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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Altalazar" data-source="post: 2989084" data-attributes="member: 939">Kamakawiwo – Chapter Twenty-Two – Swarms!  Rats!      After a brief wait for my friends, I strode toward the door of the bullies’ escape.  Akowa-ke stopped me and said he would make sure it was safe.  He also took my tiki-stick and said, “let me make it better.”  He pulled out a scroll with funny symbols on it, read it to himself, and then my tiki-stick was engulfed in a flame of bully-slaying.  He then walked toward the door, and then nearly fell down into a pit in front of it.  He then unlocked the door and I ran past him, around the edges of the pit, and into the next dank, dark room.    Inside was a swarm of rats, bullies to the poor mice of the land.  Strangely, their tails were tied together.  We quickly pounded them into the ground, my tiki stick making flaming rat corpses.  The cooked meat smelled sweet in the moist air of the room.  My stomach rumbled.  There were no other doors we could see in the room.  What a strange place this is!  But the two goblin bullies were also nowhere to be found, so we knew they must have had another way out of this dank, dark room.  Talar soon found their secret – a door.  It was in the far wall.  It led to a passageway only three feet high and two feet wide.  And it seemed to continue some distance into the dark. Kamakawiwo – Chapter Twenty-Three – Greased Kamakawiwo    I did not want to enter such a small space.  No wonder they were all bullies.  None of them could eat a proper meal and live in such a place.  My friends greased me up and helped me slide my great bulk into the crack, but I could hardly move.  Akowa-Ke and Hiapo Pua went on ahead, Hiapo Pua finding the easiest purchase as the tunnels were larger than him.  Gali, our often-rescued gnome, also found the going easy in the narrow tunnels.      My friends ran into some trouble further in, and then came running back, complaining off all of the bully-goblins that were hiding in the tunnels, waiting to bully us in the dark.      Kamakawiwo did not like being squeezed in so tight.  We backed out and looked for another way around.  Oh how I missed the warm light of the sunlight.  Oh how I missed the smell of fresh bakua fruit on the trees.  This dark place was no place to get a good meal.  Even the rats looked starved, as if their rat- makuahines could not take care of them as makuahine’s should.      Akowa-ke said we had only one door left unopened elsewhere in this dark hovel, the one with the warnings at the front.      Kamakawiwo – Chapter Twenty-Four – Bad Bullies Need to be Killed Twice    Akowa-ke took us back to that scary door.  He opened it for us.  Inside, came out a large, scary bully dressed fully in plate armor, carrying a long sword.  Akowa-ke said, “This is a room where they keep bullies that can’t be killed.”  I thought it looked like the bully had already been killed once.  But to really fight the bullies, you have to be prepared to kill them as many times as it takes.  I readied my tiki stick.    The dead bully came out at us, slamming into Akowa-ke and then me, sending a cold chill down my thick, rubbery spine.  Kai’lei later explained to me that it was the negative bully energy of the plane of bullies that caused it, but I did not understand what she meant.  I did understand we needed to stop this bully.      Unfortunately, while we fought it long and hard, the dead bully escaped, leaving the room, out into the cold night.  And Kai’lei then told us we had to hurry back to the temple, almost a day away, to make sure our afflictions would not last.  I did not understand what she meant, and I started to feel fine, but she still insisted we run back.  Talar ran ahead, to warn the clerics before dawn that we were coming.      We made it back just past dawn, and were taken care of, though I felt no different before the healing magic than after.      Akowa-ke took two days to make more of his strange scrolls while we all returned to the cold, dark place to retrieve the two bodies we had found, that of Sethrena and Toran Mulekick.  We also vowed to the high priestess that we would then return to look for the last two others, Kaenu and Keilea, who may still have been held by the bullies there.      Kamakawiwo – Chapter Twenty-Five – Squeezing into Bully-ville    With no other options, we sent Hiapo Pua to scout the small tunnels invisibly, looking where they went and where the bullies were hiding.  He came back several minutes later with a rough map of what was there and where the bullies were.  Akowa-ke decided the best option was to use his strange scrolls to make us all small, like Gali and Hiapo Pua, and then to send Talar and Hiapo Pua with his healing wand to the stairs to hold off the bully-hordes while the rest of us came up behind them to take care of the bully sentries before them.      It worked well.  Talar held them off, even as some tumbled past him.  Hiapo Pua kept him standing with his magic wand of healing, singing his songs to inspire us.  I handled the two bullies in the main-squeeze hall and then dealt with the other bullies as they slipped past Talar.      Things became somewhat desperate when Talar was surrounded, as he told me later while we ate a nice large meal of fresh meat and juicy Ululu fruits, but my other friends went to their aid.      I was accosted by a user of bully magic, who tried to use his bully ways to alter me, but my anti-bully ways were no match for him.  Not wanting to let him use his bully magic on me, I waited until my smallness wore off, and then, with my massive frame towering over him, I dropped my tiki stick, and wrapped my massive arms around him, squeezing his bully ways out of his small body until he finally squirmed free.  As he tried to run, I smashed him one last time, ending his bully magic.      Kamakawiwo – Chapter Twenty-Six – Rescued Home!    The last bullies vanquished (and tough bullies they were!) we found a sinkhole leading to a cage where poor Keanu and Keilea had been kept by the bully goblins.  We freed them and took them home.  We also found bully booty.  What was most amazing was a large set of full plate armor, inlaid with art that set my tiki-stick to shame, and that was, according to Akowa-ke, enchanted with anti-bully magic.  I just had to have it, and quickly put it on.  My friends were happy to see me take it.  They also gave me a cloak they said would help protect me against bully magic.  It did not quite cover my entire back, but Akowa-ke assured me it would work.      We also found enough coins that I no longer owed them to Akowa-ke, but I was then even more unsure of what to do with all of the gold.  I had never seen so many coins before.  I counted nearly three thousand of them, just for me.  I will have to talk more to Akowa-ke and see what he says I should do with them.  I’m sure he’ll know best how to use them to stop bullies.      I ran all the way back to see my Kuipo.  What tales and mystical things I had to share with her!  I hoped she would be proud of me.  So many bullies in the world!  I will turn them good or slay them all – for my father and now also, for my Kuipo!</blockquote>

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