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

Pira is the first to get hit by the Pixel Dust.

From Pira’s perspective, it may momentarily seem that the sparkles are making Cerberamic bigger. All three heads are glittery, but the reality is that Pottímen(/dogs) are immune to fairy magic (except for Dragon Type which are easily slain by Fairy Type).

It takes a couple seconds for Pira to feel what everyone else can plainly see. She is getting smaller. Her clothes are getting smaller. There is a giddy feeling as her feet lift off the ground. And how does she feel when she sees Bitey ‘swimming’ in the air alongside her, and twice her size—or is it thrice?Do our other heroines catch the glitter? The shadow is now spreading over the rubble. Cerberamic nervously lifts their porcelain paws and their urn-shaped snouts bark downward. If our heroines don’t move forward, the shadow will reach them before the Pixel Dust can.

The feeling of being light as air fills our heroines’ currently-little hearts with joy! Happy thoughts propel them over Cerberamic, whose three heads wear an expression of confusion as they sniff around the rubble and occasionally bark into it.

One head finally perks upward at the Princess’ insistence that they can be a good dog.

"RUFF ROO ROOF ROFF RUFF!" is Cerberamic’s reply to that.

The shadow wisps spread up the sloped wall, forming hands that try to snatch our heroine’s from their flight! They easily outmaneuver the hands, but one might notice the hand that tries to take Thundra has a fur-clad forearm. The one that attempts to swat the princess is daintily tea-gloved, and the one that moves to strike Pira has claws.

After a few evasive maneuvers, our heroines’ recognize the shadowy hands as silhouettes of their own hands!

They also get a glimpse of what’s beyond the shadow-man at the end of the corridor—a catwalk overlooking an area a hundred feet below, or maybe hundreds—it seems like a mile when shrunken a tenth of your height or smaller!

Whatever is down there is massive and pink and surrounded by strange black pillars with squares of red-gold flashing all about them. Tendrils of shadow hold the pink metal thing in place. Only Casanova knows what it is—it’s Pinky!

The shadow man raises his sword. "I won that pink thing fair and square!" he gripes. "Shoo, girls!" His shoo-ing with the sword creates a wind that blows our heroines’ into the very place the shadow man meant to shoo them away from! "Hey! Stay outta there!"

His voice is oddly boyish. As is a voice coming from way down below, about where the pink thing is.

"HLLP GRT ME URTA HRRR!"

As the princess scratches the Pottídog’s ear, an adjacent doghead barks at her very loudly—and into the ear that was getting scratched. That doghead barks back, and the third tries to bite their tail to shut the others up.

Cerberamic runs rapidly in circles, with two heads barking at each other and the other snapping at its own tail, and pretty sure he almost got it that time, making another futile attempt—


Casanova gets a better look at what’s happening below as she flies down. Her ship is indeed captured by the shadow-man, or some other shadow maybe since shadow-man looks rather boyish.

In fact, with Pira mocking his outfit, Casanova notices a pair of earthtone boots on legs wiggling at the top of an urn. His muffled voice calls, "If I get outta here, I’m gonna ruh ruh ruh…" His (probably idle) threat is too muffled to make out, but it’s not directed at Casanova. "…’cause nobody steals the form of Hero Sword Guy!"

He’s really trying to sound confident, but there’s an obvious hint of humiliation in his voice.

As Pira speaks to Antihero Sword Guy, she can feel the wind whirling about his brandished blade. It makes it impossible for a fairy to get too close, which seems to annoy the shadowy figure. Rather than reply to her, he grumbles unintelligibly and unsheathes another sword. This one has a giant rock ‘impaled’ on the tip. He puts the way-too-heavy thing down and draws another two swords at once. One has black flames rising from its blade. The other has a black fluid dripping from it.The shadow-man’s face is featureless except for two glowing purple eyes, which glare at Pira, and flicker at any other heroines that have not flown down with Thundra and Casanova. He raises his twin swords…

---

Despite her tiny size, Thundra pulls Hero Sword Guy’s leg—and the jar tips and out pops the guy! And with him—

—a SPLASH💦 of water!

Luckily, the trapped hero(?) is wearing his Plus Two Mask of the Mermaid’s Kiss. It looks like a scallop shell with eye holes and a red lipstick print on the outside where the hero(?)’s real lips are, behind the mask. Thundra has some kind of innate knowledge about fantasy items, so she immediately knows that this mask allows the wearer to breathe underwater. Casanova can probably figure that out because the guy didn’t drown, but her mind is solving a bigger puzzle…

CASANOVA, YOU NEED TO DEFEAT THE SHADOW BEFORE IT OVERTAKES YOUR SHIP

Casanova somehow gets this feeling that neither sword boy is the real villain here. The real villain is either the tendrils holding her ship, or the weird black boxes emitting the tendrils.Thundra can’t help but notice that Casanova is much smaller than her. She’s like half her size—but weren’t they both the same size when shrunken?