Robin dropped to his back, barely avoiding the second thrust. He rolled sideways quickly, away from the crack in the door. He lurched to his feet and yanked his broom in front of him, wishing he had thought to prepare the machete.

The door snapped shut.

Robin felt the blood dripping down his cheek pool onto his collarbone. He reached up and pressed gingerly on the wound. Ow! What the heck! What was that!?

Robin reached into his satchel and got out the anytool, setting it down to transform into the machete. After the heart subsided, a very nerve-wracking thirty or so seconds, Robin hurriedly tossed the Deverran Broom into his satchel and sealed it up. He had to find out what was inside the room before it stabbed him in the face again.

That’s a brand-new thought for me…

Robin crept up to the door and after a moment of hesitation spent with his breath held, Robin tapped on the door with his machete and called out.

“Is there anyone in there?

The willow of the door dented slightly as he tapped it, and then slowly popped back into shape. Robin looked closer. The door had actual bark on the handle! Is this thing alive? Maybe I should try and take this…

Robin considered it briefly, but came to the conclusion that he would not be able to fit it into his satchel of the generous matron, even if whatever was inside the room beyond didn’t stab him in the process.

Which it certainly would.

Robin tapped again. There was no answer.

He reached out to the handle from the wall beside the door, flattening himself against the wall. The moment took forever, and he kept expecting the door to slide open, a green blade to snap out, and his hand to fall twitching to the ground.

The door opened with a click. Robin pushed it inwards with a quick shove, yanking his hand back, the phantom dismemberment still repeating in his mind.

Don't let yourself be destroyed as Obi-Wan did. At least it’s not a glowing red blade, just a shimmering green one. Robin checked his menu on impulse. My body is still three points down! Why isn’t this healing like the other injuries I took? Maybe it’s because it went deeper. Oh, no, maybe it’s because it happened with a sword, or even because it was shimmering? Or that “Ignore Armor” thing… No, it was “First Rune! Ignore Armor!” or maybe “First Rune: Ignore Armor!” It could have been one or two skills.

The door hit the far wall and rebounded lightly. The noise shocked Robin; it was louder than he had expected in the stone hallway. Am I having a panic attack? I am thinking very quickly. This must be the SPEED boost!

No green blade snapped out. Robin stepped away from the wall and, brandishing his machete in front of him, crab-stepped in front of the door. The room was full of green! Robin began to tense even as he noticed the vines and foliage. The room was full of plants. There was no sign of his assailant that he could see from the door. He moved forwards slowly, the machete betraying the slight tremble in his hands.

As he stepped deeper into the room, the earthy smell he noticed before grew stronger. The room smelled alive in a way Robin had not known he was capable of perceiving. The walls were lined with wire-frame shelves, each loaded to the limit with pots of various plants. The room had tiny jars of every size and shape (Robin spotted several baby food jars) holding cuttings and saplings between the massive pots. There were two of the wire-frame shelves that did not have plants, and each held what appeared to be several watering cans of different designs, gloves, trowels, several different kinds of plant food in labeled glass jars, several unlabeled large ceramic containers, and various shapes and sizes of empty pots, as well as several dozen empty glass jars, likely the source of the ones used for the cuttings. Robin glanced up and grimaced. There was a large, circular hole in the ceiling, with a grate covering he had seen before. The metal bars across the grate had been sliced and bent upward, though.

It didn’t leave much space, but it was more than enough for a small-ish human Or humanoid… creature to squeeze through.

His attacker was gone.

Robin sighed. This was aggravating. How cool would it be to form a party in the dungeon? Everyone knows you get better experience that way… It increased your longevity and versatility! You could fight more monsters than you could alone!

Robin didn’t notice that he was being observed from further up in the tunnel. If he had looked up (and had better night vision), Robin would have seen a tense set of blue eyes staring down at him before the tendril snapped out and they turned away.

Robin struggled to pull the tentacle off of his neck. He let out a painful, gurgling shriek, yanking his body forward, away from the shelf, and the pressure on his neck increased tremendously. In a semi-panic, he willed his menu to show him small damage updates. Hurry hurry hurry! What is it doing to me!?

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Robin saw his PHYSTAM and MENSTAM ticking down and tried to calm himself. Once he moved past the overwhelming fear of having something on his neck, he could feel something heavy behind him. He reached behind himself and was briefly dazed when the yank he gave it tugged his own throat harder.

Robin tried pulling it around him to his left and found it getting tighter, so he twisted it around him to the right. He felt it slowly giving way, although it struggled to retighten its grip. He didn’t dare look down at it, bend his neck, and give it a chance to wrap more effectively. He twisted it completely around him, feeling the smooth, cold shell of the creature as it struggled, but he twisted faster.

I feel like a tetherball pole in a post-apocalyptic hellscape movie! You’ve taken a lot of PHYSTAM damage, not to mention the BODY… You’re about to black out. Remember when you went swimming at the river in Tallaquah? I learned how to swim. That shitty little church camp he sent you to instead of going to the Jamboree? We couldn’t afford it. Mom even said so. The same year he bought The Car? No… no, he bought it with the... No one knew you got swept under that tree, and no one would have found your body for weeks. I got out! Barely!

No one’s ever going to find you here!

Robin twisted the creature around behind him again.

It’s so dark… because you’re dying.

Robin almost dropped the thing in front of him, yanking his neck hard. He stumbled forward two steps.

I’ll get out…!

In Hell.

I’ll get out…!

Robin dropped to one knee as he began to pass it around his back again. The tendril unwrapped from his neck and immediately re-coiled around his leg. It was tight, but it didn’t hurt. It kind of feels like when a big ball python is climbing your leg...just… firm. Robin gasped in lungfuls of air, feeling the dizziness increase for a moment. He leaned on the machete, panting for breath.

The potted ivy plant continued hugging his leg. Robin stared down at the thing that had come the closest so far to killing him.

After catching his breath fully (he noticed it was at the exact time his PHYSTAM recovered fully), Robin stood up and looked behind him at the shelf the plant had come from. Thank Yoshi it was the only ivy on that shelf… One isn’t that bad, if you know what it is, at least, but more than one might have been enough to really get me.

The green and white stubby arms of the aloe vera on the shelf waved at him aggressively. Robin thought it looked like an extremely uncoordinated Mexican Wave. I always loved those. So many people working together to do something that is purely, solely, 100% just for fun…

Robin considered for a moment.

I wonder if they would do okay in the satchel of the generous matron? I open it enough that it shouldn’t have any trouble with air… whatever they breathe, Robin thought, eying the angry little plants threatening him silently from painted ceramic pots that would not look out of place on the porch of a grandmother.

First though, I need to take care of this one…

Robin reached into his pack and pulled out the Deverran broom. He stuck it down between his leg and the pot and began to slowly unwrap it from his leg, simultaneously wrapping it around the handle of the broom.

Yep, this is exactly like handling a friendly snake that is determined to explore. I wish it hadn’t grabbed on to my neck, though. What an embarrassing way to go…

Robin had the potted ivy unwrapped from his leg in a few minutes with only a few small ...escape, exploration, or attacks, he still wasn’t sure which yet, from the potted plant. When he was done he held the broom out between the two of them , stepped back, and let the plant have the broom.

I better check on Opal… Robin focused on the mental packet of energy in his mind that had been present since the spell that bonded the two. He found it instantly, and reaching his awareness into it. Opal seemed determined, proud, tense… There was impatience burning in her, too, with less of the intangible aloofness than Robin had ever felt from her.

It feels like seeing a girl’s room for the first time, every time I do this. Is it just me or does she feel more ...intense? Did she reach a new plateau of sapience? Robin suddenly had a thought.

Please, please, be able to talk! He already had a full mental image ready.

“Opal, that’s right!”

Eh… hopefully not like that.

Several of the other nearby plants in the room were straining towards Robin, but none had enough reach to actually grasp him. Robin stepped further away just in case, and carefully made his way over to the shelf with the tools on it.

“Identify time!”

He immediately felt foolish for speaking out loud. His grandfather’s words came to his mind. He could remember them so clearly he was momentarily taken aback. This has to be because of the few INT points I’ve gained. Better recall does make sense, I guess...

“In the field, any noise can spook your quarry or worse, alert your enemy. Noise discipline is a must for survival, young man. Scout Snipers had a saying, ‘suffer in silence’, we followed it religiously. If one of us were snake-bit on a mission, crying out would just get everyone else killed. Suffer in silence. This facility for this ‘junior internship’ is full of… it’s not… it’s not in a tamed environment. If something goes wrong with the generators or windmills or WHATEVER they use for power all the way out there… You and your fellow ‘interns’ will very quickly realize that you are not at the top of the food chain. When I acquired the permit to hunt the ‘pernicious pachyderm’, as your grandmother would call them, that I used to make that belt, I’ll admit, I went in cocky. I didn’t know what the term “Rogue” really meant, on that first hunt…

Robin blinked in surprise. He hadn’t caught the term ‘pernicious pachyderm’ before, or maybe he had not known what the words meant at the time. He did get very nervous around his grandfather, and it had been a surprise visit before he left to board the plane to get to the internship.

Robin ran his finger over the rough, wrinkled leather of the belt. It’s… elephant? He felt slightly disgusted, but the more he considered it, the more he realized that from what he knew of his grandfather, there was absolutely no chance that he had not obtained it legally. Rogue elephants… I remember there was a little bit about them in that YouTube series I watched that had the original advertisement for the internship as the paid sponsor. Robin remembered complaining about the ads in an attempt to bond with a couple boys from his class and the awkwardness that had ensued when none of them had ever seen the (apparently targeted) ad. They get a fair bit homicidal, as I remember it…

Oh well. At least I know now. That explains why it’s so tough, too.

Robin sat down. Man, I’m feeling… nostalgic. He laid back on the ground and stared at the ceiling. The plants were wiggling, just barely in sight. The ivy plant on the ground was constricting the broom.

The lights were plant lights, and had odd tinges of pink and blue from the LEDs used in its construction. The tiny dust particles swirling in the lights sparkled and shifted color. They reminded Robin of a circus tent, tiny acrobats dancing in ethereal glory.

Robin felt sluggish. That’s fair, I’ve been fighting and running and being scared-full of adrenaline for … how long has it been? He called up his menu, and was surprised when it took him a second try. His MENSTAM was depleted. How odd. Robin felt a light stutter on in his head, but could not place why it seemed so important to him.

There was no dust left down here after the Ysari System happened.