Kazuki and Tompah split up to search their own respective areas. Kazuki went to investigate the men’s and woman’s bathrooms passing the laughing drunk on the way over. The bathrooms were much like anyone would expect a rundown tavern’s bathroom to be; vile, dirty, disgusting, but with a hint of a peculiar fish gut and cat piss smell, which made would make any normal person want to gag at the mere whiff of it. Add the puke green color and grimy texture that the walls had and you walks Along the walls were a lot of different 90bvmessages, some in common which weren’t really worth reading aloud, and others in different Leissian dialects. While he found a lot of different vulgar messages and odd holes in between both restrooms, there wasn’t anything specific that he could find. He then searched under most of the tables around the bar,
Since his search was over from this point on, he decided to go back over to the main tavern area and talk to the snake lady remembering that his friend was hungry before.
“Hello, I’m very sorry about my friend from earlier. If you don’t mind me asking, What is your name?”
The snake woman smiled at him and leaned on the counter “Finally, sssomone with manners, my name is sssadie, how can I help you sssir”
Kazuki extended his hand to her
“My name is Kazami, it’s very nice to meet you.”
Sadie hissed out a laugh at his awful lie “My friend you will have to be better at lying and hiding you’re face, if you wish to pass as sssomeone elssse, I know who you are, you are very famousss at the moment, Kazuki Kazama”
Kazuki audibly gulped in fear of his situation.
“Do not worry, I would never collect the bounty of a customer” she said in a way that Kazuki found intimidating.
Kazuki gave a sigh of relief “Well then it’s good that I was actually coming up here to ask if you had a menu me and my friend could look at”
Sadie smiled and moved one of her hands under the counter before giving Kazuki two menus that he could look it while he waited for his friend to return from his investigation.
“Thank you” He smiled, and then walked over to the table that he and Tompah were sitting at before.
When Tompah left the tavern, His first thought was “who could possibly know the code for the test. Obviously, someone who’s looking to take it.”
He started looking around for suspects before thinking to himself more “What does someone who looks like they want to take a test, look like?” As he walked a fifty-foot radius around the bar he had an epiphany.
“I look like someone who wants to take the test, so All I need to do is find someone that looks like me!” He thought to himself as he searched road after road in a now one-hundred-foot radius around the Tavern, even going through alleys and other shady dwellings to see if he could find absolutely anyone that just looked like him, even just a little. Maybe if they just had the same nose, he knew who could get the code from that person.
Unfortunately, Tompah’s search was fruitless and came to an end at the sound of his stomach grumbling.
He walked into the bar with a great big frown on his face and sat down holding his head in his hands.
“Hey Tompah, how’d you’re search go?” Kazuki asked a little worried.
“Awful, I couldn’t find anyone that looked like me.”
“what are you talking about?”
“I was looking for someone who looked like they were going to take a test. I look like that, so I was looking for someone who looked like me.
“horribly confused and lost?”
“That too I guess.”
Kazuki chuckled and passed Tompah a menu “maybe we’ll be able to find it after we eat. You still have some leftover money, right?”
“Yeah” Tompah lifted his head to look at the menu and immediately knew what he wanted. “I’m ready to order if you are.”
Kazuaki raised his eyebrow in confusion “how did you decide so fast?”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“I’m just getting what the menu is telling me to get”
Kazuki shook his head violently in response to Tompah’s answer “What?!?”
Tompah laughed and pointed out a spot on the menu that had a drawn picture of a pie on it but no words anywhere around it.
“Tompah I don’t think this is an item on the menu” Kazuki replied with a small laugh.
“Nonsense, look closer."
Kazuki did as tompah asked and found what looked like scribbles of.. squiggly lines and dots?
"Tompah you have got to be kiddi-"
"It says to order the Pie Kazuki," Tompah interrupted "it's on the menu, you should get on too"
Kazuki made a few frustrated hand gestures trying to come up with a response before eventully thinking it wasn’t worth the argument, so rather than respond, he took both menus and walked up to Sadie pointing at the pie in the picture and asking if he could have two of them.
Sadie smiled devilishly and turned to griz exclaiming “two sssurprissse fish piessss for table 4 griz”
Grizz gave a roar in response as he started to get to work and the laughing drunk at the table started to laugh louder.
Kazuki returned to a Tompah who was sitting making a victory pose for being correct once again
Kazuki rolled his eyes laughing at his friend and sat down “yeah yeah you told me so”
“I told you good too; two times now” Tompah raised two fingers snickering at his bestie.
“I should have more faith in your investigative skills,” Kazuki said in a defeated tone
“you honestly should” Tompah chuckled.
The food didn’t take long to come to the table, however, what they received was not at what they thought they had ordered. What Sadie put on the table was what would have maybe looked like a chicken pot pie had it not had the head of a salmon sticking out of the top of it.
“I hope you enjoy the meal” Sadie said as she flicked her tongue at the both of them and walked back over to the bar.
The fish didn’t even look fresh as it had flies buzzing around it and the pie smelled awful at least to Tompah who was covering his nose at the whiff of it. Kazuki however found the smell fairly appetizing and couldn’t help but clean off the flies from their food with his tongue before giving Tompah a thumbs up.
Kazuki immediately dug in after, delighting in every bite he took, his frog mind almost taking over not even giving himself time to chew as he made a speed run of is meal.
Tompah shuddered in disgust wondering how strong Kazuki’s stomach had to be to eat food like this on the regular. He knew however that this would probably be the only chance he would get to eat, so he covered his nose and started to eat. The experience was surely grueling, it was definitely one of the slimiest, and yet - due to the number of fish bones in the food- still gritty meals he had ever eaten. The food wasn’t necessarily disgusting in taste, in fact it was almost well seasoned, it was however not a meal that Tompah found in anyway texturally pleasing. At somepoints he thought he would puke up his meal because of some weird random combinations of crunchies and slimy veggies entering his mouth. Tompah’s constitution however allowed him to hold down his meal without puking it up. Kazuki however was absolutely scarfing down the meal as if it was one of the best things he had ever eaten. Wiping the slime off his mouth once he was done and hopping over to the counter and almost slammed his plate down.
“Thankyou so much, this was delicious. One of the best meals I’ve had in years”
Tompah slowly walked up behind Kazuki holding his stomach and placed his plate down next to Kazuki.
“Tompah what do you think, it was good right?!” Kazuki pat Tompah’s back as he spoke
Tompah looked at Kazuki then at the snake woman who was giving him daring eyes. “Yeah it was delicious” He gagged, “thank you so much”
Sadie blushed heavily at their response. Nobody had ever actually eaten their food - save for Jared but he was insane – let alone compliment the chef. She held up a finger to Kazuki telling him to wait one moment before making her way over to Griz and whispering into his ear.
As Tompah and Kazuki watched they saw Griz turn around and…blush? His horrifically scarred face almost managed to look cute as Griz frantically turned around to roar before Sadie walked her way back to the two of them.
She opened the same part of the bar she opened for the bunny girl and moved aside “Congratulationssss, you are now allowed to take the contractorssss exam."
in response to this Jared started laughing louder than he was before.
Tompah and Kazuki looked at each other, then Sadie, then each other once more before celebrating and walking in.
As they walked into the next room, Jared started laughing so loud that Griz started roaring to get him to shut up.
Sadie led the two past the bar and through the beaded curtan into a seperate storage room which held a trap door on the ground
Immdeiatly upon entering the room and seeing the door, Kazuki became uncomfortable. "We have to go down there?”
Tompah having now recovered from his meal laughed at Kazuki “what are you so nervous about, we’re just going underground.”
“fair warning to you love,” Sadie said as they conversed with each other. She pointed at Kazuki “This is you’re first chance to walk away from this right now”
Kazuki and Tompah looked at each other in confusion.
“What are you talking about?” They said in unison.
Sadie pointed at Tompah “If you’ve taken this exam multiple times then you should know that there is a possibility of death taking it.”
Kazuki looked at Tompah with a mistrusting squint.
“Wait wait wait, I’ve taken it three times and I’m still alive, this is the first time I’ve heard this warning”
“That maybe because you’re so annoying the other paths decided to not give you one. Lucky you, this warning wasssss for the frog” She licked her lips as if she was looking at Kazuki as prey.
Kazuki shivered understanding her gaze and faced Tompah “I’m still good to go if you are.”
Tompah was a little confused but understood “There’s no future for me if I don’t become a contractor, so I’m going even if I die this time.”
Kazuki faced Sadie and smiled “Thank you for the warning, but we'll be on our way Sadie.”
She smiled at him with a slight blush and wished them luck before the two hopped down the trap door.