"You really think this measly little-" Lloyd paused and inspected Froufrou, doing so much as to lift up one of her writhing tendrils. His small hand wrapped in a rubbery, pink glove clasped around her tendril tightly to get a closer look before proceeding in his question, "-well, measly little, whatever the hell it is, is a Harbinger of Doom? Some sort of, what, terrible apocalyptic entity?"

"Absolutely," said Kahli. "Froufrou is doubtlessly a terrible monster of the apocalypse. I'll tell you why."

"Please do, I'm excited to hear what you have to say."

"Very well," Kahli cleared her throat. "Deep in the dark, forbidden caves behind the archives of Old Snow Mountain lies a teeming cornucopia of-"

"Oh my gods, get to the point!" spat the mean little cretin.

"Fine. Picture if you will a prophetic scroll that-"

"I don't want to picture anything! What the hell does that even mean?”

"Just let me finish!" Kahli said with a sigh.

"Oh, very well," said Lloyd with a groan.

Kahli wondered why he was being so comparably compliant. Hadn't this strange, little man just come on an enormous meteor to admittedly destroy her world? Why was he just sitting her arguing with her when he could probably snap his fingers and destroy her? Well, there wasn't too much time to waste dawdling on wondering if whatever she was doing was working, Kahli figured, so she got out of her head and started talking to the weird, angry guy.

"So, there was this prophetic scroll. This scroll detailed, among other things, a poetic verse that was prophesied to bring forth the existence of a beast so foul and so powerful that it would spell the end of our world. It would have a system, a powerful system with uncapped leveling potential."

"You keep talking about this scroll in the past tense. Why exactly is that?" Lloyd frowned quizzically.

"Well, you see, um, it may have gotten activated somehow."

"Ah, so it was a bit of a magic-based deal, was it?"

"Yes, and through that magical activation the prophecy then became... well, reality."

"How do you know that this thing is the beast in your scroll?" Lloyd pressed.

"Fair question, fair question. I know Froufrou is a little... interesting to look at as and maybe not what you would expect for a high leveling monster."

"Well of course not. Froufrou's at level zero right now. That doesn't really scream uncapped leveling to me."

"Yes, well, there's a lot more to Froufrou than meets the eye." Kahli swallowed air, almost in disbelief at what she was about to say and do. But a meteor had just wiped out a good chunk of the downtown and the sky was tinged in a dark shadow. There was a strange little alien telling her he'd come to end the world. Kahli had to take off her proverbial gloves. "You see, when I activated her scroll, which I actually did wholly on purpose so that we can be absolutely clear on this, I made certain before I incinerated it to make a direct note of where the beast described in the scroll would spawn." Kahli still could barely believe herself. Not only was she wholly misrepresenting what had happened up to this point in time, but she felt in the moment like it was indeed an absolute truth.

"Oh, wow," replied Lloyd. He was clearly in deep thought, and indeed he seemed to be hanging on her every word. "So, where did it spawn?"

Kahli smiled inwardly and indeed outwardly as well. She knew that, at least at this moment, she had won the conversation. "At the bottom of the depths of the Pit of Despair!"

"The Pit of Despair?" Lloyd looked impressed. "That, erm, that sounds like a nice place."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"If by nice, you mean a nightmare! It's a black hole of doom and destruction, a nearly bottomless abyss that the greatest divers in Nomachiato have tried countless times to reach the bottom of - and mind you these are water elementals that usually try this - and every single time the pressure has gotten so strong that they've either given up, passed out, or literally exploded like bloody water balloons trying to reach it."

"Wow," said Lloyd. "That is impressive. Only, well, how did you manage to go down there?"

"That's the brilliant thing, Lloyd, I didn't go down there at all. You see, all I did was trick somebody else into getting a net."

"A net?" Lloyd looked confused.

Kahli was also a little confused, and wasn't a hundred percent certain where she was going with this, but she didn't let it show. "Yes, a net. A magic net. A magic net that would always reach the bottom of something, no matter what. I tricked this-" Kahli tried to picture the poachers she'd seen when she'd been paddling over towards the Pit, "-this fisherman with big, clawed hands covered in living wood to use his magical fishing net to pull something, anything out of the water at the bottom of Pit of Despair."

"Sorry, living wood? What do you mean?"

Kahli felt a wave of shock. This strange being didn't know what living wood was! Well, she'd have to explain that later. She told him as such and then she continued with her tale, tall as it may have been. "Once he pulled up his net, I saw three things. An octopus, a sea urchin, and Froufrou here."

"Ah, three options, only one of them of course being the correct one?"

"You understand exactly," said Kahli with a nod. "Now, to be fair, I didn't always have a system."

"Ah, yes, I do remember seeing that you'd [paired] with Froufrou on first noticing you."

"Exactly. See, I didn't have a system, but the fisherman did, and so when they analyzed each of the three beings they'd caught in the net, they immediately noticed Froufrou and started shuddering with fear."

"With fear? They were afraid of this nasty thing? Are you sure they weren't just repulsed by not only its single [skill] but also by its wretched countenance? Not that I can necessarily tell where its countenance is, but still..."

"Oh yes, the fisherman was so scared that his skin went pale, nearly translucent, if only for a moment before becoming quite flushed, because soon after he whipped out a flask and finished it off right then and there before tossing it into the sea. He was that scared! He told me that in all his decades of seafaring he'd never encountered a being with so much deep, dark, and indeed powerful energy! He said that Froufrou was the most sinister entity he'd ever encountered and that it went without saying that the creature from the Pit was created for one thing, and one thing only: complete and utter destruction of this world and everyone in it! Anyways, I had already immediately known that the fear was because of Froufrou, because of her amazing energy. The fisherman begged me to keep her away from him forever, which I was happy to oblige, and he took the octopus and the sea urchin home to cook for dinner."

"But why did some random fisherman detect something in this... this Froufrou that even I haven't seen, with my massively overpowered system?" Lloyd retorted.

"Well, that's simple, Leroy, he-"

"Lloyd."

"Lloyd, sorry, it's simple - the fisherman had been on the waters for years and years, and he had an especially honed [skill] called... oh, what was it now... he had an especially well-honed and highly leveled up [skill] known as [Super Inspection]."

"Oh! That sounds like a fabulous skill."

"Indeed, it was. He'd developed the [skill] by necessity, what with all the sirens and whatnot always trying to get him to smash his fishing ship into rocks and such at every turn." Kahli was a little concerned that Lloyd wouldn't believe this bit.

"Oh, yes, of course, I should've known," he said with completed conviction.

"So it was then that I knew that Froufrou was not just some weird looking little sea monster. I knew she was the beast, the monster, the champion that would bring this world to its knees and make it beg for mercy. Yes Lloyd, it was then that I knew that she was, unequivocally, the Harbinger of Doom!"

Lloyd gasped, and then he nodded and smiled. "I see! And, of course, this also explains why you weren't immediately destroyed by my meteor's purposeful crash landing. You must be much stronger than you seem, considering you are [paired] to such a beast."

"Yes, I'm strong enough to end a whole world by association alone," said Kalhi. "I share Froufrou's system and in many ways, her power is mine. So, yes, you may be a much higher level than us. You may be here to spell out our doom. But Froufrou was created with the express purpose of destroying a world. It's my understanding that you just chose ours as a place to come and destroy, well, I'm here to tell you that your shoes have already been filled here, and there's not really any point in doing much more to further your own tasks."

Lloyd considered this perspective. "I see what you're saying, and indeed I do believe that your monster is what you say she is. With that, Kahli, I have a bit of an alternate proposition for you, if you wouldn't mind considering it?"

"Oh?" Kahli asked. She wasn't sure what she was about to hear, and she was afraid, though she was masking both of those feelings with an excellent proficiency.

"How about we join forces?"

"What?"

"How about we team up to destroy the world?"