Blood Curse exempts you from every child labor law in this universe and the next five dimensions!” He pulled my contract from his furry little pocket, pointing to a sentence written in text so small you’d need a military-grade microscope to see it.

At the counter, I could hear, Howard get Silverstein up to $9,500, and I wasn’t exactly eager to find out what that old poet was going to do once he got his hands on me. Still, there was one last, desperate gambit I could make, one that, if I was lucky, would save my skin. I breathed in slow, like the school guidance counselor taught me. If there was ever a time where I could sink or swim, this was it.

“But Freddie. You have to fire me! For YOUR sake!”

The ferret’s ears perked up at this. Looked serious. “Explain.”

I pointed to the front. “See that guy in front of all those angry customers? That’s Shel Silverstein-“

“Well, of course it’s Shel Silverstein! I can see that with my two, good, very good eyes. Absolutely incredible. What they are seeing. Right now.”

“Not the point! The point is, I’ve escaped from Hell, he’s looking for me, and if I’m found out, he’ll put you in deep, deep, trouble!”

Freddie smiled (more like a ‘u’ shaped slit in his face, really). “But why don’t I just hand you in, then? I could get famous for turning in a criminal. The publicity would be good. Very good.”

His smug grin made me nervous, yet my mind was now racing at a million miles per hour. It was to late to stop now. “And the publicity would be good HOW?! Think about it, dinkleburg! If he finds me, it’ll be proof Tako Shak was keeping a refugee. And if THAT happens, you’ll be fired by you bosses for making a scandal!”

The U on Freddie’s face flipped right upside down. “Y-you’re bluffing! They can’t fire me! I’m a very, very, valuable manager!”

The tables were turning. Now it was my turn to grin. “Face it, Fred! Everyone here is a cog in the Great Tako Masheen! There’s probably a billion ferrets who were possessed by demons out there who could do your job just as good, if not better!”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“Oh yes I would! And if I get caught, I’ll even tell the news you were employing ACTUAL MEXICANS!”

The little fuzzball finally kneeled in defeat. “I’ll never be able to go home to my mansion if that happens! Okay! You win! JUST! LEAVE!”

“But I can’t! I still have the Blood Curse keeping me here.”

Trembling, Freddie took the contract and ripped it into a million pieces. I don’t know what my blood experienced in that paper, but whatever it was made it jump right back through my finger into my vein.

Freddie pointed his index finger at me, all dramatic-like.

“Watterson Tostig, YOU. ARE. FIRRREEEDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!” right as Howard had gotten old Shel up to a $9,999 dollars.

With one powerful kick (ferrets can kick pretty darn hard!) he punted me like Charlie Brown would have punted that football, right through the ceiling on that fastfood hellhole and into the wild blue skies of the PA countryside. I shot up like a rocket, at least half a million mosquitoes smearing themselves against my face before I reached the peak of my flight. For a few tranquil seconds I floated in the air so high I saw the peak of Mount Davis, the highest mountain in the state. As far as I could see in every direction, there was nothing but forests, while a red-tailed hawk soared below. It was the most peaceful thing I’d ever experienced.

At least until I realized that cheapskate Freddie had forgotten to give me my last check! The dirty rotten cheapskate!

And, you know, freefalling from thousands of feet in the air. That tends to put a damper on your day.

                     Part III: The Blood Curse of Tako Shak: End

[nurturingflame]

Week in Review - 62

Hope that everyone has had a good week. As always please enjoy the drama and adventure. Our ask box is open to questions and thoughts. A nice review or compliment is always welcome as well. ^_~*

To Prune & Grow 1-4

Splinter’s meditations were difficult, and he found that he was not looking forward to them.  This was not unusual when he was dealing with something unpleasant, and having someone in his brain, reading all of your thoughts, feelings, memories, was highly unpleasant.  To think that someone was running around with his life in his head caused his gut to tighten, which caused his chest to heat up in anger.  

The boys were compassionate, having experienced Splinter’s aftermath of the Rat King before.  He did not tell them about the times when he felt The Rat King’s presence, tickling at his brain.  He fought it off each time, disturbed, but none worse for the wear.  This time, however, the intrusion had been deep, brutal, left him on the floor gasping for breath.  Then, to meet him again, to have his mind grabbed, his deepest thoughts, ones that he was not yet aware of, taken from him…

It was taking more meditation than he was used to, in order to deal with the emotion. Anger is never a constructive force, he kept telling himself. Neither is despair.  He had not succumbed to despair the many times in his life that it had tried to overtaken, he would not succumb to it now.

However, a thought kept creeping up, in The Rat King’s voice, not an spear into his brain, but a memory. You want her.  He shook his head, taking a deep breath, letting the thought flit through his brain, and focused on his breath.  He had more immediate concerns.

Eliza, for her part, avoided him.  When he entered a room, she quickly excused herself, offering something to the effect that a chore was left undone.  At first, he hadn’t thought anything of it.  Then, when it continued happening, he was sure that something was going on.  But when he asked, got a frosty,

“No, nothing at all.  Why would you ask?”

“Hmmmm,” had been his reply.  Nothing was flat out lie.  Her nostrils flared when he approached, her ears twitched.  He could smell hunger from her, and fear.  The hunger must be from the pregnancy, he mused, but what was causing the fear?

He had yet to figure it out.

The Phoenix was now down in the sewer with them twice a week, her poking and prodding of Eliza’s expanded belly disconcerting.  He could hear them talking in her room.  Sometimes they would laugh, and sound of it made his heart clench.  He would go into the dojo, and sit to meditate, and then the same thought would occur.

You want her?

He turned to the shelf that held is most precious things.  The photo of Tang Shen, he and she looking sternly out onto the world.  He wanted a lot of things.  But he was sure he didn’t want her.  Not when his wife still held so strongly onto his heart.

“Eliza,” Phoenix said quietly in the privacy of the ferret’s room.  “You’re progressing very nicely.”  The little healer beamed like she knew what she was talking, when in reality, she had absolutely no clue.  The book she’d stolen from the library had the ferret mutant’s pregnancy at the very least twice as long as the creature she was mutated with.  Whether this meant that Eliza would have a human length gestation of almost 10 months or something shorter, Phoenix couldn’t tell. “You’re growing, which means the babies are growing.  That’s good!”

The ferret’s pregnancy was a blessing for the little healer.  It gave her something to think about besides her abduction, weeks ago, by the Rat King.  While she had assured her children, who were livid after she returned home, that he’d done her no real harm, it did not stop her from having nightmares about him.  It did not help her that Splinter seemed to be avoiding her whenever she came over. Or that Eliza seemed to be sequestering herself in her room, or outside the Lair, neither of which made Phoenix feel better.  

“How are you feeling?” The Phoenix asked, taking her notebook onto her lap, pen at the ready.

Eliza sat up on the bed, wiggling to find a more comfortable position, as she attempted to pull her shirt down but the hem refused to cooperate and keep rolling up. Her penchant for loose and flowy garb had served her well, but the growing stomach was starting to strain the parameters of her limited wardrobe. To be fair, she had packed for New York with the intent to impress, so her baggy sweats and loose paint stained t-shirts were left a home. But even given her formidable alteration skills, she was running out of options.

“Big.” The ferret said as she tugged on her shirt again. “And likely to get bigger, cause I am always hungry!”

“That’s pretty standard for any pregnancy.” The Phoenix chuckled lightly before moving on. “What are you eating?”

“I’ve been trying to stay pretty balanced when I cook, lots of protein and less bread like you recommended, even though the boys wouldn’t mind if I let them get away with pizza every night. I wouldn’t doubt that they are picking one up to eat out on patrol anyway.”

“They are.” Gwyn piped in from her seat at the desk where she was quietly doing some math worksheets. “Mikey saves me a slice when he can.”

“Oh really,” The ferret said raising a brow at her daughter, “and where am I during these late night pizza snacks?”  

“Right here,” Gwyn said her head down and pencil still scratching away, “you sleep like the dead. You pinned my leg last night and I couldn’t make you move. ”

With no valid comeback Eliza just let out an agitated puff of air and returned her attention back to the Pheonix’s question. “AnYway, as I was saying, it feels like I’ve been eating everything in sight, and I’m still hungry.”

“Not true.” Gwyn piped in with a singsong voice.

“Excuse me?!”

The girl lifted her head and waggled her pencil at her mutated mother. “You made everyone sandwiches last night and I didn’t see you eat one. You just grabbed the last of Casey’s beef jerky. Trust me, I remember cause he complained about it all night after you went to bed. Master Splinter finally kicked him out when he tried to get Raph to make a bet with him on how huge you were gonna get.”

“Speaking of being kicked out, are you done your homework yet?” Gwyn nodded and waved the completed sheet like a flag. “Good. Go have Donnie check it and while you’re there, ask him if he has plan for the remodel ready yet.”

“Kay.” The girl hopped up happily and made her way to the door, not at all phased by her mother’s annoyance. She was still in the doorway when she turned and waved at the healer. “Tell Medusa I said ‘Hi’ and I wanna come over soon. Catch ya later Auntie P.”

After calling a farewell to the retreating girl the Phoenix raised an eyebrow at her patient, waiting for Eliza to come clean.

“It’s a temperature thing ok.” The ferret said petulantly, like a child caving under a parent's gaze. “I don’t like my meat cold anymore, it has to be room temp at least. And chicken salad doesn’t taste right unless it’s cold. I just didn’t feel like making anything else either.” What Eliza failed to mention was that Splinter had joined the rest of the family for dinner by that point and rather than stay in the kitchen to make something else, subjecting herself to his tantalizing scent, it was just easier to snag Casey’s half-empty snack bag and feign tiredness. That was one good thing about her pregnancy, no one ever questioned her wanting to go to bed early.  “The real odd thing is that I don’t even like beef jerky, hate it in fact, but it seemed to hit the spot.”

“Interesting,” The Phoenix hummed as she made a notation in her book. She then gave a small amused smirk. “Auntie P?”

“Oh that you can blame on Mikey.” Eliza smiled as she folded her legs criss-cross on the bed, ignoring her shirt riding up again. “I was making a list out in the kitchen the other day and he saw how your name was spelled. He thought Auntie ‘P’ rhymed very nicely with Mrs. ‘V’. Apparently that’s very important since was are, as he put it, ‘Team Supermom’” the ferret explained, making liberal use of air quotes.

“Team Supermom,” Phoenix repeated dubiously.  She considered herself many things, a Supermom wasn’t one of them.  She was satisfied her brood has made it to adulthood alive and free.

“Because we're a dynamic duo,” Eliza elaborated.

“Oh?” the smaller woman drawled.

“I’m a big strong mutant,” Eliza said, putting her arms body builder pose.  Phoenix laughed outright.  “Who can bend others to my will with my cooking superpowers.  You are a sharpshooting healer, who comes to the fight with your own brute squad.”

Phoenix rolled to the side, curling into a ball as she laughed.  Tears began to stream down her face before she got a hold of herself, Eliza gazed down at her in delight.  “I can take that,” she replied.  “I get Auntie P because there is no mister to make me misses, I am guessing.”

“I think you're giving Mikey to much credit,” Eliza admitted good naturedly.

“You have to eat,” Phoenix said, pushing herself back up, the last remnants of her laughing drifting off.  “Whether there is meat available or not.”. She knew from years of experience that meat was a rare treat.  Oh, there were plenty of rats, pigeons, raccoons, dogs, and cats to make meals of, but one usually had to be starving before eating any of them.  Eliza was not starving...in fact everyone in the Lair was surprisingly well fed.  

“I don't want anything else,” Eliza sighed.  “I want room temperature meat.”

Phoenix winced.  “Room temperature meat is going to be hard to find,” she said.  “Even when you’re not mutated.”  She sucked her lips in for a moment in thought.

Eliza looked away from her, her lip curling slightly.

“What?” Phoenix asked.  “Are you alright?”

Eliza nodded.   “Splinter passed the room.”

The human woman whipped her head toward the door, seeing it was firmly closed from Gwyn’s leaving.  “Is he eavesdropping?” she asked quietly, the thought unsettling her.

“No,” Eliza shook her head, exhaling.  “He stopped for a moment, but then kept going.  He was just passing by.”  She slumped her shoulders.

Phoenix’s brows drew together.  “Did you have a fight with him?”  She had a hard time keeping the defensive tone out of her voice.  She still didn’t have a bead on the rat ninja master.  There were times when he seemed very receptive to the traipsing in and out of his household, bordering on sweet.  And then there were times when he seemed very angry at something, she wasn’t sure what, but it had a self-indulgent feel to it which ground on her.  When she caught herself feeling that way, she had remind herself she did not know the man well enough to be making assumptions as to where his moods might be stemming.

Again, Eliza slowly shook her head, “No,” she said.  “Not at all, things have been very good.”

Phoenix paused.  “It doesn’t sound like it,” she ventured.

“I’m hungry,” Eliza emphasized, rubbing her belly, which peeked out of her shirt once again.  

“For room temperature meat,” Phoenix finished for her.

Eliza nodded.

“I don’t think room temperature meat is healthy for anyone,” Phoenix said.  “But,” she drew the word out, “I bet Medusa knows a lot of places to get body temperature meat.”