Shauna squirmed, sweating and tense. Spatulas surrounded him on all sides, yammering on and on incessantly, their little mouths opening and closing in an interminable murmur of insanity. They slithered up his legs, wriggling and writhing like carnivorous insects on flesh.

“No…”Shauna kicked hysterically at the heaving orgy. “NOOOO!”

A boot connected viciously with his skull, sending his head jerking sharply to the side. Bright starbursts exploded across his eyelids in a disturbingly pleasant array of colors. The spatulas screamed as they melted into a creamy, psychedelic wax and faded into the darkness of his subconscious.

The world, unfortunately, returned. As did Valencia’s boot.

Shauna opened one eye, a narrow slit of snake-like annoyance. “What?” The morning sun lanced at his defenseless pupils and he vaguely wondered when he had fallen asleep the night before.

Valencia towered above him, hands on her hips. For a moment he thought he saw a greenish glint of iris through the mass of hair that dangled over her eyes like hanging moss. Her appearance was striking: an emoting giantess, towering over tree tops and reaching for the large fluffy clouds overhead.

Then, with the resolve of an embittered and moderately malicious virago, she drew back her foot for a third blow.

“Wait! Wait! I’m up! Just- Just stop already!” Shauna jerked to his feet and staggered when the blood rushed to his head. “Eargh.”

He shook his head and waited for the blue and orange bursts of color to fade from his vision. Shakily he brought a hand up to the side of his skull, feeling for the lump that was beginning to grow there.

Valencia glared up at him, obviously irritated and more than a little anxious. “We need to get going.” Her voice was flat and back to the restrained solemnness that he had been brutally forced to listen to in her temple.

“Didn’t we make some kind of truce or something?” Shauna almost screeched at her, his head throbbing painfully.

“No. Not really. But that’s not what’s important,” she groused. “What’s important is that they’ll send us a thing, and when they do-”

“Who?”

She tugged at a string of hair near her forehead in frustration. “The Knights Errant: Delicious Technologies & Co. They’ll send us a thing-”

“A what?”

“-Or maybe many things.”

“What things??” Shauna yelled.

There was a sharp crackle of underbrush and both Shauna and Valencia spun, searching for the source of the sound. The search wasn’t too difficult: fresh and icky morning dew, trees, grass, a sky, a bird, more grass, the old campfire, something hurtling through the air-

-a man!

The rock that the man had thrown connected with Shauna’s knee and dropped to the ground between Valencia and Shauna. It rolled about and came to rest pathetically next to a crawling, fuzzy caterpillar, which promptly went about its business ignoring the rock.

There was a note tied to the rock with a bit of owl feathers.

“Now how did he manage that?” Shauna muttered as he picked up the sad little bit of limestone and tugged the note off. He unfolded the scrap of paper and read aloud:

Dearest the Unremarkable Duo, which, in fact, Epitomizes Unremarkable-ness

If you will be so kind, please do not look at the man. He is busy running away discretely. Now, on with the main subject of this little ‘note-let’-

Valencia and Shauna turned to watch the man stumble through the underbrush, trying to discretely run away. He turned to look back, saw them watching, squawked, and struggled even harder to wade through a thicket of bushes.

Valencia sighed. “I hope he knows that there’s a path about two meters to his left. Actually, from his perspective, it should be quite visible…”

Shauna decided to continue on with the Note of Great Import. “Ahem…”

Now, on with the main subject of the little ‘note-let,’ as we here in The Knights Errant: Delicious Technologies & Co call it. HaHA! We have-

An abrupt scream cut Shauna off; the man had disappeared.

Shauna’s eyebrows rose has he looked towards Valencia who said simply, “Manhole.”

He coughed and focused back on the ‘note-let’.

HaHA! We have sent you a thing! Surrender the spatula now or fear the wrath of many more things! (And trust us, you will not like the things that we will send you!!)

Shauna choked weakly.

Love,

The Knights Errant: Delicious Technologies & Co.

The bright red, sparkling ink did not make the ‘note-let’ any more threatening, menacing, or anything else generally associated with evil.

“Uhm…” Shauna struggled to find something to say, but realized that, really, there wasn’t. “Well…That was…”

Valencia shrugged. “Don’t even bother.”

“But that…that was just so…”

“No words can express?…” She asked.

“Yes! Exactly!”

“Then they have succeeded.” Valencia said simply.

“They…they’ve already won??” Shauna staggered back a step.

“No. Morbid Existentialism, remember? They seek to claim that they exist and that they did whatever-it-was in the most unreasonable ways possible. The ultimate mode of conveyance leaves the reader speechless.” Her voice had taken on the tone of an expository article, which had, in most cases, no tone at all.

“Ah.”

“Let’s go and check on Mister Oh-My-Gods-A-Manhole-How-Did-This-Happen?!”

They found him not ten meters from them, at the bottom of a seven foot manhole.

They then proceeded to spend a good half hour laughing at his screams for help, and to get the snakes away from him.

“…No really! I’m just a Proxy! Come on! The snakes! They’re starting to wake up! Please!” the man caterwauled. One of the snakes wiggled, unsure whether to wake up or snuggle back into the mud.

“Is there any way that you can prove that you’re just a Proxy? What designation were you given?” Shauna called into the pit.

“I’m just a Class Three! A side job! Part-time! Oh please!” The snake had decided that it wanted to wake up and investigate the delicious heat on the other side of the pit that it had unfortunately fallen into the night before.

“What’s your full-time job?”

“I’m the Minstrel in the Merry Band of Followers! Oh, Gods! It’s awake! It’s looking at me! It’s-!” Shauna yanked him out of the hole just as the snake snapped forward like a spring.

The Minstrel lay panting in the dirt next to the hole. “I’m only a Level Three Proxy! No High Anonymity Proxying for me! I’m sorry! I’m sorry-”

Valencia kicked him in the head. “Shut up.”

The Minstrel was quiet.

Shauna turned to Valencia. “Is that why you kicked me?”

“Kind of.” She said flatly.

“Ah.” There was a pause before Shauna drawled. “So, a manhole. Here. Convenient.”

Valencia shrugged. “It’s a mountain thing. What, you can’t just expect a mountain to let humans walk all over it un-maimed, can you? It‘ll open a manhole here and there, send a tree falling on you…a random badger could attack you. An owl.”

“I kind of didn’t think that mountains were sentient,” Shauna muttered. He turned and dragged the Minstrel to his feet. “Get out of here. Oh, and if I see you proxying again, I’ll kick your ass.”

The Minstrel took off running, using the path this time.

Shauna and Valencia got back on the path and continued in the direction they had been heading the night before. “So, Vee.”

“Hmph.” She grunted.

“Aren’t proxies kind of…”

“Yes, they are. The KEDT uses them to keep their real runners from getting caught.”

“The… the runner hires a proxy runner?”

“Yeah.”

“They seem kind of stupid, but I have to admit, that’s kind of clever.”

There was silence.

An owl hooted and Shauna flinched.

“So…that manhole. Did you…?”

“No,” she said flatly. He would have believed her if she hadn’t winked through her bangs.

“Ah.”

--

Chapter six is partially written and partially planned out. I don't know when I'll be updating next, but know that it is coming.
Next up:
The town of Amalgam and The True Hero

Review Please!