Howder Train Your Cassowary

***"Somewhere deep in the rainforests of Australia, the Howder lurks"***

None know this better than renowned cryptid hunter Ruby Kscube, who had discovered more than a few mythical beasts in her time, though never the one she truly sought after: the famous Australian Land Howder. Somehow she knew today would be the day, which is why she was navigating through a lush rainforest with her friend Dot J. Peg.

Dot's family had immigrated to Australia because of their love of animals, especially dangerous animals, so he and Ruby were fast friends. Dot particularly had a fondness for cassowaries, which he had a whole farm of at home. He was out with Ruby today because he wanted to train his favorite cassowary, a dwarf cassowary nicknamed Cass, to become better at Kung Fu in order to make up for its small size in combat.

Cass attacked a backwards giraffe (long body, short neck), disappointed to find that it didn't have to try very hard to kill it because it was already in a struggle against a Halfling warrior named Lil' Dill Smalls. He introduced himself to Dot and Ruby, then skinned the giraffe. He found a snake inside the giraffe, then killed and skinned that.

There was rustling in the distance, and an Elf emerged from the foliage, chopping with her burning gloves. Realizing she's reached a clearing, Daydream Dimension stopped to rest.

At the same time, from the other direction, Jem Jazzhands, an English cleric, arrived in the clearing throwing glitter around. She climbed the tree Daydream had sat beneath, causing it to shake and a chicken fell from it's nest above, landing directly on Daydream's head. From the top of the tree, Jem tried to cover more area with her glitter. This had little effect, so she scaled back down the tree.

All of these heroes were now in the same general area, so they introduced themselves to one another. Dot introduced himself as a cassowary trainer, and Ruby explained that she was looking for the Howder. Daydream was also searching for the Howder, though she didn't say why. She seemed like she was on a very serious mission.

Lil' Dill told the others the story of how his little sister was eaten by a monster years ago, and ever since then he's been traveling across the country killing and cutting open every dangerous animal he came across so he could save her. (it took some convincing to get him to not cut open Cass)

Jem explained that she was "the grandmaster of glitter globally," and she was sent from one of many glitter-focused churches in the UK to spread their teachings. She had come to this forest because she thought it didn't seem glittery enough. Dill immediately distrusted her because of a line she said in passing during her backstory, "don't forget the sparkle church. never forget the sparkle church." Everyone else either didn't hear it or didn't think much of it, though.

Ruby continued her own introduction by saying "I work here with my old friend and his cassowary, "Kung Fu Cass." Everything around here has a story, and a price. One thing I've learned after 21 years, you never know *what* is gonna be behind that tree."

As she said this, Bigfoot stepped out from behind the tree (this was not the first time Ruby had found Bigfoot). His presence scared away the chicken on Daydream's head, but Bigfoot was afraid of chickens, so he ran away as well.

Following that, a pale woman with blood dripping from her mouth approached the group. She wore a leather jacket with "Bloody Mary" written on its back. She attacked the cassowary, but (similarly to Bigfoot) she was afraid of cassowaries, so she ran back into the forest's depths.

Out of celebration from having just "defeated" two enemies, Dill pulled out one of his many celebration sandwiches and ate it. Cass also decided it was time for a meal and ate a cauliflower and a bug off the ground. One of those things (no one was sure which) gave Cass the ability to breathe fire. Meanwhile, Dill was horrified to discover he had accidentally bitten into a vegan sandwich, and lost a good portion of his ambition.

Jem tried to encourage Dill to get up and keep going, and she parted the leaves in front of them with her glitter hands. In doing so, she revealed an unidentified creature behind the leaves. the creature had a nose so large it obscured any other part of its body from view. Presumably, its body consisted of more than just a nose, but the adventurers knew they had to act quickly to survive.

Jem threw some glitter into its nostrils, prompting it to sneeze. Before the sneeze arrived, however, Dill blocked its nostrils by shoving halves of his uneaten vegan sandwich into its nostrils. Thusly, the force of the sneeze was rerouted, and the beast exploded.

In need of direction, Ruby looked at her hand where she wore a ring with a bee on it. The bee pointed north, and she headed that way. Everyone followed Ruby's Bee's direction until Cass killed a bush, revealing an old, torn map labelled "Moop's Map." Dot picks it up and begins leading everyone to the map's end. Somehow, they all trust that this map will lead them to what they're searching for.

At one point, Ruby climbed to the top of a tree and imitated the Howder's mating call. Daydream followed her up and helped by getting out a tape recorder and playing a recording of the call. Unfortunately, a walrus misinterpreted the sound and approached expectantly. Ruby killed it. Dill's sister was not inside it.

The cassowary got thirsty and header for a nearby river (which happened to be the right way, according to Moop's map). While it was drinking, Jem looked over and thought that it has boring feathers. She looks back and forth between Cass' back and her bag of glitter, wiggles her eyebrows, then readied herself. She snuck up behind Cass, but before she could act she was thrown headfirst into the river. The glitter in her hand fell into her eyes, and she let herself sink into the water, filled with awe and inspiration. Luckily, Dill saw the whole ordeal and correctly guessed that Jem didn't know she was drowning, so he rescued her.

Simultaneously, Ruby looked inside of a hole in a tree to see if a Howder was in there. Instead of a Howder, several pheasants leaped out of the tree and stole her sword, WhisperWodao. The sword was very important to her and may be her best friend, so she tailed them them until she got the sword back. It whispered thanks to her. The pheasants kept running until they fell off a cliff, then had a parade at the bottom of the cliff.

Daydream was scanning the area near the river for any signs of a Howder. She looked up and noticed a goth teen hiding in the branches above. Once he realized he had been seen, he jumped down, ready to attack. Upon closer inspection, he was clearly a wannabe vampire, perhaps inspired by Bloody Mary from earlier. He was actually a local kid who Dot recognized to be Johnny Zucchiniseed.

Johnny threw a zucchini at the cassowary, but Cass sent both the zucchini and Johnny flying away with one swift kick. Daydream noted that he might be important, and considered following him, but decided it was better to keep the party together.

Jem still has glitter in her eyes and can't see very well, so she walks in a random direction and steps directly back into the river, accidentally stepping on some crabs. She felt bad for them, so she decorated their dead shells with glitter and then sends them into the river, back to their home, Crablantis.

On her way back to the river where they others were, Ruby set up a quick makeshift Howder trap, but it was only sprung by a platycore (a possible relative of the Howder). When she got back, she saw that her friends had already started wading across the river.

Dill noticed a monster-like man in the water and pulled him up by his hair. Daydream recognized him, and said "Grendel? You weren't assigned to this mission." then she and Dill lowered him back into the river.

A few steps later, Dill pulled another strange man out of the water. The man introduced himself as Moop, Maker of Mayhem and Maps. Dill asked him about his sister, and Moop instructed them to follow Moop's Map. Dill gave Moop a blender as thanks for the information, and lowered him back into the river.

A Sea Howder jumped out of the river, but neither Ruby nor Daydream were interested in it, because it wasn't a real Howder. They defeated it with ease. Ruby explains that she and her sword are so good at defeating things because she grew up in Australia, which is comparable to surviving Ragnarok.

Dill cut open the Sea Howder's stomach in search of his sister. She wasn't in there, but a live bore was in there, and it crashed down on him as revenge for eating so much bacon. Dill managed to triumph over the bore and cut open its stomach as well, but to no avail. The Goddess of Many Things including stomachs got frustrated with Dill, so, in a bolt of lightning, she threw Thor's hammer down at him.

When they made it to the other shore, Jem dried herself by vigorously jazzhandsing. She asked Dot, the map-holder, for directions. He told her where to go, she gave a jazzhands-thumbs-up, then went the wrong direction.

Because she had gone the wrong way, Jem bumped into two Skeleton brothers, the White Brothers, who had been following her all the way from England because she had stolen their recipe for floating glitter. They talked it out, came to an agreeable compromise, and shook hands. Then the White Brothers helplessly floated away, because Jem had spread float glitter on her hands before the handshake. She then remarked "They're terrible businessmen, they don't realize anything." she had stolen their kneecaps.

An Amazonian woman steps out from the forest and said she wanted to talk to Daydream. She, too, looked eerily similar to Bloody Mary, but she seemed friendly enough, so Daydream talked to her. The Amazonian simply wanted to give Daydream a Howder-finding-dog, which she did, and then disappeared into the forestry again.

The dog barked at Cass, startling it and causing it to cough up the bug and cauliflower from earlier and lose its fire breathing ability.

A Minotaur appeared, and Ruby's sword whispered to her that she should kill it, so she did. Dill was worried and told Ruby that she shouldn't be talking to swords, much less taking advice from them. Jem tried to reassure him by telling him the she trusts Ruby, then smiled, which unnerved Dill even more because she had glitter in her teeth.

Jem's smile quickly turned into a frown, however, when she realized that she had ran out of glitter. She yelled in agony, distracting a stork and causing it to die. She looked around desperately, could she turn flowers into glitter? No, flowers were useless! Dill asked her where she got her glitter from in the first place, but she refused to answer. Daydream calmed her down by assuring her that the Howder would have glitter, so she just needed to help them find it.

Dill wanted to be helpful, and he thought he saw some glitter on the ground, and reached for it. But what he had actually seen glinting in the sunlight was a portal, which absorbed him as soon as he he touched it. Dill returned after a minute had passed for everyone else, but ten years had passed for him. The once hopeful 15 year old Halfling in search of his sister was now 25 years old, and had lost all hope. Daydream noticed the portal, remarked that it shouldn't have been there, and casually closed it with her fire gloves.

A vampire pepper steps out from the forest, asking to talk, in a similar manner to the Amazonian. Daydream and her dog walk up to him, but the dog is frightened by his fiery appearance and runs away. Daydream thanked him for his information but punched him in the face for scaring away the dog.

WhisperWodao told Ruby to cut down a tree, so she did, and found a Loch Ness Monster behind it (another useless cryptid!). She killed it and was rewarded by finding another sword, one which sings and dances for her.

The group approached a stone statue of a meditating man, damp and moss-covered from months in the rainforest. Dill, wizened from his years on the other side of the portal, recognized that it was enchanted and advised the others to leave it alone. However, the cassowary did not understand the warning because it didn't speak English, and pecked the statue in the head.

It awakened, groggy, but enraged. Cass pointed at Daydream, indicating that it was her who awoke him, and he lunged at her. She was having trouble fighting him, so she called for backup. A portal opened at from it jumped a clone of Daydream, who joined in on the fight. They still couldn't triumph, though, until Dot also helped.

The fight over, Daydream #2 left, and Daydream #1 was exhausted, but relieved that "at least they got practice for the real thing." When asked about this, she said that the man depicted by the enchanted statue was someone she knew all to well: No Man.

Daydream revealed that No Man was the first vampire in the Lunaverse, and that he had escaped from another dimension to this one so he could spread vampirism farther than he already had.

She had been sent here from her dimension to capture No Man, bring him back, and imprison him. Clearly it was already too late to prevent any vampires from existing in the Lunaverse, but she still had to complete her mission. And apparently, some of No Man's followers weren't too happy with how he was running things, which is why they had been dropping by periodically to help her out.

Daydream wanted to find the Howder because it was the key to finding No Man.

the adventurers continued on their way, soon happening across a large building that resembled a lost ark. They entered, and were greeted by Bloody Mary, Johnny Zucchiniseed, Moop, the Amazonian, and the vampire pepper, all dressed like lawyers (because they were all actually lawyers who had worked extensively with No Man).

Standing in front of them was an unfamiliar insurance salesman, wielding a suitcase-like mimic, AKA the Real Land Howder. He stepped forward, with a cocky smile on his face, completely unprepared to be mauled to death by a cassowary.

Bloody Mary and Johnny Zucchiniseed were shocked, partially because their immediate boss had just died, partially because that meant one of them could take his place. They turned to each other to argue about who should be promoted, and at that exact moment they were also killed by Cass.

Moop, the Amazonian, and vampire pepper smiled, and stepped back into the darkness before anything could happen to them too. They had won.

Having just beaten and partially consumed three vampire-status enemies, Cass gained the ability to speak, officially having become a Talking Animal, and announced aloud that he would like to be called Kung Fu Cassowary from now on. Dot couldn't have been prouder (and he also swore that Kung Fu Cass stood up straighter than before).

Ruby knelt gently next to the Howder. It recognized the touch of an experienced cryptid handler and purred as she opened its lid.

Out popped confetti, streamers, balloons, and a ton of glitter. Jem ran around gleefully collecting the glitter in a butterfly net. And then, from "inside" the Howder, out stepped Lil' Dill's sister, Sally Smalls, holding a vampire law degree. She hugged Dill, crying about how she hadn't seen him in years (Of course, he hadn't seen her in longer). Dill was incredibly happy to see his sister again, a dream he had long since given up on, but also distraught that she was actually safe the whole time at vampire law school.

Daydream Dimension wished everyone good luck with their lives from this point on, stepped into the Howder's mouth, (which was really a portal to the vampire's home at the center of the Earth). She was one step closer to No Man.