Y/N's Perspective
Rough 'n' Tumbleweed Ranch, Wrath Ring
Tuesday, 24/03/2020
"Hold up-" Loona said as she saw the book, snatching it from me. "Wait a fucking minute-" She studied the book in shock. "Where the fuck did you get this?" She asked, clearly confused.
"From a client." I said casually, going back to flicking through the pages. "Gave it to me as payment for killing her husband and his fling."
The two of us were silent for a moment as I flicked through the pages of the book, eventually finding the one for the Imp disguise and reading the incantation, the room being enveloped in a bright red light.
"So how exactly are you gonna convince Dad that it's you?" Loona asked, looking at me with her arms folded as I tucked the book away.
"Easy: I'm not." I said casually, smiling at her. "See, Blitz and I have actually had a run-in before. He almost ran me over in the van, and that was what prompted me to check out I.M.P.!"
"Thank God you did... after what happened at Spring Break I never thought I'd meet another hellhound like Vortex." She smiled at me, her expression soft.
"Yeah, you've told me about him. Didn't he say he was gonna have a hellhound party at some point?" I asked, jamming my hands into my pockets and leaning on the wall next to her. "Something about introducing you to his girlfriend?"
"Oh yeah, that was... I think we agreed on the second Sunday of next month. I told him that I had someone I wanted him to meet as well. He seemed pretty stoked I made a friend when I told him, and that he couldn't wait to meet you."
"Well, he sounds like a blast and a half." I said with a small chuckle. "I don't come across many hellhounds, so it'll be nice to finally meet him."
"I think you'll like him, Y/N. He's a good guy." Loona said, looking towards the door. "Anyway, shall we get out there? You do need to sign up still, after all."
"Yeah, let's go. Don't wanna miss the chance to come out on top." I pushed off the wall and walked to the door, leaving with Loona following behind. "You might wanna head back to the others. They'll get nosey if they see you and some random imp walking around together."
"Okay, and how do you say we do that?" Loona asked, stopping at the bottom of the stairs.
"Simple: you head out the door and back to the group, tell 'em that I've headed off to poke around the festival, and I go out through a window and sign up for the games." I explained, already backing towards one of the windows on the opposite wall to the door.
"Whatever you say then, dipshit." She said with a shrug as she left the house. I turned and pulled the window open before jumping through, noticing a crowd of imps beginning to form in front of a stage, surrounded by various food stalls and what had to be the course for the Pain Games.
I looked around for any signs or flyers about the games to see where sign-up was, and eventually I found one stuck to a fencepost. I pulled it off and started flicking over the paper, looking for something to help me.
"The annual Pain Games... held on the Harvest Moon Festival... prizes to be won... sign up- here it is. Sign up is behind the main stage, at the course's entry point."
I put the poster back and headed towards the stage, seeing Stolas sitting under the shade structure set up on the back half of the stage. His red eyes pierced through the dimly lit half-tent, moving in a way that made me feel they were following me.
A shiver shot up my spine but I pressed forward nonetheless, walking past the stage to see a small marquee set up behind it, with a tall imp and a hellhound sitting at a folding table under it.
"Must be the place..."I muttered as I sped up, coming to the marquee and clearing my throat to get their attention. The hellhound looked up while the imp slumped in his chair, obviously asleep.
"Oh? Here to sign up for the Pain Games, I assume?" The hellhound asked, pulling a pen and notebook towards her.
"Yeah. Heard it was a good challenge, so I thought it'd be fun to see how far I can get." I said, doing what I could to make conversation. Politeness was an odd thing to come across in hell, but something I found other people quite appreciated.
"Absolutely it is!" She said, clearly becoming a lot more excited. "Though it's a shame I can't enter into it. They won't let hellhounds in because they reckon we have a 'unfair advantage' on our opponents. I mean, it's true, but still..."
I let out a small laugh, happy to see that I had brightened someone's day a bit with conversation. "Oh, you'll need my name won't you?" I asked, looking at the notebook and pen she had. She nodded, clicking it and preparing to write. "It's Y/N. It was my father's, actually. Kinda turned it into a generational thing."
The hellhound nodded, jotting down my name before shutting the notebook. "I'm Prezlee, if you're interested in knowing. And this idiot here's Theo. He's about as sharp as a bar of soap but he's a good dude." Prezlee laughed, smiling up at me. "I'll see you around, Mr Y/N?"
I smiled and nodded at her, stepping back from the table as Blitz, Moxxie and Striker approached. "See you when the games start, Prez."
Later, before the Games' beginning...
I was the first out of the contestants to arrive at the marquee that marked the entry, which gave me a good opportunity to scope out my opponents before the game started. There were a fair few stocky imps, but also a good few leaner imps, like myself, Blitz and Striker.
Speaking of Blitz, I noticed the imp walking towards me. I was about to smile and wave until I remembered I was in disguise, and our only interaction with me like this was when he almost ran me over.
He squinted at me as he pushed past a few of the smaller imps, studying me closely as he stopped just in front of me.
"Do I... know you?" I asked cautiously, making it look like I was examining him.
"Pssh, naah-" Blitz said, shaking his head. "I'm just scoping out the worthy opponents, y'know?"
I nodded, catching what he was saying and growing a smirk. "Well, I hope a second place medal satisfies you, stripes."
A smirk appeared on Blitz's face as well. "Is that a challenge I hear, big man?"
"It's a guarantee." I said, about to continue before a loud voice turned everyone's heads.
It was Theo, the sleeping imp from the sign up marquee, standing on a few boxes stacked up so he was taller than the contestants.
"Right! Hog-wranglers, hillbillies and housemaids! The games are about to start so put your dicks away and get ready!" He shouted, earning roars of excitement from the crowd of contestants, myself and Blitz included.
"The name's Blitz, by the way!" He yelled to me as we prepared for the starting gun to go off.
"Y/N!" I exclaimed in response, making him raise an eyebrow at me.
"I've got an employee named Y/N!" He yelled back, examining me again.
"Oh really?" I asked, Blitz nodding in response. "You'll have to show him to me after I kick your ass!"
We both grinned at each other as the starting gun went off, making both the crowds watching and the imps participating yell out. Blitz and I were joined by Striker as we ran towards the first obstacle - a wooden wall you had to climb over and jump off to advance. I used the mob of imps around me to boost myself onto the wall, jumping onto a shorter imp's shoulders, then head, and launching myself up from there. As I was about to jump over the mud pool from the other side, Blitz grabbed my tail and yanked it backwards. My feet came out from under me but I caught myself on the wall as he sprung up, only to be climbed over by Striker as I jumped across the gap and to the floor.
I raced forward and heard two sets of footsteps behind me, and assuming it was Blitz and Striker, I continued to dash forward. I was knocked over by some other imps barreling through and lost sight of the two, only realising Moxxie was in the games as well when he stumbled past me, looking as if he had just been mauled by a shark. I jumped up and followed him as we ran to a ring of sorts, where there was an imp waiting to give each of us a length of rope to tie another contestant up with. Striker and Blitz were wrestling for the upper hand to tie each other up while I stood over Moxxie menacingly, readying my rope and sneering down at him.
He didn't put up much of a fight and only kicked and screamed when I tightened the final knot, obviously attempting to free himself as the rest of us - Blitz included, who had been tied up by Striker, raced on to the next challenge. As we got to the tug-of-war platform over a muddy lake, we quickly sorted out into teams of four with Moxxie appearing just in time to be a part of Striker, Blitz and I's group. The team we were up against weren't much of a match due to everyone but Moxxie, and when we won the small imp lost his footing and tumbled into the water and was attacked by a shark. Neither Striker nor I took any notice of this, since we were celebrating our victory. Striker stood with his arms out, grinning at one side of the crowd while I pumped a fist and jumped into the air facing the other side, also grinning.
The last of the challenges was mud wrestling, and as soon as the remaining contestants entered the hogpen used for the challenge, bodies were being thrown left and right. Blitz and Striker were at it once more, with Blitz pinning Striker into the mud, so I decided to go for a different target. I saw Moxxie on the far edge of the hogpen and grinned - he was an easy target. I started to run towards him but stopped when half a dozen random imps appeared and dived onto him, trapping the small imp in a football huddle.
I spun back around and looked at Blitz and Striker, a smirk growing on my face as I started running towards them. "Cutting in, ladies!" I yelled as I dived towards Blitz, knocking him off Striker and wrestling with him. Blitz's empty spot was filled quickly by another imp that was chasing me. Blitz and I rolled around in the mud, fighting for dominance to pin the other one down. As we flipped each other over again and again, I started to realise this wasn't going to end.
30 Minutes Later...
Blitz, Striker and I stood near the steps to the stage from earlier, cleaned up after the mud wrestling challenge. The judges had deemed, after 15 minutes of the three of us fighting to knock the other two out, that we had tied for first place. Since we were all tired we didn't put up much more of a fight, and went to clean up for the post-games congregation.
"Well, I say, I say! For the first time forever, we have a tie for the winner of the pain games!" Wally Wackford, who was up on the stage, announced. "Not just any tie, but a three-way tie!"
Stolas stepped forward from his tent on the back of the stage and took the microphone from Wally, who stepped back to give the owl demon some space.
"The winners of this year's Harvest Moon Festival pain games are... Striker, Y/N, aaaaaand, my darling Blitzy~!" Stolas announced, making Blitz furiously blush for a second before becoming agitated, crossing his arms in front of him.
"Just say my name RIGHT, fuckin' dick!" Blitz exclaimed as he, Striker and I stepped onto the stage with the encouragement from the cheering audience.
I looked to the stage's left at the bleachers to see Loona, Moxxie and Millie sitting together, Millie seemingly trying to comfort her better half about losing the games.
Striker ducked back towards Wally for a second and said something to him before the showbiz imp nodded and disappeared momentarily, reappearing with a guitar in his hands. Striker took it and stepped up to the microphone, making the crowd go silent.
"I'd just like to take this here opportunity to sing a little song I wrote just now, about me winning."
"OH, WHAT THE FUCK?!" Moxxie yelled from the bleachers, clearly seething with rage.
As Striker began to play his stupid victory song, Blitz and I exited the stage and started to walk around to the bleachers.
"So you wanted me to meet your Y/N?" I asked as we walked, my eyes on the trio at the bleachers.
"Yeah, but it looks like he ain't here. Probably having a wank-off session somewhere." Blitz said, showing some form of mild disgust. "At least Loonie isn't missing as well or I'd kill somebody."
"You don't like him much?" I asked without hesitation. If you're under disguise, might as well see what info you can get - whatever kind it is.
"Well, it's not that I don't like him, it's just-" He sighed, stopping me near the entrance to the bleachers. "Just promise me you won't tell him this if you come across him, alright? He's kind of intimidating..."
I nodded, giving him a reassuring smile. "On my grandmother's ashes, Blitz."
"Look, I'm just worried something's going to happen to Loona. With all this stuff about that freaky human company running around and how Y/N and his grandpa are tied to it, I just... I just don't want anything to happen to her." Blitz confessed. My heart panged in my chest as he finished speaking, and it really sunk in that he was just trying to be a good father, even if it was only on paper.
All I could do was nod in agreement. "It does sound like risky business..." I finally said, a solemn look on my face. My eyes drifted from Blitz to Joe & Lin's house for a moment and I sighed. "Look, I gotta go man. It was fun though, I guess."
Blitz smiled and nodded. "Yeah, see you around. I'd offer you a spot in IMP, but two Y/N's would be, well... way too confusing."
With that, Blitz and I parted ways with him heading to the bleachers while I left for the house.