Random Encounters with Missingno: Chapter 44

Chapter 44- A Random Eye

As the giant Marowak spirit and Missingno cross… ‘weapons’, Cassandra and Driller sneak around to the stairs. She jumps the broken one as they head for the top floor.

On the top level is a long, dark hallway. Traveling along the floor, she sees a purple gas that dissipates just before the stairs. She hesitates, but walks through it anyways. The passageway becomes wider, and as she grows used to the low light, a terrible scene is ready to open before her eyes.

The first thing she sees is a sign. ‘Warning: Flammable Gas- No Smoking!... Actually, you shouldn’t smoke anyways. It’s bad for you.’

She raises an eyebrow at the sign, but doesn’t spend too much time on it. Movement beyond it catches her eye. She can now see pretty well, and the three skeletons standing around in the gas makes her flinch.

“Twi Needle!!!”

Driller shoots the creatures, which turns them into two guys with a large R on their shirts, and an old man. They start to fall backwards, but purple orbs enter their backs, and they turn into skeletons.

Cassandra calms herself. “String Shot!” She smiles as Driller ties them up and dangles them from the ceiling.

Her smile fades as she hears a cackle from the other end of the hall.

“Kakakakaka! Consider me impressed!”

Still hard to see, she looks towards the sound. Sitting at the end of the hallway is a skeleton, although this one is very different from the rest. It wears a crown, and only has one large eye with a slightly deformed pupil. The purple gas covering the floor seems to build up in its rib cage, and fall out of its mouth. It is sitting on a huge throne that looks like a mass of gravestones mashed together in a bulking, asymmetrical mass. Small purple orbs of light fly around the throne, and especially around the skeleton’s hands.

“Twi Needle!”

Driller tries to raise his spear hands, but they stay at his side. His wings also stop working, and he falls into the gas, struggling to move.

Cassandra quickly pulls out her hammer and throws it at the new skeleton. It flies directly at the creature, but bounces off harmlessly. “W-Who...?” She manages to force out a word before she falls to her knees. She looks at her trembling arm and tries to say something, but finds it even hard to breath.

“Kakakaka! You can call me the Tower King.” It stands from the throne and walks towards Cassandra, its teeth chattering with each laugh. It stoops down to her and stares at her with its one large eye. “I always thought that the purple gas was too obvious, but to think that someone would be stupid enough to enter.”

Now that it is closer, she notices two things. The first is that this skeleton is completely blue. The other is the pupil, which looks like a round ghost with a tail and small hands. Similar to a Haunter but very different, the image seems to look at her with blank eyes of its own.

The skeleton’s cackle echoes through the empty hall. “I don’t know how, but I combined with my Koffing, so I can emit all the poisonous gas I want. I also can do this.” It reaches to grab her face.

As it gets mere inches away, time seems to slow down for Cassandra. The cackling grows faint as her heartbeat drums in her ear. Every instinct yells to run, but her body can’t even respond enough to turn her head away. As the hand gets even closer, she notices every small groove and nick in the bones, and she wonders if this will be the last thing she will ever see.

“HEEEEEEEY~YOOOOO!!!!!!!”

Cassandra hears Missingno’s sporadic yell behind her, which causes the Tower King to jump up. It leans back, and the cloud of gas within the rib cage expands, ready to burst out.

And then it flies back. Cassandra looks at the throne, where the Tower King is stuck to the throne of gravestones, a javelin piercing through both. The gas stops spewing from its mouth, and the gas on the floor completely dissipates.

“It hurt when I was stabbed with it, but I’m glad I kept that javelin I got from that Hiker.” Missingno walks into Cassandra field of view, breathing heavily. “We don’t have much time, so we need to leave fast.” He holds up a small spray bottle and sprays her with it.

Her limbs suddenly feel lighter, and she stands up slowly.

“That was the only Antidote I have. You think more people would leave them lying around, but…” He shrugs and points to Driller.

She removes an Antidote from her bag and heals her Pokemon. “You said leave. Don’t we need to finish that thing?” She points to the cackling blue skeleton, still stuck to the throne.

Missingno is breathing even harder. “I don’t have the power right now.”

“But I thought you said-”

“You think you can leave so easily?” The Tower King laughs as purple orbs, one after another, drop out of its hand and through the floor.

“Escape now, explain later.”

Cassandra raises an eyebrow, but follows him.

As they pass the strung up skeletons, he turns back to her. “One of them should have been an old man. Which one was it?”

Cassandra points to the middle one.

“Driller, fix him and drop him at the same time.”

Driller stabs the skeleton and cuts the string at the same time. Missingno catches the bald, old man and turns to leave.

On the floor below, the tied up skeletons struggle against the threads as they their forms and colors shift as more purple orbs fall into and around them. When they see the escaping group, they scream and struggle harder.

“Running all the way down is not safe.”

“Then what do you suggest we do?” She glares at him.

Missingno points to the wall near the stairs. A large circle is missing from it. Next to the hole is the Marowak spirit, back to normal size and shaking in fetal position.

“I needed to move on, so I was forced to use Splash.” He straps an umbrella to the unconscious old man and throws him out. He slowly floats down into town.

Cassandra shakes her head. “And do we have a way down?”

He hands her the hammer she left upstairs. “I’ve got you this time.”

She hesitates, but the screams of the skeletons and the orbs falling to lower levels convince her to make a decision. She grabs the hammer and jumps out the hole.

The hammer opens up, and a parachute pops out. Her descent is slowed, and she looks at Driller, who is struggling to not drop Missingno on their flight down.

‘He had better have a VERY good explanation.’