365 Days of Starshipping (Part 2)

Creepy Crawly Quests

10/13/19

The town was a bit smaller than they'd expected to be, but that was only in how wide it was - it made up for its small diameter by having stacked stairways and buildings, decorated everywhere in the Halloween spirit, with the occasional waterway here and there to split up certain sections of the town while a sparkling fountain stood proudly in the center. It had a Pumpking, the King of Ghosts statue as the middle statue of it, which matched with the feel of the overall atmosphere thanks to all the lights that'd been threaded throughout the buildings. It was permanently night outside in this area, so there had to be lights everywhere in order to see anything, and part of that was fulfilled using jack-o-lanterns whose cutout, instead of the traditional scary face for pumpkins, was that of various duel monsters.

They'd started on the quests once they got their fill, figuring that there was little enough at the start to be able to do (plus not all of the quests required dueling), so they went about doing all the little activities - collecting candy, asking NPCs about if they'd seen anything strange, grabbing a pumpkin from the fields close to town for a kid - until Judai finally got a message from Carly, detailing everything they needed to do to unlock the new aura that'd been released.

"She didn't tell me what the aura was, at least," Judai smiled, sitting on a lit-up bench with him off on a side road in town while searching up all the quest NPC locations on his map, "It should be a fun surprise. I'm glad she gave us everything else though, because we definitely wouldn't have had the time to go through all those other quests... rather, you wouldn't have had the time, at least."

"Please don't remind me," Yusei muttered, sighing at the thought that his classes were actually set to start in only a few days. He only had a precious few days left until he was back on a different kind of work grind and he didn't want to think about it if he didn't have to, "Oh, found him. That's the NPC, right?"

"Yup, that's him," Judai chirped, giving him a sympathetic side hug before he went back to his open notes window, "Coordinates... one-hundred one, and... yup, got it!"

"Let's get started, then," Yusei said, standing up and offering a hand to Judai, who grinned toothily at the gesture and took his hand to stand up.

"Thanks, love," Judai hummed, threading their fingers together while the hearts sprouted up around them, "What do you think the new aura will be?"

"No idea," Yusei admitted, glancing over at him with a smile, "That's part of the fun, though, isn't it?"

"True, I did just say something similar," Judai agreed, falling silent for a few seconds as he looked away at something before turning back to meet his look with a thoughtful frown, "Hey, Yusei..."

Yusei tilted his head in question, humming curiously as Judai seemed to scoot a bit closer before continuing much quieter than before, "Well... I just realized, one of the quests might have quite a bit to do with spiders based off the title of it. Are you gonna be okay or...?"

He's right, Yusei realized, eyes widening ever-so-slightly at the revelation as he went back over what info they'd been given - there was one quest called 'Cull the Creepy Crawler Cave', which he had kind-of glossed over before due purely to the generic-ness of the name. It wouldn't just be spiders in that case, since 'creepy crawlers' implied a whole slew of bugs that belonged in a fire, in his opinion.

"...Well, I guess that should've been expected with all the Halloween decorations," Yusei stated, thinking a little more on it before concluding, "I should be okay though. As long as I keep in mind that nothing here is actually real, I should be able to deal with it just fine. Besides, I've had to duel against people with spider-like duel monsters in their deck, and while it was definitely unnerving, I didn't have too much trouble with it around."

"Alright, that's good," Judai breathed, looking up at him with a reassuring smile that made him relax a little more from suddenly being confronted with that horrible reality, "But if it does get to be too much, just tell me, okay?"

"I will, don't worry," Yusei replied, a more mischievous smile taking over as he spotted the first of the trio of quests they needed to take to get started, "Now, let's get started, shall we? The first set all deals with the haunted forest outside town and I'm curious to see what they did with the place."

"Thank the gods for this map," Judai laughed, looking over the quests they'd accepted that were all marked on it, "Because this would've taken way too long otherwise, even knowing what we do. It looks like the forest is pretty much a maze and there's some blanked out sections in it."

"Spooky forest maze, huh?" Yusei asked, thinking of the careful observations he'd been making about Judai as they'd wandered through town and looked at everything before saying as innocently as possible, "I bet there'll be ghosts."

"A-Ah, yeah, maybe," Judai chuckled, though he wasn't able to hide the nervous stutter from him fast enough; Yusei felt a trill of satisfaction at guessing what he was most scared of correctly and he fully planned on sneaking in a well-placed 'Boo!' at some point. It'd probably earn him a pout and a scare himself later on when Judai figured out how to get back at him without the use of insects, but it was well worth the cute reaction he knew he'd get.