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Eeny woke up in his room with Meeny still sitting on the bed in front of him, laughing at his brother.
“Wakey wakey Blondie. It’s time to get on your boat.”
“Wh-what happened?” Eeny groaned as he sat up, squinting and rubbing his head.
“Well, we had an argument, Rose knocked you out, and then NavyJ came by and we had a huge party. Such a shame you missed it.” Eeny laughed and punched his brother’s arm.
“Yeah, sure. I bet you and Rose made out too.” Meeny’s face flushed as Eeny laughed at the thought, and the two brothers walked out of the mansion and onto the docks. As the brothers arrived, Eeny was surprised to find Rose, Butler, Miles, and a still-shaven Leopold waving at him. Across from them, in the water, was a medium sized boat covered with Lavasteam décor and sacks of supplies.
“So, how’s it look?” Meeny asked as his brother ran up the gang plank and scoured the decks, admiring the food in bags and the weaponry on the walls. He ran into the Captain’s Quarters and gawked at the giant map hanging on the walls.
“How did you guys make this so fast!?” Eeny shouted as he ran to the edge of the ship.
“Well, we’ve been working on this ever since Galileo left,” Leopold said as Eeny continued to run around the ship. “Rose commissioned it for you by the way, so I’d be thanking her if I were you.” As Leopold continued to explain the history of the new ship, Eeny ran back down the gang plank and picked up Rose, hugging her and spinning her in a circle.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!”
“I’ve never seen you this excited in my entire life! You must’ve really wanted this ship, huh?” Eeny dropped Rose and ran over to his brother, completely ignoring the fact that Meeny and Rose were embracing only moments prior.
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted a ship of my own. I’ve wanted this since before Miney was king, dude. This is huge for me!”
“Well, you better get to it then!” Eeny gasped and ran back onto the ship.
“You’re right! I need to take this on a maiden voyage! Where should I go?”
“You mentioned wanting to go to Galileo’s hometown, so I went ahead and marked that on your map if you wanna start with that.” Eeny looked at the map and found a large X over a city, along with a crudely drawn image of Galileo next to it.
“That’s a great idea!” Eeny came back down the gang plank and squatted next to Miles. “And that was a great drawing! Thanks Miles!”
“You’re welcome, Mr. Eeny! Have fun on your trip!” Eeny said his goodbyes to the rest of his friends and prepared his ship to sail. As he left the docks, Meeny leaned over to Rose and whispered to her.
“Galileo did say he lived in Rapocity, right?”
1 week later
Eeny docked his ship at the port of Rapocity, leaving the now empty bundles of food and the trash filling the Captain’s Quarters behind. As he prepared to disembark, he looked around and noticed that the landscape had lost its color. Looking at the buildings, he began to notice Raposa-like figures with no color either. Fearing for his safety, he returned to his quarters and grabbed his stone spear and a bag of trash, tossing them both onto the colorless ground below. He watched as they rested on the ground, and after they retained their color, he went down to collect them, quickly tossing his trash into a white trash can.
Wandering around the desolate city proved to be very exciting for Eeny’s adventurous side. As he walked through the town, he not only saw the Raposa he identified earlier, but he also found whitewashed Baki, petrified farms with petrified plants, and a large, colorless theatre. However, Eeny was shocked to find that the handles of the theatre were colored in, albeit only slightly. Raising his spear, he crept through the doors and followed a path of dull footprints along the floor. As he made his way down the aisle and onto the stage, the saturation of the prints began to increase. Eeny made his way backstage, his body shaking, when suddenly, color splashed out of a hallway next to him. He quivered as he slowly turned the corner, seeing only a colored hallway, though the hallway was the darkest place he had encountered yet. Buckets of pure color rested on rows of shelves lining the walls, and as the hall got darker, a large, bulging shadow became visible at the end of the hallway.
“Whatever you are, I’m not scared of you,” Eeny blatantly lied to the shadow as he slowly approached. As he came closer, a blade shot past his head, and a voice echoed out from the figure.
“If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended.” Eeny continued to approach as the deep voice monologued. “That you have but slumber'd here while these visions did appear.”
“Stop it! Get out of my head you monster!”
“How now, Raposa? Whither wander you? I’ll put a girdle round about the realm in forty minutes!”
“Stop saying all this nonsense and show yourself!”
“Here, villain! Drawn and ready! Come, recreant! Come, thou child!” Eeny and the shadow figure began to scream at each other, and Eeny charged the beast. Right before Eeny shoved his spear into the shadow’s chest, the beast ducked and flipped on a lightswitch. “Alright, alright! I’m sorry! Please don’t hurt me!” Eeny’s spear stuck into the wall, and he turned around to meet a brown furred Raposa wearing a white mask, a dark grey cape, a green and yellow sock hat, with a leotard made out of leaves, and a white shirt with a comic depiction of skeleton and organs.
“All of that fuss just for you to be some theatre nerd?” Eeny said, collapsing onto the ground out of breath. “I gotta admit though, you scared the shit out of me.” The Raposa collapsed on the adjacent wall, ripping off his mask and dropping a second plush sword that he had in his hand.
“Right back at ya. I assume your weapon is real?”
“Stole it right out of a statue’s hands. Speaking of, how are you still alive when everyone else is basically a statue?” Eeny asked in between breaths.
“Well, do you want the monologue I’ve been practicing, or do you just want the summary?”
“As much as I would love a full-blown monologue, trust me I would, go ahead and just give me the summary.” The brown furred Raposa stood up, struck a pose, and adopted a more mysterious persona.
“It was a normal night on Banyaberry Road, right outside this very theatre. I was going through the stock room, checking on the color buckets and making some of the costumes for our upcoming production, A Hero’s Journey. As I was adding the finishing touches on Farmer Brown’s costume, I noticed the walls turning a stark white. Heroically grasping a bucket of color, I concocted a contraption that would save my life I too fell into the clutches of colorlessness. I noticed the floor begin to fade away, so I held a bucket of color above my head. Suddenly, I lost feeling in my legs, and I knew the time of reckoning was upon me. As the color faded from my body, and my face became petrified, my hands flipped the bucket, causing all the color to fill in my form. Ever since then, I have fought against this desolate landscape, using nothing but my supply of color and tactful disguises.” Eeny stared at the Raposa and began to laugh.
“There’s absolutely no way you were that calculated with your plan. Especially not after I was able to scare you so easily.”
“To be fair, you charged at me with a real spear.”
“And you threw a sword at my head!”
“Yeah, a plush sword!” the Raposa argued, pointing at the second sword. Eeny looked at the weapon, but his attention drifted to the white mask that was resting beside it. He studied it, feeling a sense of familiarity, before looking back up to the Raposa.
“What did you say your name was?” Eeny asked as he slowly reached out to his spear.
“Depends on the day. Some days I’m the masked opera singer, Salem.” Eeny grasped his spear and lifted it up. “Other days I’m the bumbling comic relief, Sock.” He stood up and pointed his spear towards the Raposa. “And different days, I’m the most wicked Raposa to ever live,” Eeny charged towards the Raposa as he turned around. “Wilfre.” Eeny lodged his spear into the Raposa’s side, causing them to yelp in pain and collapse on the floor. “Dude! What was that for?”
“I knew that mask looked familiar, Wilfre! I’ll kill you right here and now, and I’ll be the one to end your reign of terror!”
“Terror? No! I played Salem, Sock, and Wilfre in performances before! Technically I was just an understudy for Salem but still! My name’s Puck, asshole.” Eeny knelt down beside him and helped tend to his wound.
“Why did you feel the need to scare me like that, especially when Wilfre is the one behind all this?”
“He is?” Puck looked down and thought for a second before perking back up. “Oh Creator, I just had a perfect idea for my rendition of him! Wait, wait, wait, isn’t he dead?” Eeny paused and looked at Puck.
“How do you know so much about Wilfre?”
“Like I told you, I played him in a performance before, or at least, I was going to. I got cast as him for A Hero’s Journey.”
“Well, congrats, maybe you can lead me to his hideout then.”
“Sure, which one? The one a few hours from here on foot, or the one you can actually reach on your big boat?”
“Preferably the one with a hospital, so we can get this puncture treated by a professional.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. I’m sure that with a bit of healing magic, I’ll be perfectly fine by tomorrow,” Puck said, resting his hand over his wound.
“Healing magic? First, I’m told the Creator exists, and now there’s healing magic?”
“Yeah, in Rapoville, the next town over, there’s this amazing doctor, Dr. Cure. She’s said to be able to heal anything other than death itself. But regardless, since Wilfre is behind this, our first priority should be finding and stopping him.”
“Do you have a mannequin we can paint over? Any control over Shadow or Color?”
“No, but you have that spear, and with the exception of Wilfre himself, I probably know the most about the guy.”
“Alright then, let’s get you back to my ship and then the two of us can head towards Wilfre’s hideout.” Eeny stood up and reached his hand out to Puck, who was still laying on the ground. With his free hand, Puck reached up to him and stood.
“Follow me, then, to plainer ground.” The two of them walked back to Eeny’s ship, and Puck laid down in the Captain’s Quarters. “You know, for a solo act, you have a really big ship.”
“Thanks, I get that a lot, but most people don’t say ship.” Puck laughed and scanned the map around the room.
“Alright, take a look outside. Do you see any purely black or purple island?” Eeny stepped to the window and scanned the horizon. “If you do, head towards it. Earlier in this whole colorless event, I saw something truly beautiful. Streams of color coming from 4 corners of the world. A stream of blue and green coming from the northeast, a stream of red and orange coming from the north, a stream of green and grey coming from the west, and a stream of pure color coming from Rapoville, and I assume our color was used in that stream as well. It all flowed into that dark island, and I guess it’s safe to say that…Wasteland…is where Wilfre is.” Puck and Eeny sat in silence as Eeny made the final preparations to set sail.
“Well, I hope you know what we’re getting ourselves into, cause this is shaping up to be the fight for our lives.”