It all began so pleasantly: sharing a nice mug of scumble with the man who's ruined your memories and has been of late trying to ruin your lives. Fundus was concussed and a little bit drunk, and more than willing to lead DCM to the meeting place where Chang Kai Eel lay waiting - the mastermind behind the ill-fated events on Lungfish Isle.
Fundus weaved his way up the narrow path that led to a man-sized rock covering a secret entrance in the rock face. The rock slides open, and a long chasm is revealed. Up ahead, two dozen orcs, a large ogre and the shadowy Eel himself await Fundus and his new 'bodyguard'.
Saladin, in bat form, flies ahead to scout out the scene, but has a turn of bad luck and meets the cave wall head-on. He then discovers that while bat urine does not serve as ogre repellent, guano can be an adequate fire starter...
Still feeling the effects of the blow to the head, the now-burning bat flees up the staircase at the back of the cave... transforms into his Saladin form... and falls down a dozen stone stairs and loses consciousness.
Somewhere above the planet's surface, the Gods of Ata'ri have a hearty laugh. "Don't you think the poor lad's had enough?" one asks. "No, not by a long shot," chuckles another.
Rushing to his side, Kobayashi helps get Saladin back to consciousness, before a flood of onrushing orcs chases him up and into what appears to be Chang Kai Eel's underground palace. As he watches, Fundus, Eel and the orcs emerge from the secret passage and disperse. But not before Eel sneaks up on Kobayashi and flattens him, knocking the portable hole open and causing the box of all pandoras to spew forth Xeno and the rest of the crew.
A melee ensues, and Iryien ("Doesn't she know how bloody dangerous that thing is?") opens fire with the Alien Bazooka, opening a tunnel-sized hole in the mountain. The sudden evaporation of thousands of cubic feet of rock cause a nearby vein of crystal to become unstable and start resonating at a high but audible frequency. This resonation fills the tunnel, and as it does so, the pitch climbs and fills the space, getting ever closer to fulfilling the equation Eik = 8πG/c4 tik. The only thing that was needed was a mass object of suitable size and density to act as a focus for the building sonic energy. Once introduced into the tunnel (read High-Powered Sonic Oscillator and Matter Accelerator), this mass object would trigger the 8πG part of the 8πG/c4 tik equation, and cause either a chain reaction of sub-atomic explosions throughout all of the non-living rock (out p=2D/∞ (∆-4)/∫˚• π miles, where D= 2d6) or a transformation (at the most basic atomic levels) of any organic matter inside the tunnel.At this point, Saladin appeared, swimming through the living rock, and came upon the fleeing Chang Kai Eel. Saladin grabbed at Eel's heel, but missed. Chang Kai Eel lashed out at Saladin with his foot...
...and didn't.
The last thing Saladin heard as he toppled backwards into the tunnel was the climbing resonance of a million angels singing.
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