Level 2: Need Another Hero, Girl and/or Sprite

SPLITTING THE PARTY? OH, I LIKE THIS

Kurumi and Casanova both head to Pub. In side, you see Bart Ender slinging drinks down the bar. Foamy mugs slide easy without spilling. Johnny Piano plays a tune.And at one of the tables there are four men playing cards. They are Wild Bill Cardshark, Sleeve Ace, Lenny Loserhand and Bob Questgiver. So far Lenny Loserhand is winning, but Chatty Cathy bets Bill will turn it around.

There are other partrons in this busy place, but Chatty Cathy’s overhead expositional blathering doesn’t mention any of them, so they’re probably not important to the Missy Girl quest our heroines are unofficially already on.

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Pira and Princess Diamond walk about town. Thundra and Sparkle follow, but you all overhear a couple arguing next to a coach parked next to a sewer grating.

The woman is giving the man an I-told-you-so. Apparently, he dropped the keys to his coach through the grate and now they can’t open the door.

Sparkle can easily fit down the grating. Thundra stands by, ready to rip the door off the carriage, if the key is too lost or gross or heavy for a fairy to carry.

Pira and Princess Diamond would probably be in a socially awkward situation (or grave danger—the horses could gallop off with the locked carriage, make a J-turn, and run the princess over!), but…

There’s a clattering. A shattering! It’s all coming from the farmhouse across the street. On the front porch, there’s a woman in a sun hat. She looks mildly peeved.

The Questgivers’ Farmhouse
The woman introduces herself as "Penelope Questgiver.

"That Hero Sword Guy’s in the barn again." She points to a rather large and ominous corn maze that is surely—

—wrought with unspeakable perils!

—the fastest way to that sword boy who obviously deserves a punch!

"I’m just waiting here so I can give him my very strong opinion when he finally gets bored and leaves."

*CRASH!*
*TINKLE!*
*SMASH!*
Penelope sighs at the distant sounds of destruction. "Does that boy have any idea how many hours it takes to make just one pot?"

PUB
Casanova has this funny feeling the villagers can understand her.
SO CAN I

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YE CORN MAZE
Princess Diamond sees some tumbleweed tumbling by. Upon closer inspection, they are THORNED tumbleweed. One… two… three… one… two… three… there are three intersections where tumbleweeds pass at regular intervals. It should be very easy to just walk forward and time one’s steps—

—but behind the princess there’s a really HUGE tumbleweed!
and
it
keeps
tumbling
closer!

PUB
Kurumi notices that everyone at the table is playing some kind of game with cards that have different symbols on them.

Lenny Loserhand looks excited when he draws a card with a coin on it, but then his tell (steam puffs coming out of his ears) makes it apparent he was dissatisfied. At the end of the hand, you see that he had drawn The Ten of Coins with three Twenties of Coins. That doesn’t seem bad until Wild Bill Cardshark plays five Stars. "All-Star!" he declares. "Double Bonus!!"

"Not again," bemoans Sleeve Ace, whose hand included four Ones of Up.

Bob Questgiver has five different symbols on his cards. He doesn’t seem too upset as he slides not one, but two peanuts across the table. "Fair and square, Bill," he says good-naturedly.

Next hand, Bill’s luck continues to defy the law of averages. Lenny’s too, in the sense that his hands are always good but never the best. Sleeve Ace always has at least a pair of Ones of Up, but there aren’t cards up his sleeve. He draws them honestly. They all do.

Bob’s hands always show all five symbols. The coin card is sometimes the Ten of Coins, sometimes the Twenty.

They don’t seem to mind having an audience to their game. Bill seems to especially like having one more person witness his winning streak.

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Bart replies to Casanova, "Happy to oblige, Miss."

Bart goes on, "As for finding someone, I’m afraid I’m not the best at it. The only missing person here’s Missy Girl, and I hear a lot… but I don’t quite believe it all."

He doesn’t seem like he’s going to be much help. When he mentions places a fairy could be ("down a well, a rabbit hole, one o’ them really narrow green pipes…"), he’s really just listing places a fairy could fit.

He stops doing that when another customer comes up to the bar, wearing a guard’s uniform. With a look of desperation he orders "The usual." Instead of a foamy mug, Bart gets a bottle. The liquid he pours into the guardsman’s glass is bright green.

Princess Diamond dodges the giant tumbleweed by diving into a haystack! (She also finds the needle in the haystack mid-jump, and twists to avoid being poked by its poisonous tip!)

Pira gives the tumbleweed a solid kick! It veers off course, crashing through the corn maze walls!

When the dust is clear, our heroines have a direct path to the barn.

But… there is a man made of straw wielding a pitchfork—obviously not just a scarecrow!

THE YELLOW KNIGHT
The scarecrow pivots on its pole, a crazed jagged grin painted on its burlap face. Buttons for eyes stare into our heroines’ souls.

It takes its pitchfork and thrusts it downward, poking the ground. "Hoo, haw, ha, haaaa!" Crows rise from the dirt, black flames trailing from their wings. "Hoo, hah, tee heeeee!" Its pitchfork scares more flaming crows into the air!