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"As you can see, this building housed the foreman's office and headquarters for the mining company. It was never lived in, but it has running water and a room in back where you can put a couple of beds."
Gil looked around the room, trying not to wrinkle his nose at the sheer amount of dust on display. Marlon was less polite about it.
"It looks like it needs a good cleaning before you could bring any beds in." He glanced at Gil with a smile that always made his heart flutter, as if he was a teenager in love, rather than a 44 year old man who'd been married for a decade. "And we'd just need one bed."
Their guide, Lewis, the new mayor of Pelican Town, smiled at them. "One bed," he amended. "I can make sure the building gets cleaned before you move if you decide to take the job."
The poor man sounded like he was trying not to be hopeful. When Marlon had heard that the small town was looking to start an Adventurer's Guild to help keep the monster population down, he'd been intrigued. Normally guilds ran in tandem with mining companies, but the whole Republic knew of the Pelican Town 'incident' and how the former company had filed for bankruptcy to get out of paying for any medical bills or burial expenses. It seemed like the mayor was trying to correct that.
The proposal was simple: 50% of profits for any gems would go back to the town to pay for the medical care or the one surviving injured miner who still lived there. The rest was to be split between the employees of the Guild in whatever way they deemed appropriate. Since the only employees would be Gil and Marlon, and they were married, it was an easy split… and an easy decision.
"No need," Gil said, looking around again. "We'll clean it ourselves when we start next week."
"You will?" Lewis looked so happy, he might cry. He shook both their hands enthusiastically. "Thank you! Thank you both!"
"Sure'd be nice if this elevator shaft actually contained an elevator," Marlon grumbled, shining his flashlight down the dark hole. "Looks like it goes down for ages, maybe even to the bottom."
Gil agreed, but Marlon had been moaning all morning, so he wasn't feeling inclined to let him know that. He just shrugged and grabbed his backpack full of tools. "Lewis said they just used it as a pulley system," he reminded him. "Now let's go. I want go see what monsters we're dealing with."
Marlon's visible eye shone with excitement as he made his way to the ladder that led underground. As usual, he paused at the top, standing on his tiptoes to kiss Gil in a good luck tradition that hadn't failed them yet. Then he descended, Gil following immediately afterwards.
The first few floors were clear, aside from the few cave bugs, rock crabs and slimes they'd expected. It was annoying having to search for ladders that were buried under rubble, even more so because they both knew the slimes loved nothing more than to move rocks around overnight as part of what Gil hypothesized was a courtship ritual, and that they'd have to search again the next day. But it was fairly easy going.
Things took a weird turn, though, when they reached floor five. Gil could see some slimes up ahead, but in between them and the monsters, a strange creature was standing in their way. Marlon, ever over-protective in spite of the fact that Gil could hold his own just fine in combat, angled his body between him and the unknown creature. To Gil, it almost looked like an apple, but with arms and legs and a face that seemed scared. Certainly, the creature skittered away into a crevice when Marlon took a step forward, dropping a piece of paper in its wake.
Gil picked up the page, shoving it into his pocket so they could look it later. He checked his watch. Almost midnight. "We should get going Mar," he said. "We'll figure this out tomorrow."
"They're called the junimo," Gil said, sliding a crumbling book across the table.
"Junimo, eh?" Marlon mused, looking at the drawing on the page. "Says here they move into abandoned spaces. Did you manage to decipher what was on that paper?"
Gil slid the other page across the table. "I think it's asking for copper," he said, pointing at the crudely drawn image.
"Copper? Well that's easy enough."
"200 copper," Gil clarified. "There's 200 separate drawings."
"200!" Marlon exclaimed indignantly. "Seems like a wild goose chase to me." His look softened when he looked at Gil, whose disappointment must have shown on his face. "Alright," he grumbled, placing a hand on Gil's and squeezing it. "You know this means we need to find 400 copper though, right? We have to give half to the town."
Gil just sighed. Yeah… he knew.
With great relief, Gil heaved the heavy bag off his shoulder, dropping the copper onto the floor where the junimo always seemed to stand. The creature looked at them with wide eyes and began jumping around excitedly, picking the copper up like it was weightless (the jerk) and carrying it to its favourite crevice. Then it did a little dance and disappeared.
"Weird," Marlon said. Gil couldn't disagree. Disappointed that nothing else had happened, Gil suggested an early night. Marlon winked at him (or maybe he just blinked), and agreed.
Ding!
"What the fuck?" Marlon said, his jaw dropping in confusion. "Where did this elevator come from?"
Cautiously, Gil entered the elevator, testing to see if it would hold his weight. The floors went down to 120, but only floor 5 was lit up as an option. Each button was shaped like a junimo.
"Still think it's a wild goose chase?" he asked his astonished husband. "Come on Mar, let's see what they want next!"