My mission was to retrieve the small golden object, presumably that golden triangular piece that was traded between the two users. While I did fail that mission, I did manage to gain a small amount of information that Dr. Peppy would hopefully be satisfied with. The user HoneySyrup was very adept in battle and I managed to get a good sense of who he was, both physically and cognitively. I did not catch the name of the other user, but he definitely seemed to be the head of the operation. Even from that brief encounter, I could sense that he was one of great strength and I don’t think I could have dealt with him in a one-on-one duel. If HoneySyrup obeyed him without question, surely the mysterious leader must have had great battle prowess. Still unsure of how Dr. Peppy would react to this rather limited information, I went to the back of the Star Fox Fan Art Directory, punched in the code from before and was face-to-face with the large chrome doors of his base once again. It was about 2:00 AM, so I didn’t have to worry about being too stealthy, but I still checked to make sure no one was around before I headed inside.
I stopped abruptly after hearing one of my footsteps echo on the marble floor inside the room. Doctor Peppy was busy chatting with another user and I hoped that I wasn’t interrupting anything important or confidential. They both turned around upon hearing me enter and then continued to chat amongst themselves. After a few more seconds of waiting, I spoke up, “Umm…I thought you would be expecting me…” Dr. Peppy looked at me once again, and then whispered one final piece of information to the user as she nodded her head. This user was taller than average for a girl, but still a bit shorter than me. She had pale skin, light blue eyes and pointy ears. She wore leather brown boots and a silver tunic with a brown belt strapped over her shoulder that held a quiver full of arrows on her back. Turning away from Dr. Peppy, she slowly made her way towards me and a bright smile crossed her face as she moved closer.
“Hiya! I’m HyruleGirl9!” She said rather enthusiastically, “What’s your name?” I gave an indifferent expression – even though I don’t think she could see my face as it was concealed by a black hood – and remained silent, much to her dismay. “Don’t like to talk a lot, huh?” She said, grinning at me strangely. “I’m here to deliver a report to Doctor Peppy.” I finally replied, growing increasingly annoyed with her attitude, “Is your discussion with him finished?” “Yeah…yeah… Always about business around here? Fine…I guess I’ll go do my job then. I might not look like it, but I can hold my own around here, you know.” “That’s wonderful…” I said, hoping that she would just leave so I could deliver the information to my employer. She then continued, “Actually… I haven’t had a chance to test my new moves in a while. Would you be up for it? It would be good practice for my real mission.” Before I had a chance to accept or reject her offer, Dr. Peppy spoke out from across the room, “HyruleGirl9, don’t be foolish. Your mission was not to fight my other clients. Besides, you couldn’t beat him anyway.” She scoffed and was about to retort with something, but wisely decided to hold her tongue and started to walk away. Before she reached the large chrome door, she turned her head, looked towards me and said, “Just don’t doubt my abilities…” She held out her hand and conjured a small fireball, hoping to impress both of us with her limited magical abilities. Unfortunately for her, neither of us showed even the slightest bit of emotion and she, once again, turned away in disgust. When the chrome doors closed behind her and it was just Dr. Peppy and I in the room, I turned towards him and said, “Dr. Peppy, I have returned.” He looked at me with a satisfied expression and exclaimed, “Yes, I can see that. Now, did you manage to grab the golden item? Did you succeed in your mission?”
Even though I was still nervous as to what his reaction might be, I decided that the truth would be the best thing to tell him. If I tried to make something up, he probably would be able to see through it. Despite my knowing that he would be displeased, I replied shamefully, “No…But I did recover some vital information that I think cou-” “Say no more!” He said loudly, instantly quieting my futile attempts to make up for my failure. “Surely, you do not know the value of this item. I knew I should have a warrior of a more reputable status. You were not ready for this task! Now NSider will be in disarray come sunrise. How could I have been so shortsighted and underestimated the magnitude of this event!? Hopefully I can still quell the media before things get out of hand.” Disappointed in myself, I offered to explain what exactly happened while I was on the island. He reluctantly agreed to listen to my story, so I proceeded to tell him about where and when the exchange took place as well as my fierce battle against HoneySyrup.
When I finished, he remained silent for about a minute. He just stood there, thinking and analyzing the tale I just told. I anxiously awaited a response, whether it was positive or negative, just to relieve this tension. Finally, he said, “You have failed to recover the golden item, but your story is helpful I suppose. However, you get no pay as your objective was not fulfilled. Now be gone! I have much work to do in order to make up for your shortcomings.” I was extremely angry by this and pleaded to the military veteran, “But, sir, without pay, I will be unable to support myself. I need some posts to survive.” Frustrated and annoyed, I continually insisted upon receiving something for my hard work, even if it wasn’t the full payment. He remained firm for a while, but then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a bronze coin worth one post. He tossed it to me and sarcastically said, “Here… go buy yourself a soda or something. Now please show yourself to the door.”
This only heightened my anger, but I decided to retain my composure and head for the door rather than ruin my reputation with this man. Even though he was older and probably past his prime, I don’t know if I could handle facing him in a battle. If he could not beat me alone, he would probably call in someone who could. I turned around and saw Dr. Peppy muttering angrily to himself as he went into another room and a door closed tightly behind him. However, within the clouds of my anger, a ray of light shined through a presented an opportunity for revenge. I’m sure he was well aware of how hard I worked and yet he still shortchanged me, giving me one post out of pity rather than what was agreed upon. Despite the fact that there undoubtedly were security cameras in this room, it didn’t stop me from going towards the center of the room. There, still, was the large table with a map of NSider on it and figures moving around, although more were stationary now than before. After a few seconds of staring at this map, I started to realize the significance of these figurines. My speculation was confirmed when I looked towards the Star Fox board on the map and saw a figure positioned on top of the Star Fox Fan Art Directory garbed in all black and holding two daggers. Looking at the details more closely, it was a figurine that greatly resembled my appearance, as it mimicked my exact moments. I unsheathed my daggers and assumed a fighting pose and the figurine did the same thing. “What…is this?” I asked myself, “This must be how Dr. Peppy tracks those he is interested in.” Just to further convince myself, I looked towards the ceiling and the head of the figure looked up. There was no mistaking that this was a figurine of me that somehow was able to copy my movements, despite not having any mechanical parts or remote devices.
I looked on the map again and saw a figurine of HyruleGirl9 heading away from the Star Fox Board, towards the Donkey Kong Board from what it seemed. Before I glanced over the map to see more and perhaps find one of HoneySyrup or other users, a thought crossed my mind of how Dr. Peppy discretely insulted me further. He could see my progress and the battle between HoneySyrup by using this map and didn’t even need to hear my story. My words didn’t matter in the least to this egotistical ex-military general and he didn’t give a damn about paying me. He only wanted the golden item for his own selfish ambitions and I started to become satisfied with myself that I wasn’t able to get it. When I was first hired by Dr. Peppy, I thought that he was a generous man looking to give those with great skill and little money a chance to make some decent earnings. Now I could see that he only cared about his own well-being and exploited the situations of users like myself to achieve personal goals. Out of anger, I snatched my figurine from the table, shoved it in my robes, and ran like a flash towards the door and far away from his headquarters.
I decided to run towards the Metroid Board so as not to be detected or even tracked by Dr. Peppy. Using my PM watch, I blocked him from my contacts so that he could not send messages to me and possibly track me in such a manner. Now that I had his precious little figurine, there was no way he could keep tabs on me from his pathetic little base of operations. I knew that this would not sit well with the man, but that was where I gained a sense of satisfaction. Rather than being afraid of what he would do, I felt like it would be fun to elude my new enemy and face the challenges he throws in my direction. “Find me!” I shouted in the air to no one, “Find me, Dr. Peppy! Find me if you dare!”
Once I safely took cover in a back alley and regained my calm composure, I took the figurine out of my robes and examined it. The figure was only about two inches tall, but was of immense detail. It had everything from the exact engraving on my daggers to the rip on my robes from one of HoneySyrup’s attacks. However, it was no longer moving and now remained stationary; resembling the pose I was in when I snatched the figure from Dr. Peppy’s office. I tried making all different poses, like raising one arm, drawing one dagger and even performing a back flip, but it did not move in the slightest. There was definitely something odd about this and I would have to make a point in finding out more information about this object. Even if I didn’t know anything about it, it was pretty cool to have a miniature model of me. I was asking myself where he obtained this object and who made it for him, but I decided to put those thoughts to rest for now. The point was that it was in my hands now, not the greedy hands of Dr. Peppy. I placed it back in my pocket gently, figuring that I would toy around with it more in the daylight and searched for some sort of shelter where I could spend the night.
When I awoke the next day, I looked at my watch and saw that it was 12:30 PM. I don’t think I slept this much in years and still felt a little sore from last night, but still amazingly refreshed. I sleepily wiped my eyes and was about to get up when something painfully collided with my lower body. “Look boys, he’s finally awake.” I glanced up, my vision still a bit blurry, and saw a user’s black boot rear back in preparation for another kick. Unable to move out of the way in time, I felt his kick again but it surprisingly didn’t hurt as much as I expected it to. I looked at his face and saw that he was a muscular brute surrounded by four other guys, all of which looked about the same, but the one who was kicking me appeared to be the leader. They were very strong, had big scruffy beards and wore tattered brown clothes with cut-off shirt sleeves. I sprang to my feet and attempted to move into a fighting pose, but my wrists were tied together with a thick tan-colored rope. The four men were surrounding me, laughing at my predicament, but I was still confused as to what was going on.
Finally, I looked ahead and saw someone emerge from behind a building. Unlike the other users who were large and muscular, this user had more of an average size and body build. He was about the same height as I was and sported a black goatee on his chin. He had brown eyes and wore crimson-colored robes, which didn’t seem very well-suited for close, physical combat. He wore brown boots and brown gloves, both of which seemed to be made out of a thin material. His gloves, though, did have a blue-colored gemstone on the back of them, but whether this solely for aesthetics or not I wasn't sure. Upon further examination, his gloves did have small, metal spikes on the knuckles which would probably leave a mark if one were to get hit by them. When he was about two or three feet from me, he stopped and spoke, “Did you really think that you can come in our territory and stay the night?” He had a stern expression on my face and was clearly aggravated at my ignorance. Once of his minions spoke out, “Heh… boss… he’s sleepin’ on the job. Heh heh!” “Quiet, you!” The leader said, “Don’t make me freeze you again.” “Ugh…” He said with a worried tone, “Sorry boss…” One of the other brigands tried to stomp on my foot, but I moved and his foot collided with the pavement. “Stop, idiots!” The leader screamed once again, then turned towards me, “Just who do you think you are?” “I would ask the same of you,” I said slyly, realizing that this particular group of users seemed to be comprised of more brawn than brain. He said proudly, “I am MegaFreak400, the leader of the Freak Bandits, and you’re on our turf uninvited!”
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