Episode 19: Deal or No Deal

Having dispatched the last of the jellyfish spawn, Der Mobile and The Hammer returned to DCM HQ. Plans were made, money was spent and everyone got back to their gentle routines back at home.

Then Takemiya pulled out The Deck.

The power of the Deck must have gotten to him, really. Why else would someone pull out what is surely The Most Dangerous Artifact in the known spheres? A surge of that magical power must've been directly responsible for him stating "I will draw four cards."

Everyone else slid back from the table as if he'd just let an ace mistakenly fall from his sleeve in a poker game with Bludgeon MacSplosion.

Takemiya placed the Deck on the table in front of him and turned over the First Card.

Euryale, the Dread Medusa.

Takemiya felt his body change on a molecular level. Weaken. Warp. Arteries hardened. Muscles stiffened. An image of a woman, snakes for hair, screamed through his mind. He wasn't sure what happened, but he was QUITE sure he didn't want to run into one of her kind in real life. He wasn't sure if he'd be able to handle it.

Takemiya turned over the Second Card.

Death.

Outside, Death Himself appeared. He pulled out an hourglass and glanced at it casually. His dark eye sockets smoldered with supernatural fire as they gazed at the sign on the door which told him that he'd come to the right place. He put the hourglass back inside his robe and reached for the door...

He wasn't sure what made him pause. Did he have the right place? He tried to look through the door, see through Time, but for some reason....

Nothing.

This place was a blank spot, a nothing in his field of vision.

"INTERESTING," he thought to himself. "I'LL JUST HAVE A BIT OF A WAIT." He turned and sat on a largish stone some way up the path that led from the house. Little did he know that he was not the first Immortal to have parked his Undying Keister on that particular piece of rock.

Meanwhile, Takemiya turned over the Third card, the idiot.

Um, I mean, The Idiot. The card.

Takemiya suddenly felt the strange urge to do all sorts of things. Dumb things. Silly things. He couldn't say why, but he just felt like doing the next thing that popped into his mind...

Like drawing another card.

The Donjon.

At that moment, Xoe saw the lights go out in Takemiya's eyes. Saladin noticed that a rosy glow had started to emanate from Takemiya's midsection, and it rose slowly up his torso, up his neck and towards his mouth. Takemiya's mouth opened and out of it floated a small amber sphere. It bobbed slowly up and down as it floated across the room, and everyone - everyone save Takemiya, that is - everyone followed it with their eyes as the sphere floated across the room, towards an open window and...

pLuB!

The sphere seemed to hit a soft, invisible barrier and pLuBbEd quietly back into the room where it bRoBbEd silently for a moment before fLuRkInG its way back towards Takemiya. A few whispered comments and gentle pokings ensued, whereupon DCM surmised that it was in fact Takemiya's soul that was silently gLeRnKiNg just over his right shoulder.

Takemiya ceased to draw any more cards.

While everyone debated what they were going to do next, Xeno scooped up the Deck. "Well, looks like he won't be needing this anymore," and he stowed it away. He then turned towards the Helm of Telepathy, where it was sitting on the old stuffed penguijn that had, for some reason, come to be in the office. He had what would later, in the history books (at least the ones that weren't used to line penguijn cages), be called a Moment of Inspiration.

He took the rather large and unwieldy helm and with an embarassed whisper asked Saladin for a boost. The bewildered giant dwarf picked the gnome up under the arms and hoisted him up towards the amber globe.

Xeno carefully placed the Helm over the globe and slowly, slooowly loosened his grip on it.

The Helm stayed there, floating.

(rattle, rattle...)

Then, just as slowly, just as carefully, the helm turned - slowly and silently - in midair, until it was facing the dangling gnome. It then did something that it had never done before in all of the the seven hundred and fifty three years of its existance:

It blinked.