Rising Shards

The seemingly endless lines of rude old people demanding complicated customer service and immediately getting mad at Chumbler, Z.O.K., and Typo when they did something slightly off grew more painful by the minute.

“Ma’am,” Chumbler said. “I don’t think we even sell stamps here. This is like a ski lift ticket sale or something.

The old woman looked down at Chumbler with such disdain that even she felt some modicum of shame for not knowing exactly what this ski lift place was supposed to be.

“Chumbler…” Z.O.K. wailed as an old guy made some very invasive comments about her appearance. “Queceilitrex is super, incredibly, deluxe-o hot, but I don’t know if this is worth it anymore.”

“Yeah…” Chumbler said, wiping the sweat from her brow.

Typo was on the ground, cowering from someone yelling “DO YOUR JOB!” over and over. The manager guy had wandered off and hopefully wouldn’t be seen again.

“Alright, new plan!” Chumbler said. She crawled onto her desk.

“If you don’t get me thirteen stamps and the latest issue of Box Spring Bi-Monthly, I’m going to kill your manager.” The old lady said.

Chumbler rushed into her roll ball form and barreled forward, knocking the group in front of her over like bowling pins.

“Chumbler!” Z.O.K. said. “You can’t just beat up old people!”

“Why not? They’re really mean!” Chumbler said, slipping out of her ball form for a second to go back and roll some more over.

“Well…you make a good point.” Z.O.K. said. She leapt over her desk and started punching and kicking the rude old people.

Typo didn’t join in on the fight, still sobbing from the customers.

Most of the geezers went down easily, poofing into dust.

“Ah, so they’re just void things!” Z.O.K. said. “I feel a little less bad about fighting them now!”

“Or they’re just really really old, and any physical activity literally turns them to dust!” Chumbler said.

“Then wouldn’t this be like…kinda murder-y?” Z.O.K. asked.

“Oh, we’re definitely void things so, yeah,” An old guy said, getting out a chain that he started to swing around.

“Void created monsters specifically for this!” An old lady said, brandishing a bat wrapped in barbed wire.

Chumbler and Z.O.K. ended up back-to-back.

“Quite the mess we’ve got ourselves in, huh?” Chumbler said.

“Time for me to finally show off my really cool Cani power?” Z.O.K. suggested.

“Nah, let’s just fight normal style.” Chumbler said.

“Fiiiiiine,” Z.O.K. said. “But you know how cool it is.”

“it’s not that cool.” Chumbler said. “My roll ball is much cooler.”

The lady with the bat lunged at them, and the rumble really began.

Fighting a bunch of old people was more harrowing than the duo expected, but they managed to escape without major scrapes. They were panting, then coughing as they hacked up some of the old people void monster dust.

“Did we…win?” Z.O.K. asked.

“We probably just got DQ’d for beating them all up instead of customer service-ing like we were supposed to.” Chumbler said.

Typo rose from behind the desks, still crying. “I wasn’t watching, but it was cathartic hearing you beat those guys up.”

“Thank ya kindly, Typo my dude!” Chumbler said. “Maybe when we get back to the school I’ll show you around Chumblerosa. Provided you’re willing to pay us as a customer or work for us as an employee.”

“I think,” Typo sniffed. “I thought we’d agreed we’d do that already.”

“Did we? I don’t remember.” Chumbler said. “Well, at any rate, we got to beat up a bunch of people who are rude to those in customer service, and isn’t that the important thing?”

In another burst of disco lit smoke, Queceilitrex appeared. Chumbler braced for the giant mythical lady to punish them immediately and send them abck home.

“Um!” Z.O.K. said. “If you have to discipline us, get me first, please?”

“Good work,” Queceilitrex said.

“Wait, we’re not disqualified?” Typo asked.

“No, you beat up one hundred of em,” Queceilitrex said. “In addition to meeting the challenge parameters, it’s also pretty cool.”

“Wow! Thank you, ma’am!” Z.O.K. said. “Radiantly gorgeous as always!  Our victory was never in doubt, because that win was all for you, gorgeous.”

“Right, so next challenge?” Chumbler said.

“Follow me.” Queceilitrex said.