You Can't Spell Funnel Without Fun

Chapter 11: Geraldine's Apartment

You have left the tutorial level. Congratulations!

I heard a sad sack party favour trumpet sound.

"Gee. Thanks," I said while wiping spider gunk off my body. "I need a shower."

"Don't waste it!" Suze scooped up the goo I left on the ground and it disappeared in her inventory.

"That's just too gross. I can't."

"You will thank me later." She said with all seriousness, then she looked speculatively at the cardboard boxes and just began looting them again.

"Hey. Can I have my mirror back please?"

In a move smoother than I could ever do, the mirror appeared in Suze's hand and she tossed it to me. I'm the least sporty person I know in the world and I knew I wouldn't catch it, but then at the last minute, the mirror flipped over and I was able to catch it with both hands. "Could you not throw the clearly magical item?"

"It showed as basic and wouldn't change shape for me. Might be only magical to you."

I had nowhere to hold it so I let it disappear into my inventory. How much space did we have in there? Suze's seemed to be infinite as she kept grabbing everything in here.

Even covered in spider gore, Suze was careful about how she looted the room. Box after box disappeared as they entered her inventory. She gingerly picked up each one, not even bothering to open them to see what was inside.

"Don't you want to know what's in them?" I asked.

"I will do that later, when we are in some place safe."

"Right. Tsk." The minimap was no longer glowing red and I could not see any hostile dots in range. We were probably safe for a little while. Maybe we would be safe in this area in general. I certainly needed to take a breath, but not near my own self because ruff I smelled something awful.

If Geraldine had a shower, hers might be the real thing like our toilet was the real thing and our shower was not. Looting a working shower would be very fantastic. Our party would be the best one ever with a real toilet and a shower.

Party. I thought to myself about the fact that we were not partied and had no guild chat open. "Do you have a chat window?"

"Nāo. Kaylee. You are talking so much. Could you loot as well?"

"Let's try partying up."

Suze sighed as she stopped looting and stood for a moment. "Okay. So do it."

"I party with Suze!" I slapped her on the shoulder.

Nothing happened.

She lifted one eyebrow at me.

"Maybe it needs to be both of us?"

"I party with Kaylee." She said with only a bit of sarcasm in her voice.

Again, nothing. "I might need a little oomph to it." I lifted my hands in what I thought could look like a pretty cool mage casting pose. With a tsk I reupped the light spell and swirled the globes around us in a whirlwind. Well, a really slow moving and bobbing whirlwind.

"I. Party. With. Suze." Each word was its own sentence just like Captain Kirk of that Star Trek show. I emphasized each one with a flourish of my head this way and that.

We waited a moment, but nothing happened.

"Here. Let me try." Suze, standing in silence, gave me a very serious, very pointed look and then a window popped out.

Would you like to join a party with Suze Tier 0 - High Rise Cleaner?

"Yes. I would."

And just like that, a chat window opened in the lower left of my vision. It held a few tabs. One was COMBAT that when I focused on it I could see the remainder of a combat log showing a long list of "Insert Adjective Baby Giant Spider has been killed by Suze Tier 0 - High Rise Cleaner" and each line had a corresponding attack. There were tabs to the little window. Another said PARTY and it blinked urgently so I thought hard and it came to the front.

Suze Tier 0 - High Rise Cleaner: Safadāo! ;P

"Oh funny. Well good now we're partied up. I feel a bit better." She even showed up in my minimap as a different coloured dot. Kinda Prussian blue.

"Kaylee you know I love you girl. That exploit you found worked great."

"Yeah. I'll have to figure out more of them. Is it really cheating if it's programmed into the game? No, don't answer that." I waved my arm as if waving a response away. "You loot. We might need to get out of this room soon."

As for the morality of cheating in the dungeon, I'd have to ask Kitch. He usually had the best answers to my hypothetical questions or moral dilemmas. Thinking of Kitch brought on another question in my mind.

"Do you think that the rest of the guild is in here with us?"

"Nāo, I really hope for their sake that they aren't. But if they are, I hope that it's Late Night Crew."

"Ditto."

Having her say that outloud really was the first moment I thought about who the Late Night Crew were and who would be in the dungeon. I mentally combined the main CHAT window and the PARTY window, they merged after a moment to be CHAT PARTY which would probably annoy the pants off me, but I could ignore it.

I thought firmly about sending a whisper or direct message to KitchenSimon. The chat remained just Suze calling me naughty in Portuguese. It might require me using his first name. So I tried focusing on Simon or messaging Simon, but nothing happened.

I then tried Matt too. Again, no response. Maybe they weren't here. I could hope for their sake, but I was kinda leaning toward the idea that Realms of Ifaneli had something to do with this. It was just too convenient.

Suze and I had been in that raid dungeon The Funnel of Madness doing that Lich fight when we dropped out of whatever game we were playing into this bizarro alternate reality. It could follow that the guild was in here somewhere too. Maybe in strange facsimiles of their current living situation.

That could be kinda cool because FairDinkies and Humplains were currently living in a tricked out hippy van with crazy laptop set ups. I wondered if maybe they were still in that van, but in the dungeon.

For this was fairly obviously a dungeon. Part of it was pre-designed and required a bit of planning or maybe scouting out our living situations. The apartment building around me was proof of that. Though it did not seem to work like a well-programmed dungeon. I had to complain about there being a tutorial level before there actually was one. Maybe it was generating as we went based on whatever we said. The ultimate in sandbox creation.

It could be just me and Suze. That would make sense based on what I'd figured out or guessed at that point. The thing is, we were in Geraldine's apartment. The quacky little old lady who lived updoors with like three cats and pretended that she only had two for the condo board.

I thought about the room around us and all these things that Suze was looting. "Geraldine's stuff came with us. Do you think maybe she did too?"

"Maybe we should go check."

"Yes. Yes we should." I scurried to the door, tsking my lights again. If we were in this dungeon fighting for our lives, then if Geraldine was, she could be dead by now and it'd be all our fault.