Bodiccea (Chapter 18)

Template:Bodiccea nav It was still dark in the morning; Bodiccea overslept, so Heather took advantage of the first chance she'd had to visit Atma's tavern in some time. "Hi, everybody." Paige: "Hi! C'mon in."

"Hey," Khaleel smiled, "how's the new gear working out?"

"Fantastic. I've never felt this powerful. It's weird."

Kasim grinned. "You got twinked up bright and shiny. How's Barbie taking it?"

Um... not so well. She keeps trying to outrun me and kill everything before I can get there. And she won't stop talking about what she's going to get when she's 25th level."

Smiling, Khaleel leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. "Jealousy... is an ugly thing. I think it's about time we had some."

"We've had some," Kasim said. "All the magic in the world couldn't help my boss."

"Your boss..." Klatu began, then frowned. "I still don't get her."

"What's to get? She had to do it her way, no matter how stupid it was."

Paige: "Look, they're all a little weird. That's not important right now. Heather, you look like something's bothering you. Are you going to be all right?"

"Yeah, I guess. I don't know." Heather looked down, fidgeting slightly. "I'm kind of wishing she didn't get jealous."

Khaleel's mouth fell open. "Why not?"

"I don't know. I keep thinking she's going to get hurt. More than usual, I mean. I don't really hate her or anything. Sometimes, she's nice."

Paige: "Heather, she's just competitive. She's an Amazon. That's why she has to do it her way too -- it's like she's in competition with all the other Amazons right now. And you."

"Yeah," Khaleel said, leaning forward. "It's like, when you were lower level and didn't have the gear, she didn't mind treating you like her b!tch."

Heather blinked, leaning back.

Paige: "Uh... so to speak."

"Um, yeah, ok," Khaleel shrugged. "She didn't mind holding it up over you. Now you've got it on her. I don't think you should mind letting her know how it feels."

"I don't know," Heather chewed her lower lip. "That sounds kind of mean."

"Well, yeah! Sling some of what she gave you right back at her, see how she likes it."

"Uh, dude?" Kasim interjected.

"What?"

"She might fire her if she does that."

Paige: "Yeah. I would."

Klatu shook his head. "No. That would be cowardly."

Khaleel laughed. "Exactly. She's not gonna fire her until she knows she can beat her."

"Then I really shouldn't be mean to her," Heather said. "She'd fire me sooner or later, and I don't want to go back and sit in the Rogue camp until someone hires me again. At least this way, I get to do something."

"No, no!" Khaleel hit the table with his hand. "I just mean rub her nose in it a little. Let her know you know you're good. That's how you compete."

"But I don't want us to compete."

"Well... she's gonna compete with you. She just is, get used to it. Everything you get, you should give right back, and get a little respect for yourself."

Frowning, Kasim tapped Khaleel on the shoulder. "Uh, dude?"

"Yeah?" Khaleel asked, with some exasperation.

"Just 'cause you Act III guys are the wimp mercs doesn't mean you should try to get her to honk off her boss."

"What?! What are you talking about?"

Paige: (laughs) "I'm picking up a little projection here, too."

"I'm still trying to parse, 'Let her know you know you're good.'" Klatu said.

Kasim nodded. "Yeah. That kind of was a lot of pronouns."

Paige: (looks quizzically at Klatu) "You know what 'parse' means?"

"Aye. And what a pronoun is."

Smirking, Kasim said, "Ok, big guy. What's a pronoun?"

"A noun that has lost its amateur status."

"I knew you were gonna say that."

"Guys!" Khaleel jumped in, "I am not trying to get Heather in trouble! I'm trying to tell her that, maybe, she'd feel a lot better if she cut loose a little and treated Blondie the way she's been treating her."

Paige: "And she's been saying she doesn't want to."

"Yeah," Kasim agreed.

"Look! She... I mean..." Khaleel sputtered, then sighed and gritted his teeth. "All I am saying... if you will LISTEN... is that maybe Heather should try a little harder to, you know, teach Miss Bodice-ripper that what goes around, comes around. She should treat people the way she wants to be treated."

Kasim laughed. "I think she already does."

Paige: (Notices Heather looks uncomfortable.) "Heather, are you ok?"

"Yeah," she mumbled unconvincingly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to start a fight."

"We're not fighting," Kasim said. "We're just telling wiz-boy here he's acting like an ass."

Paige: "Heather, you should treat Missy B the way you like. I think you're doing great. She'll catch up, and maybe stop being so competitive."

Khaleel sighed. "Fine. Whatever. I know when nobody wants to listen to me. Happens all the time."

"There may be good cause for that," Klatu smiled.

Paige: "Oh come on, Khaleel, don't sulk. You'll start sounding like deadboy."

"Hell, no. Pasty doesn't sulk, he whines."

"Ugh," Klatu said, covering his eyes with one hand. "Do not remind me. I heard he spent the entire last conference whimpering after some woman in spiky black leather."

"He does that at every meeting," Kasim said.

Heather sighed. "Um, guys? I think it's time for me to go wake Ms. B up and get going."

Paige: "You sure?"

"I think so. You can't really tell, but it's getting late."

Khaleel nodded, looking Heather right in the eye. "Yeah, ok. Could you just try, please, to get her to stop treating you so bad? You're a great girl, it really burns me to see the way she treats you."

"I'll be ok."

"Look... just -- ow!"

Paige: (stomped Khaleel's foot under the table) "Bye, Heather!"

"Ok, bye!"

As Heather scampered out of the tavern, Khaleel gave Paige a dirty look. "I was --"

Paige: (fumes) "Just because you went out of your way to piss off your boss doesn't mean Heather should. Has it occurred to you that she might be a better person than you?"

"That is exactly the problem! If you try being nice to somebody like Barbie, she'll walk all over you! I know, I've been there!"

Kasim laughed. "I guess she is a little like Asheara..."

Paige: "A little. Ok, more than a little: she would run around in a bikini if she could."

"Who is Asheara?" Klatu asked.

"The b!tch I used to work for, before I got hired by the b!tch I work for now," Khaleel grumbled.

Klatu chuckled. "Lucky you."

"Yeah, it's been a great life." Grimacing, Khaleel rubbed his foot. "Man, I wish we could wear boots..."

Bodiccea was up and looking for her when Heather got back. After a perfunctory lecture about keeping up and not getting lost again, they went back to the Lost City. The first thing they found was a well, with a desiccated skeleton right next to it. "What is this, a Gary Larson cartoon?" Bodiccea thought, just as the poison potions started raining down. Night Slingers, with Night Tigers and Marauders for backup. Nothing they couldn't handle, though the lack of zombies was strange. She thought the Lost City always had zombies.

The Lost City was full of ruined buildings (duh) and wells, which was good seeing how much poison was being tossed around. Night Slingers carried their own light sources, which helped for spotting them in the dark, but begged the question of why cat people would need lights. Maybe it was too dark even for their eyes without them. The unique zombie Dark Elder was near the Ancient Tunnels entrance. He dropped Bodiccea's first greater healing potion and a Bronze Large Charm of Greed. This had to be some kind of record.

On a return trip, Cain greeted Bodiccea with "Good morning."

"How can you tell?"

"It's only an expression," he said with slight annoyance, and identified her finds.

When she stopped at Fara's, the greeting was "Good day."

Bodiccea giggled and started singing, "Oh, won't you see things my way?"

"Hmm?"

"Nothing. Stupid joke. Have a rare dagger."

The zombies were all hiding in the Ancient Tunnels, along with some lightning Horror Mages and lesser mummies. They really would have been a pain if there'd been Greater Mummies in there with them. Bodiccea and Heather wandered around a while, killing dead guys, kicking urns, and turning green a lot. Heather reached level 21, and the only time they were even alarmed was when a Conviction aura appeared under their feet. Fortunately, it was only a zombie. He coughed up (literally) a jewel. Bodiccea had an identify scroll on hand, so she ID'd it: a Jewel of Avarice, with +11% gold find.

Bodiccea glared at the jewel, then looked at Heather. "No blonde gold-digger jokes."

"I wasn't going to make one."

The golden chest of joy was guarded by an extra strong skeleton mage. No challenge, but there was nothing exciting in the chest anyway. Back upstairs, they continued to clear the Lost City area, Bodiccea inching ever closer to level 24. While Heather was blasting a fire tower to bits (which took surprisingly little time) something occurred to Bodiccea.

"Hey, Heather, have you noticed something?"

"Like what?" Heather asked, drawing her bow again. Killing the fire tower wasn't taking very long.

"Every monster in the city, except that tower, is dark blue."

As the tower crumbled, Heather thought about that. "Yeah... I think you're right."

"The cats, Marauders, even Plague Bearers are dark blue. I wonder if that's to make it look dark, like when they put a blue filter over a scene in a movie to show it's night."

"Maybe they put a filter over everything while the sun's out."

Bodiccea smirked. "Or maybe it's just everything turning blue the minute you catch sight of it."

"What I wonder about," Heather said without comment, "is why you wear that little patch of armor on your right thigh. You keep your left leg forward, so if you're only going to armor one leg, it should be that one."

"'Cause I've got a big zit on that leg," Bodiccea said. "No, the armor only comes with one thigh plate, for the right leg. Dunno why."

Heather shrugged. "Okay. Weird."

When they finished the Lost City off, Bodiccea was just shy of level 24. There wasn't a fire tower in the Valley of Snakes, so they went down into the Claw Viper Temple, and ran into some Embalmed right in the entrance chamber. Bodiccea squealed and jumped for the kill... just as Heather's bowstring sang, and a mummy flopped over dead. It was enough to give her the level, though. After clearing the room, Bodiccea stuck a point into Fend, switched it to her main attack, and put a point in Decoy.

"What does Decoy do, Ms B?"

"It's a distraction. Bowazons love decoys," Bodiccea said, casting it for the first time. A glowing version of her appeared on the other side of the room, swaying slightly in some air currents. "I probably won't use it much, but I want Valkyrie."

Heather looked at the decoy, blinked, and grinned a little. "That's it, huh?"

"Yep! A perfect duplicate of me... whoa, is my ass that big?"

Heather managed to stay quiet until the decoy disappeared with a soft pop and flurry of glowing motes. Then, she started giggling. "It... inflated. And popped."

"Uh, yeah... Decoy is a minor gift from the goddess of the air. Valkyries are better."

Small, strangled guffaws slowly squeezed their way out of Heather. "It... it was... it was an inflatable you... until it popped..."

Bodiccea blinked in confusion until dawn broke and her jaw fell open. "HEATHER! It is NOT a blow-up doll!!"

Unable to hold back any more, Heather burst into laughter! "YES IT WAS!! It was it was oh GAWD it was! You could sell those!!"

"Heather, you are not selling inflatable me's to every frustrated guy in Lut Gholein!"

"No, we couldn't," she kept giggling. "They'd all want refunds."

"Hey!"

"After they pop!"

"Oh. Well, yeah. I'm not gonna pump the skill enough to make it last."

Another wave of giggles shook Heather. "Pumping skill..."

"NO, Heather. Don't even think about it."

"I'm sorry..."

"Good. Now, you can say you're sorry by telling me my ass isn't really that big."

"Um, yeah." She tried to regain her composure, but quaked with the giggles every time she tried to complete the sentence.. "Sorry, Ms. B, your decoy doesn't look like a... and your butt isn't... your... your butt is... hee heee hee..."

"Never mind," Bodiccea rolled her eyes. "Let's go kill something."

Their first meeting with Claw Vipers convinced Bodiccea of two things. First, she liked Fend. It was quick, dished out lots of hurt, and wasn't too demanding mana-wise. Secondly, she really needed something that gave her Cannot Be Frozen. The Vipers' chilling charge really cramped her Fending style. There were other problems with the skill, sadly. If the first stab missed, the entire round would miss, a bug that's plagued it since the beginning. And unlike Jab, Fend really needed mana leech to keep going. Surely, there would be some waiting for her when she was a high enough level... she just needed to get there.

The first level of the Viper temple was pretty big, but nothing noteworthy took place. On the second level, there were no Greater Mummies, only Fangskin, his cohort, and a few random Salamanders. Impaling Fangskin was easy as pie, and once the room was cleared, Bodiccea kicked over the altar and picked up the amulet. Back in town, they wandered over to visit Warriv.

"Why are we going this way?" Heather asked.

Bodiccea grinned. "For the best Warriv quote in the game. Hi, Warriv!"

"Ah, welcome!" he replied. "I understand you've become as great a hero here as you were back in the Rogue pass."

"Yep! And I just brought back Mr. Sun."

"Excellent! With renewed daylight, we may gather the wits that were scattered about like restrictive undergarments in the darkness."

Bodiccea laughed noisily, and Heather grinned a little. "Sez you! I need my restrictive undergarments. These things don't stay up by themselves, you know."

"In all honesty, I've never given your foundation garments a thought," Warriv cleared his throat, but his eyes twinkled. "Oh, Jerhyn would like to see you. It seems to be urgent."

"Oh, Jerhy-baby! I almost forgot him. Heather, don't you dare interrupt this time."

"Um..."

Bodiccea spritzed some Binaca in her mouth. "Maybe I should get a bath first. I'll bet I've still got bug snot in some very private places."

"Um..."

"That's right, no bathtubs. I'll have to shower! Are my tan lines too obvious?"

"But... what about inside the palace?"

"Don't worry, it's cool. The uppermost floor is always empty, and there's a couple of beds there."

"But..."

"He can't get away this time, you know. He's got nowhere to run."

Heather finally just sighed. "Can I at least go somewhere else so I don't have to see this?"

Bodiccea raised an eyebrow. "I think you'd better."

"Good. I'll be at Atma's if you need me."