The Dangers of Stupidity

Chapter XXIII: Pinkie's Hall

This hall was disturbingly large. The ceiling had to be at least two hundred feet high. The room was completely blank except for a table-like stone in a corner.

"What the hell?" I whispered to myself as I ran a hand over the stone. It was covered in writing. The letters were in Equish, but they were all jumbled. After a moment, I realized what it was.

"They aren't jumbled. They're in Al Bhed! Hang on, where's my phone?" I rummaged through my pockets and backpack for a moment, finding my cell phone. I just barely had a signal, but it was good enough.

"Hello?" Erika's voice and face sprung to life on my phone.

"Hey, I'm here in Sephiroth's temple. I found some writing on a stone, and they're in Al Bhed. Can you read them for me?"

"Sure. Where is it?" I turned my phone around towards the stone.

"It says, With one switch, the moon will come forth. The Lunar Diviner will show the way to a whole new place after. Enter, and show them the power of Laughter. What the hell does that mean?"

Don't these things usually rhyme or something?

"It clearly has something to do with a switch somewhere in here. But it mentioned a Lunar Diviner. Is it a person, or an object?" I looked up above me, seeing a pedestal topped with a crescent shaped gem.

"I think I found the Lunar Diviner. How am I gonna get it down?" The pedestal was tucked inside an alcove at the top of the wall. I could have flown up there and brought it back down, but I would need two hands to control myself. My Electrokinetic Grasp wouldn't be able to reach that far. I needed a way up, and quick.

"Erika, you got any-Pinkie, what the fuck are you doing!?" I covered my ears to shield them from a horrid grinding sound. Behind me, the pink mare was pushing the stone with all her strength and actually moving it!

"You're a genius!" I leaned down beside her and began pushing as well. The stone moved forward before stopping. A set of poles emerged from the wall, leading all the way up to the alcove I was after.

"Alright! Let's do this!" I ran forward and didn't stop, running straight up the wall due to a small amount of static electricity keeping me attached. As long as I kept moving, I would be fine. After a while, I grabbed one of the poles and swung upward, landing on another one. I kept moving in this fashion until I reached the alcove.

"Crap. I can't climb back down. Think, man, think... well, I'll have to push my luck, but it's the best I've got." I held the pedestal on my back, jumped, and slid down the wall, nearly slamming into the ground face-first.

"That takes care of the Lunar Diviner. Now, where's this switch?" I scanned the room around me, not finding any trace of a switch.

Maybe I should think outside the box...

"Aha!" I reached for the stone and pushed down on it as hard as I could. It started to move a bit before it sunk down into the floor.

"How did you figure that out!?" Pinkie asked me, bouncing in circles around my legs.

"I'll explain later. Let's just figure out what's going on here first." The ceiling began to open up, causing a beam of moonlight to shine down on the Lunar Diviner. The floor did the same, revealing a large pool of water. Its surface rumbled for a moment. I drew my Blades of Exile, preparing for a fight.

"Look out!" I yelled, grabbing the mare beside me as the floor fell apart, forming six circular platforms around the pool. An immense dragon-like monster burst forth from the water.

"The Spectral Keeper. We're fucked." I slashed at it a few times and did a fair amount of damage. The beast fired a blast of energy at three of the platforms, creating a large explosion on them. Luckily neither one of us was standing one any of them. I launched a flurry of lightning bolts at the water, swiftly electrocuting the bastard. It tried to swipe at me with its tail, but I grabbed on, climbed up its body, and stabbed it in the eyes. I fell back onto the platform right before it trapped the same three as before. This time, I was standing on one. I flew into the air, propelled by the explosion.

"You're dead!" In midair, I flung a blade out in a curve, wrapping it around the Spectral Keeper's neck. It tried to pull the chain off with its fin shaped appendages, but I wrapped my other blade around it, strangling the monster and making it fall onto the platform in front of me.

"I guess we're not as fucked as I thought!" I said jovially, throwing out another blade and piercing throught the Spectral Keeper's head. It started to pull back, but I pulled harder, tearing its head in half. I looked around me  while its body disintegrated, not seeing any way out but down.

"Stay right here." I said, jumping into the pool of water. It had to have been at least sixty feet deep.

Thanks, Poseidon.

A small lever sat at the bottom. I pulled on it for a little while, but it didn't budge. I tried pushing this time, and it lurched forward.

Woohoo! What's next?

The water drained from around me, and a narrow path opened up in the wall.

"Yo, Pinks! Jump down here! I'm gonna catch you!"

"Yaaaaay!" She shouted, jumping over the edge. I dove forward, ending up with a small pink pony in my hands.

"Let's go." I drew my Amp with my right hand and coated my left in electricity. The two of us squeezed through the opening, barely coming out on the other side. Three large, green, flying alien-looking creatures charged at us. They may as well have jumped into a blender when I took them out with a series of blade shaped lightning bolts that tore away at their flesh and bones, leaving behind three shredded corpses that leaked blood like faucets. Ahead of us, a black, shiny ball covered up a hole in the wall. I felt a series of scales on the thing when I touched it.

"What is this thing?"

"Do you really not know what this is?"

Samus? You know?

"It's a Rhedogian. If you hit it either with enough force or a sufficient amount of heat, it will remove itself from its perch and kill you almost immediately. Do not wake a Rhedogian unless it is absolutely necessary. It is a borderline certainty that you will die."

Well, thanks for that bit of cheerfulness.

"I am simply telling the truth."

I took a few swings at the Rhedogian with my blades. Nothing happened. Instead, I threw Zeus' Thunder at the wall, blowing it to pieces. The monster still didn't wake up.

"Damn, these things are heavy sleepers. Come on, Pinkie."

We strolled through the rest of the hall. The room looked almost like a parking garage. The floor began to rumble again, much like when the Spectral Keeper had appeared. I prepared a bolt in one hand and held my Amp in the other. Two immense worms burst forth from the walls, firing a ball of energy at me. I shoved Pinkie out of the way and held up a shield of electricity, blocking the explosion. They sunk back into the holes while I readied another attack, one much more powerful than before.

"Look out!" I shouted, flinging an electric rocket at both of the monsters. They flew out of their holes and started squirming around on the floor, trying to escape. I grabbed onto one of them, jammed my arm in its gaping maw, and fired another rocket, blowing it apart from the inside. I tried to do the same to the other, but it dodged my assault and pulled me into its mouth with a long, prehensile tongue. I struggled against it futilely. The beast tried to swallow me, and I blasted its back end out with one last attack.

"Ugh, that was disgusting." I said, climbing out of the body and wiping the blood from my clothes.

"Let's keep moving. I don't wanna go through anything like that again." I ran out of the room with Pinkie following me, almost accidentally throwing us both into a nearly bottomless pit.

"Watch yourself." I held her on my shoulders and jumped, running across the wall just like when I went after the Lunar Diviner. I slid to a stop on the other side.

"That was awesome!" The pink mare exclaimed, climbing off of my back.

"What's this thing?" I reached down and opened a small chest, revealing two small balloon-shaped gems and an orb of pink light.

"Well, that was anticlimactic."

The wall behind us practically exploded, sending the Rhedogian straight after us.

"Goddamn it! Y-You know what? Fuck you, Sephiroth! It's like you're specifically trying to piss me off! So you can GO FUCK YOURSELF WITH YOUR SWORD!" I fired a bolt at its neck, but nothing happened. No matter what I did, the Rhedogian didn't even notice. It just kept charging and swinging its arms at me.

"HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO KILL THIS THING, SEPHIROTH!?" At this point, I was completely and utterly pissed off. The Rhedogian's single eye turned bright red. I dove out of the way as it fired a massive beam of energy straight ahead. The attack just barely nicked my leg, but it felt like someone had duct-taped my foot to the roof of a pizza oven.

"Damn you!" I summoned a power of Cole MacGrath's that I never even knew I had. I don't think he knew either.

I tossed a grenade at the Rhedogian's head. It exploded in a cloud of freezing wind, coating the beast's horns in ice. I took this chance to gather my strength and smash its horns with a pair of bolts, severely weakening it. My body floated into the air, suspended by wind and electricity. Massive lightning bolts struck the floor around me. The speed of the wind was so fast that the room's roof went flying into the night sky, while storm clouds formed around my hands and in the air directly above me. The walls became entirely coated in thick sheets of ice.

"Now, you die!" My voice was deep and distorted, but still audible. A huge spike of ice pierced through each of the Rhedogian's limbs, holding it in the air and starting to freeze its body, while I blasted it with the most powerful bolts I could conjure. Finally, I spun in a circle, forming a circular lightning bolt around me, and pushed it forward with my palm, sending the electric spear straight through the frozen alien, shattering it like glass. I fell to my knees in a puddle of melted ice, panting like a dog in the middle of summer.

"Pinkie..." I managed to say between breaths, "get... get out of here. I'll c-catch up with you."

I dropped onto the floor face-first, my head resting comfortably on the wet stone floor.