Sunday Justice - Session 3

# Gnomebody Knows the Troubles I’ve Seen

29 April 21 IRL

4-10 July 2250, SooN

 Sunday has had e-damn-nuff of being pushed around in the big city.  People have been stealing his stuff, his beloved horse also got eaten by the stupid river, the boat got destroyed, and he’s just over all of it.  He stands on the shore of the river, a recently-saved Buttons beside him, dripping wet, and fed up.  He’s quite sure Saturday Morning, his cousin, wouldn’t take this, and by golly, neither will he!

He asks the three hulking people on the shore with him if they’ll accompany him to the Moldy Banjo and act as his backup while he tries to right a serious wrong.  The three cheerfully agree - standing there looking menacing while Sunday talks sternly to someone, eh, that doesn’t sound too hard.

The quartet tramp wetly though the streets and arrive at the Moldy Banjo, which is still disgusting, and still has 2 inches of crud on the floor.  Sunday squares his little shoulders and follows the path worn through the crud to the bar, his enforcers behind him.  Sunday jumps up onto a stool and then right onto the bar top.

“ Hey you!”, he growls at the fairy bartender, Ant Bavarian, “I’m sure you remember me from this morning!”.  She looks at him and chirps back “Nope, who the hell are you?”.   Undeterred, Sunday presses her, “Well ma’am, I’m the one who stayed here last night, and I’m the one you stole from last night.  Now, I don’t care what your little sign says, you are responsible for stealing my things, or you know who did steal it!  Now I’m gonna wait here with my three big friends, and I’m giving you ONE HOUR to return with my gran’s hat!  One hour, mind you, no more!”.  Feeling pleased with his bold speech, and a little cocky, Sunday reaches over the bar, pours himself a thick dark beer, and turns his back to the fairy.

Paboo, Maurice, and Lisi stand there looking calmly large and back-up-ish as the fairy bartender grabs his glass right out of his hand, smashes it, and stabs Sunday right under the eye, almost gouging it out.  Sunday yelps in pain and falls off the bar and flat on his back on the gross floor, the fairy following him down and stabbing him in the nose with her broken glass “sword” before planting her feet on his chest as though daring him to keep up the attitude.

All hell breaks loose, though the few patrons drinking in the Banjo don’t seem to care.  Sunday, thinking that Ant got in a lucky shot, whips his belt knife out and up, trying to slice her wings off.  One wing gets caught by his knife and rips midway up the middle, causing her to scream in pain and fury.

Now really, really angry, the fairy lets loose with her full might, which, despite her tiny size, is really quite a lot.  She’s 5 parts barbarian, 2 parts fighter, and 2 parts rogue, and 100% pissed - and she does not take this kind of shit without unequal, instant, and massively overpowered retaliation.  A 7 inch fairy in a human-sized world isn’t going to make it far if she doesn’t have the ability to take care of her own-damn-self, and Ant, well, she’s not a fairy anyone should try to poke at.

Sunday and his three companions - a giant tortle fighter, a tiefling, and a Goliath fighter - suddenly find themselves in the midst of a very ill-advised and lopsided bar fight with a person the size of a beer bottle.  They are simply no match for the fury of the fairy.

Paboo the Goliath whips out his knife to stab at her, but despite her ripped wing, Ant is able to flutter up and out of the way, causing Paboo to stab Sunday deeply in the gut.  Aghast, he watches as Sunday goes limp, blood pouring out the little gnome body in a red gush, seeping into the floor crud and adding a touch of Sunday to the floor goo.

The tortle and tiefling try to engage with the fairy, who just isn’t having it.  When Maurice tries to stop her with his trident, she simply puts up her dime-sized hand and catches the center point, then shoves it back at the tortle, hard, and he stumbles backwards and falls.  The tiefling makes a half-hearted attempt to attack Ant, but she’s most concerned about Sunday.  Ant doesn’t even notice, as she’s now concentrating on stabbing the Goliath.  Lisi scurries over to Sunday while the others fight, and casts cure wounds on him.  “Oh I hope this is enough, I don’t have any more shards”, she frets quietly.

Sunday heaves a gasp and sits up groggily, in time to see Buttons galloping into the fray.  She lashes out with her tiny pony hooves, trying to kick Ant, bless her big pony heart.  Sunday staggers to his feet, not knowing when to quit.  By now, Ant had centered her rage on Lisi.  The raging barbarian fairy was perched on Lisi’s chin, stabbing over and over and over into Lisi’s face.  Poor Lisi’s face has gouges down to the bone, and she doesn’t look like she can take much more.

Sunday whistles for Buttons, who jumps the bar and rushes to his side.  Sunday swings into the saddle and charges at Ant and Lisi, bent on fairy destruction.  Her little legs churning, digging tiny divots in the floor , Buttons puts her head down and charges with the soul of a war horse, in complete accord with her gnome.

As they reach Lisi’s side, Sunday reaches out with his pistol and shoots at Ant, envisioning his bullet smashing into her little body, crunching her matchstick-ribs, tearing through her flesh, gleaming coils of innards spilling out, her limbs flailing from the force of the shot, head snapping back,  ripped wing fluttering sadly as her limp, dead body falls into a track in the floor crud.

That’s not what happens.  Sunday shoots at Ant and misses her completely, as does Buttons’s attempt to bite her.  Ant flutters awkwardly up from Lisi’s savaged face,  her own face twisted in barbaric rage.  She dives at Sunday, knocking him off of Buttons and back onto the floor.  As she begins pummeling  and stabbing him,  Sunday once again felt his mind grow dim.

He sees Buttons face standing over him, surrounded by light, while trumpets sound.  “Come here Sunday” she whispers into his mind.  “Come here”.  He thinks that’s a great idea.  He loves Buttons and she loves him; he can count on her more than anyone else in this big wide world.  He starts drifting towards her, and as the trumpets grow louder, her faces starts to morph, elongating and widening and changing color to a soft grey, her muzzle drooping towards the floor......

Sunday awakes in Charge N Charge with a purple fish, Grungis the receptionist, smacking his face, hard. Large Marge is looking down at him, saying “Come......back, Sun..day, come .....back...”.

She scoops up Grungis, crosses the room and puts her back in her fishbowl, and then kindly, melodically begins scolding Sunday and the other three idiots.  “I..sent youuuu....to de....stroy ooze, and ...youuuu...get in....a...bar...fight.....with a FAIRY.”.

Lisi, her face lightly marked with healing crisscross scars, stands against the wall with Paboo and Maurice, looking abashed.  “No, no Miss Marge, the fairy started it!”, Sunday protests weakly.  Large Marge cocks her head and gives him a very large side eye.   “No, really, she assaulted me.  They were just trying to help a friend, but she started it, I swear!”, he continues. From her bowl, Grungis cracks “ well if you didn’t want to get assaulted, why didn’t you go to the Peppermill?” , and laughs for at least half a minute, maybe longer.

Large Marge instructs Grungis to close up shop, she is done with today and just wants to go home.  Marge considers Sunday, still lying somewhat limply on the floor, and gently picks his battered little body up and says “I am.....tak...ing you..home with ....me”.  Sunday nods at her in relieved acceptance.

Large Marge carries the exhausted gnome, Buttons trotting alongside, with the three friends trudging behind.  They walk some ways, and the appearance of people on the street starts changing from majority human or humanoid, to more animal-ish people.  Leonids, tortles, tieflings, Tabaxi and the like are going about their business.  Large Marge and the rest arrive at the shell of a former mall, anchored on one end with a large square building that has an outline in the faded paint of letters that once spelled out JC Penney.   The weary group enter the former Penney’s, which turns out to be the foster home ran by Large Marge.

The kind elephant-woman takes Sunday into a plain guest room, furnished simply with a full size bed, a simple dresser, a small bathroom, and an animal print rug.  She lays him gently on the bed, and Buttons hops up next to him.  “Now why...did you go...start trouble..ble..at...the bar?”, she asks him softly.  Sunday pushes up against the bed so hie is half sitting.  “Large Marge, I told you, I didn’t start it!  She did!  I went there to get my gran’s hat back.  She assaulted me, I was only trying to get my stolen property back!”.

Working up a full, steaming head of indignation, he exploded, “ I’ve been here two days, and in that time, I’ve dealt with some insane person on blue powder, been attacked by giant murderous subway rats, someone’s tried to take my guns and then chased me through a subway station, one of my guns got damaged, I have no money, I had to sleep in a disgusting sewer of a bar, my gran’s hat got stolen, I almost drowned and Buttons almost died trying to battle giant black ooze, my ass got kicked by a fairy, and I have had it!  Where I come from, people are NICE to strangers, they don’t get attacked, and they are neighborly!  All I’ve done was try to fight evil and be a righteous gnome on the side of justice and good, and get. my. hat. back!!”, he ended with a heaving chest and a red face.

Large Marge calmly blinked at his emotional outburst, “ Well Sunday....what ....do you...consi....der....evil?”.  He gaped at her in disbelief.  “Well, I consider someone who stole my stuff to be evil, that’s for sure!  That fairy is either responsible for it, or she is in cahoots with the miscreants who did it! That’s pretty evil to me, and not something that good folks do!”.   “But....what if...you...are...wrong?”, she asks him simply.

Sunday goes quiet at this, and lays back against Buttons on the bed.  “Miss Marge, all my life I’ve fought to do what’s right, to be a person of good in the world.  I believe in fairness, justice, kindness, and all the things that make this world safe and good.  All my life I’ve had to be a small gnome in a big person world, and fought to make my way, and to be kind and good and stand up for the people who can’t stand up for themselves.  It seems like an impossible task, but “, he starts yawning and his eyes droop, all his energy depleted, “I keep trying”,  yawn, “ and I’m not going”,  yawn, “to give up”.  His eyes droop and flutter closed.   Large Marge gently pats his head and leaves the room.

Sunday blinks and yawns, waking up to a room flooded by filtered sunlight.   He raises his head off Buttons’ flank, and she nickers softly.  He staggers to his feet, feeling as if he got his ass royally kicked yesterday...oh wait, he did.  Damn fairy.  Padding over to the window, Sunday pulls back the curtain.  Against a backdrop of the New York City skyline, kids are playing out on a lawn in what was once a parking lot.  These must be some of Large Marge’s fosters.  Again, Sunday notices that all the people are animalistic, and less humanoid than in the other places he’d visited in the city.

After performing his morning ablutions, Sunday makes his way out into the main area.  He looks around and sees that there are jungle areas, a large pond that goes under and outside the wall, a savanna-like area and various other mini-biomes.  Large Marge had put a lot of work into creating environments where her fosters would be comfortable and feel at home.  It almost looked like a zoo, except the animal-people were there willingly, and not locked in cages.

Lisi comes up behind him quietly, greeting Sunday and making him jump, and then stumble a little on shaky legs.  She laughs softly and wished him a good morning.  Her face looked almost completely healed from the fairy attack, to Sunday’s great relief.  They made small talk for a few minutes before Large Marge appeared with a small pouch, surprisingly quiet for an elephant lady.

Large Marge informs Sunday that since it’s a holiday weekend, she’s decided to take some time off to follow up on his suggestion to track down the source of the black ooze coming from the river to the north.  “Well, ma’am I appreciate all that you’ve done to help me, and letting me stay here.  If there’s anything I can do to help out, I’d be happy to do it.”, the gnome tells her earnestly.  “I did...ask”, she begins, “and...in..stead of...take..ing out the...ooze,” her large eyes narrow in displeasure, “you start..ed...a..bar..fight!”.   Sunday’s head hangs low at this, but he’s smart enough not to protest that the fairy started it.  Quietly, “I am deeply sorry to have let you down, Large Marge”, and he straightens his head, “but if you’ll let me, I’d like to go with you to track down the source of that ooze.  I won’t let you down again.”

Studying his earnest little gnome face, she relents. “Okay, Sun...day.  Oh...kay”.  To his surprise, Large Marge produces little figurines from the pouch she has with her.  From a spill of tangled mini figures, she pulls out ones that look just like the people that he’s met through her.  She places in front of him a red tortle, a large Goliath, a purple fish in a bowl, an elephant lady, and a cute tiefling that causes Lisi to smile.  She adds a final, unpainted humanoid figurine to the end of the line up, which he presumes is a mini-Sunday.  “Here ..are your...choi..ces.  Who do...you want...to go...along. We can...take four.  Some...one needs to...watch..the shop...and...the store.”, Large Marge informs him.

Sunday immediately plucks out the elephant lady and the humanoid, then studies the remaining figures.  He questions Large Marge and Lisi about the skills of the people represented.  After some time considering his options, Sunday eventually settles on Maurice the red tortle fighter, and Grungis, who surprisingly, is a spellcaster.  Sunday suggests Paboo the Goliath fighter to hold down the foster fort, and Lisi to mind the shop, since she seems to have the best head for business.  Lisi smiles at him, flattered that he thinks she has what it takes.  With a silent nod, Large Marge gathers up her figurines and glides off to get ready.  Sunday marvels, again, and how quietly she moves.

Sunday turns to Lisi, and explains to her that he feels exhausted, like he can barely move.  He wants to be useful and help out on this hunt, but at the moment, he feels like he could sleep for days.  Can she, he wonders, heal him some more?  “Oh, I can’t heal what’s plaguing you, Sunday,” Lisi apologetically tells him.  “You aren’t wounded, your body is just really really tired.  Still,”she perks up a bit, “there are drugs of course, they can help!”.  Sunday doesn’t even hesitate and nods at her, “that sounds great Lisi.  As long as it’s not blue powder, I’d appreciate something.”.

Lisi gives him 8 capsules that say ‘spidthri’ on the coating.  “What’s spid- thrih?”, he asks, trying to sound out the strange name.  Laughing, Lisi says, “it’s  called speed-three, it will help you not feel so worn down.”.  Shrugging, Sunday takes them, and thanks her most kindly, as only a cowboy gnome can.

Figuring that prudence is the best option, Sunday carries them over to Large Marge in her study and asks her if it’s safe to take them.  She pops little glasses on her trunk, picks up a clipboard, and begins peppering him with questions. Is he allergic to red food coloring, what about peanut butter? Had bad reactions to a vaccine? Does he have dreams of grandeur (“no, only delusions.”,  “Well that’s...ok...that is....different”.), has he been addicted to drugs, or is he a spellcaster?  He answers in the negative to all of her strange questions.  She opines that he should be ok to take them.  Relieved, Sunday immediately pops one.  He feels great almost immediately, like he could take on the world, and win.  Sunday loses 3 levels of exhaustion, feeling like his gnome self.  Large Marge casually tells him after the fact, that for the next 24 hours, when he makes an attack roll, there’s a tiny chance he may turn invisible.  He looks at her in surprise, but then shrugs, thinking being invisible for a while wouldn’t be so bad.  It might even help if they have to fight oozes.

Large Marge, Maurice the Tortle, Sunday and Buttons head to Charge n Charge to grab Grungis.  Marge puts the fish in a large ziploc bag that she then hangs off a large stick she props over her shoulder.  Maurice grabs a sick and offers to carry Sunday, with a gruff ,”Ride?”.  Sunday gestures to Buttons, “got my own, thanks”.

The crew walk for hours and hours and hourrrrs that day, trudging upstream.  After 8 hours, they bunk down in a motel.  One that does not, by the way, have inches of crusty crud on the floor and shady looking patrons.  The second day they decide to rent a boat now that they’re past the bulk of the ooze, and keep heading upstream.

Though they expected to find the source somewhat quickly, they end up traveling for four more days upriver, camping on the banks at night.  Sunday uses that time to repair his damaged pistol, and get rid of his exhaustion naturally.  He is a bit disappointed that he doesn’t get the chance to see if he might turn invisible, but the trip is surprisingly pleasant.  Except for the occasional clump of floating black ooze, it could have been mistaken for a pleasure cruise.

A few hours into their fifth day on the water, the ooze clumps seem to be spaced more closely together, as though they hadn’t travelled far enough downriver to have a much distance between them.  The crew stop casually scanning the areas they pass, sensing that they’re getting close.  They sharpen their gazes and sit more alertly, looking more actively for a potential fountain of black ooze, or a semi-hidden pipe plopping them into the water.

They needn’t have looked so sharply.  They see in the distance a large cliff jutting out over the river, and as they get closer, it becomes apparent that the black ooze is coming from the cliff vicinity.  Sunday and the gang reach the cliff, looming over the river, and easily see they’ve reached their target.   A very big cave-like crack slashes across the cliff-face, from out of which a small waterfall flows, with oozes occasionally plopping out to splash into the river below.  Inside that cliff, or through it on the other side, somewhere, lies the source of the black oozes.

Getting the boat closer, Large Marge peers into the crack, and tells the others that it looks like they can walk through it.  Sunday looks around from behind Large Marge’s large knee and sees a dark, damp, somewhat frightening tunnel that leads deep into the center of the tons of rock that make up the cliff.

“My gosh that looks like a dungeon”, he breathes.  Despite being so quiet, Large Marge hears him.  “Yes..”, she says quietly, “it ...does...look like..a..dungeon