Climb the beanstalk to a land of dreams (Dimaria/Zeke job)

The villagers were very nice people. They gave her tea and some snacks, even though she did not really enjoy the snacks. The first thing she decided to do was get friendly with the villagers, because she liked to know people everywhere, in case she had to come back someday for another job, or maybe just to visit again. She liked traveling too. So after breakfast provided by the villagers, she set out to find the ‘tunnels’ that was mentioned in the job sheet. She had no idea how she was going to do that because she did not have any sort of detectors or things like that that some mages used.

As though the gods were listening to her mind, she found someone familiar peering down or something...she wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing. It was Zeke, someone she had tackled a job with, and oh gods...if he was on this job as well, that would be amazing! Dimaria strode over to where he was and tried to look at what he was looking at, and saw some kind of entrance. “Looking for something?” she asked him.

The expression on Zeke’s face showed very clearly that he did not remember her, which made her frown a bit in disappointment. How could someone forget her? Especially because of her almost albino-white skin. Not many people in Fiore had skin like hers. They were more yellow, and some even brown. Now back to reality. Zeke did not remember her, that part was certain. But the first thing that he said was that he was mapping out the tunnels underneath the Beanstalk Village. Dimaria nodded with a small smile. “Very nice,” she said, already thinking about how she could work with him again on this job as well. The only reason he could be mapping out the tunnels to go into them, had to be because he was on this job. But what he said next made her frown slightly. “Really? Oh well, I guess you can call me ‘that Blue Pegasus girl’, and I will call you Tonfa Man, hm?” she joked. Then with a short laugh she would add, “Let me remove that curse for you. I am Dimaria Stark. Remember my last name, even if you can’t remember my first,” with a calm voice.

Now he would ask her what she was here for, of course. “I’m here for the same reason you’re here!” she told him, eyebrows raised. Afterwards, without permission from him, Dimaria would snatch one of his tonfas, twirling it in her own hands and saying, “Can you teach me how to use these? Are these your echolocators or whatever they’re called? I need something like this if I don’t bump into you on my next job that requires me to venture underground.” One more twirl put it in her hands like a sword as she held it to his throat, then tossed it in the air so she was holding the other end, as if to return it back to him. The other hand rested on the sword that was strapped to her waist. “I wonder why there is a tunnel system beneath a village. That’s really strange to me, what about you?”

Dimaria nodded with a smirk when he said that he would try to remember her as ‘Stark’. Everyone back in Winterfell, aside from her family, addressed her as ‘Lady Stark’ so it was probably the only name they remembered. They probably did not even know what her first name was, even though it was one of the unique names Northerners would not really expect to hear in front of the name Stark. Then Zeke continued to explain about his tonfas and how echolocation was a part of his magic since he manipulated resonance and that blah blah. “Oh god, can you speak English please?” she asked with a laugh. For some reason she was quite cheerful on this job. Probably because she was meeting someone she had met before, and that was always fun.

Laughing again at Zeke’s expression when she held the tonfa at his throat, Dimaria decided to stop fooling around. The look on his face was very funny, though. “You have the time to build someone else a weapon? I don’t know what I’d want. I know nothing that has to do with ‘tech’,” she told him quite bluntly. She came from the North, a not so techy place where she lived in a castle and everything was very old-fashioned. The first time she came to Fiore, she was very amused by everything, especially that one time she sneaked in to the black market and found lots of interesting lacrima devices. They had moved onto the subject of the tunnels and Zeke seemed to have found of what kind of tunnels they were using his abilities again. Apparently they were not manmade. Tunnels formed inside of the giant beanstalk roots? “So, do you think we should jump right in?” she asked, not really concerned with that the villagers used the tunnels for.

Dimaria didn’t expect Zeke to actually give her a more understandable explanation of what he does with his tonfas. “Now we speak the same language,” she said when he asked if that was better. What she didn’t expect even more was that Zeke was completely serious about making her a weapon. She wondered why he would waste precious time to create something from scratch for someone he barely knew. True, they had been going on jobs together but that was only two jobs and they were not even from the same guild. He then told her how making weapons was like writing stories. If you had the muse for it, it would be done faster. She liked his comparison so with a smile she nodded, “Nice.”

Then they found an entrance with Zeke’s echolocation, into the tunnel, which they entered. Apparently Zeke discovered the fact that these tunnels were a maze and that it would be a good idea for Dimaria to stick to him because otherwise she would get lost. Which was the whole truth. She did not know how to navigate through tunnels like Zeke. She didn’t know how to echolocate or anything. The whole time she had had her hand on her sword, always ready to fight back if someone or something decided to ambush them. Her head raised in interest when Zeke said that her sword could be used as a tracking device. She immediately unsheathed and stuck the blade in the ground and listened, not hearing much. “I guess there isn’t anyone around at the moment,” she said, then yanked her sword out of the ground, sheathing it.

She followed Zeke around because she honestly couldn’t track anything down or find out where they were supposed to go. She needed to get rid of the habit of depending on him. He was not going to be with her on every job. “I’m good with the bow and arrow, and the crossbow even though I rarely use it. That’s about it for ranged weapons,” she told him since he asked. She kicked a little rock as they walked.

An eerie melody began to play in the background, which made Dimaria stop in her tracks and turn to Zeke. “Do you hear--” she would say, but fell unconscious to her knees before she could finish the sentence. Eyelids drooped over her eyes and she drifted off into a deep sleep that was completely unexpected. There was nothing, not a dream, just blackout. She couldn’t even try to get out of it, which wasn’t disappointing her or anything because she didn’t even know what state she was in right now. Trying to take control of her current state of mind was beyond her capabilities, and so was trying to wake up. A while later, she actually woke up, in a strangely gloomy forest. How did she get from the tunnels to a forest? She was being tricked somehow, and this was probably her enemies’ magic. “Zeke are you there?” she called out, slowly rising to her feet and moving around. Strange silhouettes passed by her through the underbrush. “Zeke?” she called again, eyes on the strange shapes. Were those animals? They sure had life in them since they were moving around her and it felt threatening. “Hello?” she kept calling as she walked, legs trembling as they felt like jelly right now.

There was no answer to her calls, and instead she came to a familiar shape. Her eyes drew the outline of the silhouette and realised what it was - a dragon. Not a big, dangerous one, but quite a small one. She was still a bit afraid since Zeke wasn’t here and she was supposed to face this alone. “Well, this sucks,” she muttered, unsheathing White Chaos and held it in front of her, watching the dragon carefully with unblinking eyes. She couldn’t be distracted at this point, especially if there was a dragon in front of her that looked like it was about to eat her up, despite its slightly smaller size. ‘Just get on with it,’ she thought. The dragon, as if reading her thoughts, blew fire in what would have been her face if she didn’t act fast and rolled to the side. Immediately standing up, she held the sword up again. This time, she stole a glimpse of the dragon’s belly. That was where she had originally planned to strike and all she was doing now was trying to find the perfect chance for her to pull this. Maybe another breath and she would roll under it? This was the perfect plan, at least for now, even though she was in panic mode. Once she was sure she could pull this off without a flaw, she raised her eyes to peer into the dragon’s own blank ones. It was like a puppet, but she had no time to wonder who was puppeteering it. The next blow was released and Dimaria rolled right under, rose to her feet smoothly and connected the blade to its belly, blood gushing out uncontrollably as Dimaria retrieved her sword and cleaned it.

This was not the end however. If she was meant to take their main target alone, then she would do just that. If Zeke had bailed instead of getting trapped by the magic of their enemy or something, she couldn’t care less since the only way to finish this was to find Kreddy Frueger himself and that was her main objective now. Once her blade was clean and glistening again, she set out in search for the Frueger man. Where could he be hiding in this strange, dreamy world? Dimaria went everywhere. She was tired, she was drained and Kreddy Frueger was still nowhere to be found. Right at the moment she was about to give up, an echoey sneer sounded around her, causing her to lift her head and search for the source of it. She tightened her grip on White Chaos as she spun around on her heels; the sound was all around her.

“One, two, Kreddy's coming for you.”

“Who’s there?” Dimaria asked, holding her sword in front of her as she spun around at the change in position of the source of this creepy voice.

“Three, Four, better lock your door.”

“Zeke, are you here?” she called one last time in the hopes that she might get an answer.

“Five, Six, grab your crucifix.” The voice got closer and closer every syllable it said, and this was sort of freaking Dimaria out. “Seven, Eight, Gonna stay up late.”

“It’s not funny anymore,” the Stark girl managed to retort with. She turned almost immediately at the sound of breathing right behind her before she came face to face with the killer with razor sharp knives for fingers.

“Nine, Ten never sleep again.”

Once the words left his mouth, Kreddy began to thrash at Dimaria with his hands. It’s not like she wasn’t armed, so she blocked his attacks with her sword as well, hoping it wouldn’t break under the impact. Her enemy was very careful not to have her blade slice his fingers off. Smart. But not smart enough. Dimaria had already brought together a plan to kill this psychotic man and finish this job for both herself and Zeke. If only she was right about one thing. In between dodging and parrying his attacks, Dimaria stole a second to try and pinch herself. There was no pain. This was indeed a dream and she needed to get out of it before she actually killed him. It was still unknown to her, how she was supposed to get out of the dream. Maybe she should try and kill him here first and see where that took her? Good plan. So that was what she did. With two widely spaced and quick steps, Dimaria stabbed the spine of her target from behind and retracted her sword, watching as the world swiveled into a sort of vacuum and a new scenery was brought to display, this time they were back in the tunnels and Kreddy looked quite shock. Dimaria took no time to waste and knocked him out with the hilt of her sword. She then proceeded to sheath her sword and look around for Zeke, who was apparently in a deep sleep as well. She went over and shook him, trying to wake him up. “Hey, wake up, we have to deliver this to the council,” she said, cocking her head in the direction of the defeated criminal.