shinkothetoongirl – Siblings-a-Fixin'

“Course I do! Here, I got just the thing!” Shinko replied, reaching behind into her hammerspace.

Belial and Falcon managed to calm down and give the two some space when Shinko pulled out a Toon hole.

“Aha! Here we go!” She slammed it into the floor, effectively making it usable.

“Jump right in! First light in the ceiling you see, climb up and you’ll be in Duckburg!” Shinko told Marie with a grin, placing her hands on her hips in a proud manner. Really, she was just happy she could help a friend.

Marie looked on with interest as Shinko pulled out a portable hole. It was her first time seeing such a thing happen; the Repairman usually just walked to other worlds.

“Um…well,” she gulped, peering into the hole. “…All right. Here goes…”

She gently clambered in, breathing a sigh of relief when she realized the “ground” wasn’t that far below.

“Thank you so, so much for this!” she said, waving back out of the hole before she moved out of sight.

A few moments later, Shinko could hear echoes of the Repairman’s older-audio-quality voice. He sounded nearly out of breath.

“THERE you are! What happened to you?! I was worried sick!”

“Heh, sorry. I um… got a bit lost…”

“Well, as long as you’re back…”

Shinko gasped, running over to hug Marie. “Marie! It’s been a long time!
Oh! Sorry…” She quickly let go with a sheepish smile, keeping her hands
behind her back. “You said you got lost? Where are you trying to get
to?”

Marie gave an awkward pat as she was hugged, already feeling warmer from the heat inside the house.

“No, it’s fine,” she smiled, weakly. “We were on our way to Duckburg. You know where that is?”

She leaned in a little as she asked that, eyes widened slightly.

Belial wordlessly began taking a few steps before she came across a thought.

“Actually…it will be quicker if I fly you there.”

Without waiting to hear if Marie had any concerns about heights, she
quickly turn to scoop up the blob in her arms, her wings spreading wide
as she took off to get past the treetops. She quickly took sight of the
town, flying as fast as she could mostly so that she could stop carrying
Marie around.

As soon as found Shinko’s home, she landed right on the doorstep, putting Marie down to knock.

Within a few moments, the door opened to reveal Falcon, who
immediately tensed the dark tendrils of his ‘hair’ and spread the
fringes of his sleeve in a defense stance.

“Hmph… stop that nonsense. I seek the little girl, Shinko,” Belial scoffed.

The dark eye holes of Falcon’s mask, as well as the white eyes of his
demonic form, narrowed at her. “She is sleeping. It is late.”

“Unlikely, for a brat like her. One of her friends got lost in the
Outskirts. Something about getting lost on the way to some other place
I’ve never heard of,” Belial spoke irritably. “If you know what’s good
for you, you’ll step aside and let us see her. You know I’m not above
taking you down.”

Before Falcon could react, he heard the sound of a door from the
hallway creaking open. He glanced back with one of his white eyes to see
that Shinko had peeked to look outside.

“…um…. I heard my name?” Shinko asked. From where she stood, she could only see Falcon and Belial at the front door.

“..Wait whAUGH!”

Marie suddenly found herself aloft, hyperventilating and flailing as she was carried at high velocity…and more importantly, quite a ways away from the ground.

Her hat was shocked back into a green bow by the time they landed, and her blobby form was pale as she shivered from both the cold and the experience.

She looked up, starting to really regret this. Oh, if she hadn’t tripped (~~how on earth can a blob trip anyway?),~~ she wouldn’t have been in this mess, she wouldn’t have caused this much arguing…What an assistant she was turning out to be…

Her self-pitying train of thought was interrupted as she heard Shinko’s voice from inside the house. Well, at the very least, she could speak up.

“Um, s-sorry about this, but, um… she was helping me out…”

She moved her lower half in a manner similar to how someone would shuffle their feet, as she rubbed her hands in the cold. She was having trouble making eye contact.

“…I k-kinda got lost in the woods,” she partially admitted to her own failure. “She agreed to take me to Sh-Shinko, and, w-well….”

Belial seemed slightly shocked upon hearing that this blob seemingly knew of Shinko. If this blob was a friend of hers, Shinko probably wouldn’t want Belial to leave Marie lost in the woods like she had been thinking about.

She let out a small sigh, slowly standing up. “Perhaps I should take you to her home then. Shinko will probably have a better idea of how to help you than I do. But you’ll have to stay close or risk getting lost again. I won’t come back for you if you do. Is that understood?”

Marie perked up, as this woman gave her a direction to go. Needless to say, she found this a far better plan than just wandering around the forest aimlessly.

She shivered as she slowly nodded, agreeing to Belial’s terms. Well, it may not be a perfect solution, but it was at least a ray of hope.

“Th-thank you, m-ma’am….” she managed, as she prepared to walk with Belial.

Belial sighed. She supposed that the sooner she helped this stranger, the sooner they would be on their way.

“This is the forest on the outskirts of Versille. If you’re new to
this place, I can’t say I’m surprised. Those who can’t fly above the
trees usually end up lost if they don’t know how to navigate it,” she
replied.

“V…Versille?” Marie asked, eyes widening. She looked around, only stopping to brush a sheet of frost off her arm.

“…Y-you mean where Sh-Shinko l-lives?” she asked, finally. “Th-that’s a long way from D-Duckburg, isn’t it?”

She sighed, shaking her head as she looked at the solid trail she left in the snow instead of footprints. Oddly, none of her paint was left behind. She supposed it all just froze together.

Speaking of freezing, Marie unconsciously inched closer to the fire.

“…I-I hope Repairm-man can follow m-my trail, at least…He’s m-much b-better at n-navigating….”

Belial’s wings suddenly spread open, as if she were prepared to confront whoever dared approach her. Slowly, her stiffened wings lowered as she saw who was approaching her and her campfire.

It appeared to be some form of blobby being that spoke with a female voice. They didn’t seem like much of a threat.

She scoffed a little, returning her gaze to the fire. “…what do you want?” she finally asked.

Marie stepped back when those wings unfurled. She didn’t want any kind of confrontation, and she doubted her chances against someone this big anyway.

When the other relaxed, she cleared her throat.

“…Erm, I’m a l-little lost…” she said, moving forward a little. “…Is there any ch-chance y-you could tell m-me where I am…?”

shinkothetoongirl:

(Open Starter – Belial the Demon)

The holidays. Belial wasn’t really quite fond of them. Sure, the other residents of Versille attempted to get her to join in on the fun festivities. But in the end, it just wasn’t for her. She was too used to being a loner.

She sat in a small clearing in the woods, her dark black dress adorned with sleeves as her bat wings curled up as if to shield the rest of her body from the cold.

The passing of the new year gave her time to reflect. So many years had passed. So many opportunities. So many relationships. And all of them were gone. Perhaps she had lost hope that she would ever have anything more meaningful than her desire to destroy things.

“…at least I could instill panic and fear. That would be something…” she murmured to herself.

But as she sat before a small fire she made herself, black from being produced by her dark energy orbs, she couldn’t help but thing of warm, fuzzy moments. Times where she was held, kissed, and was told that she was cared about. Times that, she felt, were far behind her.

Well, Marie was hopelessly lost. The Repairman did say they would have to pass through a few worlds to get to Duckburg, but he had expected Marie to follow and keep up. She had no directions in case she tripped and they were separated, which of course she did. She didn’t even know what universe she was stuck in.

How can I trip without legs?! I’m a liquid, for crying out loud!

Of course, she couldn’t dwell on that; even though she shaped her bow into a nice little beanie, it was still colder outdoors in most worlds, and Marie could definitely feel it here. What was worse, every tree looked the same to her, to the point she felt like she was going in circles. Maybe she just had to learn her way, and to differentiate these trees. Her brother certainly did.

She sighed in relief when she came across a clearing in the woods. Finally, something resembling progress. It looked like there was someone there, too…

“Um, excuse me…?” she asked, tentatively.

Shinko raised her hands up defensively. “I wasn’t here for that!”

Crystal
chuckled a bit, “No, it was before Shinko got here. Belial has… a bit
of a temper. And she can get stir-crazy. I don’t know a lot, but she
talks like an old woman, ranting about how back in her day, she’d be
destroying villages left and right with glee. So if she’s angry enough,
she’ll try to reenact her glory days by destroying buildings. A couple
of residents got injured last time, but it was the buildings that took
the most damage.”

“Yeah… that’s why Crystal tells me to be careful
whenever I go to the Cafe. She doesn’t want me to accidentally make
Miss Belial too angry with any Toon-y antics,” Shinko replied with a
sheepish smile.

By now, Falcon had seemingly finished eating and was standing up from his seat to walk over to the living room.

“Oh… you gonna go watch more movies?” Crystal asked Falcon.

The demon nodded before seating himself on the floor, just in front of the television.

“Ah,” the Repairman said, thanking his lucky stars he didn’t mess the cafe up when he fixed the Wall that one time. Still, he wasn’t surprised that it was mostly buildings that got hurt; that seemed to be how things were when rampages like that happened, at least from what he saw…

“Those people turned out okay, right?” Marie asked, a look of minor concern on her face. If Crystal was saying it so casually, it couldn’t have been terrible, but still…

“I see,” the Repairman said, nodding to Shinko. He would have to make a note of that; he wouldn’t want to annoy Belial just by being a Toon. And maybe he shouldn’t sneak in, even if it’s closed when a break in the Wall is there…

His train of thought was interrupted when Falcon got up. Oh yeah; he had to get up soon, too.

“Wanna walk and talk while I go fix the Wall?” he asked, patting his face with a napkin.

“We fix the Wall?” Marie asked, quietly but hopefully.

“Well not much on my end. Oran’s been making sure I kept up my half
of the work schedule, but nobody’s done anything too bad worth locking
them up in the jail cell yet. She’s been asking me to switch homes with
her so she’s not next door to the monkey guy who keeps tagging the back
of her house, but I told her I like this house too much to move now,”
Crystal noted.

“He does that a lot. I’ve seen Miss Momo around
too! She says she goes to the Akuma Cafe to help out where she can, but
Belial doesn’t like her too much,” Shinko added.

“Still? I’m
sorry, but that priestess really needs to learn to take a hint. Belial’s
the kind of person who’s just really set in her ways…and she’s a powder
keg waiting to explode on top of that,” Crystal noted with a
frown. “The last thing we need is for her to go on another demonic
rampage.”

“…Huh.”

The Repairman was honestly surprised. A mischievous monkey person, and the inkblot still hasn’t met him? He would have thought they would have butted heads sooner, but maybe this guy was only mischievous in the “skateboarding and graffiti” kind of way, rather than the “wacky fourth-wall-breaking” kind of way.

Both he and Marie looked up in surprise.

“Wait, another rampage?” the Repairman asked. He remembered Belial being a little stand-offish, but nothing like that.

Falcon shifted a little, taking a fry with his spindly fingers and
putting it into his mouth, which had drifted to his neck for
convenience.

Shinko pouted a bit at seeing Falcon so quiet. “Falcon, it’s okay. They’re nice! They won’t bite if you speak up!” she insisted.

When
Falcon didn’t respond to Shinko’s plea, Crystal gently took hold of the
fringe of Falcon’s other sleeve, a small smile on her face. This
managed to catch the demon’s attention as he glanced back at her.

“…you
can do it. Do you remember the Repairman? He was at our Halloween party
a few years ago. Remember?” she asked softly, keeping a gentle smile.

Falcon
seemed taken aback by Crystal’s words as he slowly turned to look at
the blob that lacked a bow. Slowly, he started to recall seeing the
walking gravestone that had come by their house once upon a time.

“…sorry. Thank you,” he finally spoke softly, nodding his head towards the Repairman.

Seeing
as how the fries had cooled down, Shinko was busy using a toy shovel to
literally shovel some fries onto her plate. “Aww, how come he never
does it when I ask?” Shinko whined before taking some fries to shove in
her mouth.

The Repairman nodded, smiling encouragingly.

“Yeah, it’s been a while…” he chuckled sympathetically. “Don’t blame ya for not recognizing me…”

He shrugged, before taking a handful of fries. No use dwelling on that.

“So, uh, other than the misfire, what else has been happening?”

Marie cringed. He was still acting like it was no big deal. No wonder he needed an assistant!

Still, she managed to put on a smile again and scooped a few fries of her own onto her plate. She had several questions, to be sure, but maybe several of them would be answered here anyway.