Maddie and Keria emerge from the water elm tree into a park lined with them. A stream cuts through a dip in the grass, and park benches dot a sidewalk through the park until it bends off to the side and out of sight. It's noon, and the tree canopy provides little shade. There's a distinct scent of fish first and ocean second.
The edge of the park is close by to a one-way road, and several outlets and local businesses line the other side. A clam chowder establishment is packed with a line stretching to outside its entrance, and—conveniently—a chocolate storefront is just two stores over. A large hanging sign reads "Gobeli and Son's," and a special offer for five assorted bars is plastered on the board sidewalk sign.
Keria looks out over the landscape as she turns to Maddie, smiling a little bit.
"Okay, you're at the helm for this. I'll follow your lead!"
Her stature and appearance start to seem a bit more strange juxtaposed on this relatively normal-looking town. She stands nearly a foot over most of the other people here and she's already getting a few stares from the handful of park-goers nearby.
Maddie spots the chocolate store, and points toward it excitedly.
"Can we go there? Maybe they have hot chocolate or something. Or normal chocolate. That's good too."
Maddie starts walking towards it, not noticing the stares Keria is getting. The passersby would probably notice her too-real cat ears and tail if they hadn't been looking at Keria.
Nobody interrupts the odd couple, however, beyond a spunky teenager demanding a selfie with Keria. And they cross the road at an opportune time, jaywalking as everybody else seems to be.
Gobeli and Son's prides itself as "Seamont's Oldest Chocolatier" on a poster with finer text on the window. And, when Maddie leads Keria inside, the eccentric and intricate interior shows that age. The beige and brown color scheme has become something yellow and brown instead, and a couple of the display cases have small cracks. There's a central island of these cases, surrounding a cashier's desk stylized to resemble a podium, and the walls are lined with shelves of other unique chocolate varieties. Interestingly, a couple of expensive cakes are in the main display alongside the company's own chocolate.
"Welcome and—wow, look at that, you're the tallest person I've ever seen. That's honestly hard to believe!"
The man standing at the desk smiles broadly. He slicks his brown hair back, revealing his tasteful sideburns, and he walks back around so that he can shake Keria and Maddie's hands personally. He's wearing a vintage leather jacket over pale flannel.
"Anyway, I'm Ruedi Gobeli. I'm the owner of this place. I understand you're probably new here. Well, don't worry, I can show you around. Do you prefer light, milk, or dark varieties of chocolate?—And what's your names? I'm dying to know. Nice ears. Quite nice."
A quiet, late teen mops someone's spill of soda at the opposite end of the store. He's wearing a pink tie that matches his pink hair.
Keria is taken aback at Ruedi's almost 'used car salesman' levels of overbearing kindness, and chuckles quietly as she introduces herself.
"I'm... Keria. And yes, very new here, in a way. As for the chocolate, don't worry, I've already got some of my favorite here."
Keria reaches into her bag and takes out a bar of chocolate wrapped in brightly colored plastic, but... the language on the front is entirely unintelligible, completely unlike any language Ruedi or Maddie have ever seen. She casually pulls off two chunks, eating one and offering the other to Ruedi.
"Wanna try it? 99.9 percent certain you've not had this brand before."
Maddie looks up at Keria, a slightly annoyed expression on her face.
"Heyy, why didn't you offer me some earlier? I want some, why didn't you tell me you had this back on the other side of the tree! Honestly, you probably could've given me them back in my glass world, that would've been even better."
She pouts, exaggerating how annoyed she is about the chocolate.
Keria chuckles at Maddie's annoyance, and glances down at her.
"Once you've been to enough worlds you'd understand. I've met creatures whose insides would practically melt if they ate this. It's a rule not to offer unless in an emergency."
"Oh come on I was literally engulfed in the unmatched power of the sun for over a hundred years and I'm fine! Although I suppose that would make it the matched power of the sun, because it couldn't destroy me."
Maddie's ears flatten down as she ponders this, her tail waving gently.
"Anyways... pleeaaaseee can I have some? I'll be fine!"
Keria ponders for a moment, shrugging at her.
"You make a compelling point. Can't much deny it, so... here."
Keria pulls a square off and hands it to Maddie, ruffling her hair some.
Maddie smiles, happy that she managed to get the chocolate. Her tail wags back and forth with delight as she takes the square, biting into it. She gives Keria a contented smile, definitely having enjoyed the chocolate.
Ruedi had slowly slipped away from the alien druid and catgirl. He crouches beside the pink-haired teen with the mop and gestures at the two repeatedly and frantically. The boy looks like he's about to cry, then, and he runs off to an employee door to the side of the store, locking it. And then Ruedi gathers his breath and walks to the front entrance of the store.
"Hey, my beloved regulars and special guests," He says, loudly, "There is an unfortunate family emergency! Please vacate the premises and the store will resume as soon as I open the doors again. Thank you."
He leans over Maddie, however, gently patting her shoulder. Other customers stream out of the store, buying into Ruedi's lie on his good reputation alone.
"Before you two leave, would it be alright if you humor me? I was hoping I could learn more about your favorite chocolate, Keria."
Keria's hand tightens over her bag, the sudden shift in atmosphere setting off some alarm bells in her head. Most people would simply assume she's crazy or just having a laugh, but something's off about this. After a moment of sifting through her options, she settles on the simplest one.
"Very well. What is it you want to know? I'll be honest."
Keria subtly pulls Maddie away from Ruedi, glancing around the room a bit.
He smiles, and his hands drift nearby the inside pockets of his leather jacket.
"I heard her and you come from a different world altogether. And seeing as you're seemingly made of plants and this other one claims to be immortal, I want to know how you're here. And, anyway, did you come here just to buy my chocolate? That just sounds like a missed opportunity. However, I can give you some. Milk chocolate seems to be your taste..."
He tries to circle to behind them and then guide them forward to the back of the store.
Keria places a firm foot down on the ground as she stares at Ruedi, towering over the man and not letting his act get to her.
"I'm surprised you take our existence at face value. This one..."
Keria puts a hand on Maddie.
"—Has not had a single thing to drink in an eternity. We traveled to a random place on a whim, saw a chocolate shop, and she wanted some hot chocolate. We did, indeed, come here just for that. So, allow her a drink. No need to head back there. We'll be staying right here."
Keria's mind wanders to the crying teenager... clearly something is up with that, it's the last place she wants to end up.
Maddie moves slightly behind Keria, half obscured by the much taller woman.
"I was just trapped alone in a completely empty world for over a thousand years... it's been so long since I had hot chocolate, it was always my favorite drink."
Clearly a bit scared of the situation, her tail is down and her ears flattened down as well. She didn't seem to notice the crying young man, as she had been too distracted looking at the various chocolates."
While Maddie does this Keria keeps a reassuring hand on her and whispers to her, "It's okay, we're perfectly safe."
He tilts his head, recognizing Keria's challenge. He takes a key chain from his jacket and unlocks a cabinet with a powdered chocolate mix, grabbing a few packets and stuffing them into his pocket. He locks the cabinet again, and he sits on a stool close to them. And he folds his hands together.
"Hot chocolate was always one of my favorites too. What was your name again? You're telling me you sat bored for one thousand years? Didn't eat anything, didn't drink anything—you had nothing? I'm sorry."
He coughs into his shoulder.
"Unlike you, I'm going to die someday. I think about that a lot. What about you, Keria? Do you think about how she is going to outlive you? What will she think of you then?"
"Yep. Nothing but a glass wasteland. I lived in a lab for a year before it happened, they kept injecting me with things every day. Then, one day, some people accidentally made the sun explode. Turns out the experiments made me immortal, and so I just had to sit in the empty world forever. Until Keria found me."
Maddie glances at the hot chocolate mix, eyeing them greedily.
"Also, I don't think I'm going to outlive Keria. Nor will she outlive me. She's much, much older than I am." Maddie puts a hand on her chin, thinking. "I'm pretty sure she's older than the universe."
Keria nods as Maddie speaks.
"I am an integral part of the way reality functions. I cannot die nor be killed. Even if my body is entirely destroyed, it will simply come back."
Keria smiles a gentle but piercing smile, clearly unbothered by anything Ruedi may try.
"Now... I've been honest with you, return the favor. What did you send that boy off for? And why was he so upset?"
"I'll take your word for it, Keria. I'll take your word for it. Well, you know me, I'm just—a chocolatier. It's in the family. I make people smile. Mostly children. I don't even leave the city much. That's what I have."
He sighs, and he presses two fingers hard into his forehead. Seconds later, he grabs the hot chocolate pouches from his jacket pocket and stares at Maddie. He slaps them into her hand.
"That boy is my assistant Clyde. He was just scared by the two of you. You still haven't told me your name, cat-eared girl."
"I'm Maddie. Don't have a last name anymore. Forgot it."
She stuffs the hot chocolate pouches into the pocket of her hoodie, keeping them safe as if they were her only possession in the world. Perhaps, because they are.
Keria simply nods and stares at Maddie some before speaking up again, looking back to Ruedi.
"Now… have you vacated your store simply out of a desire to speak to us? It seems a touch unnecessary. And it seems to have given Maddie quite a scare. Perhaps it was partially on us for being so open about our natures, but… very few have reacted like you did to this news, and I must say I'm quite curious as to why. It was most unexpected."
Keria takes another bite of her chocolate bar, curiously looking around the store some as she waits for a response.
He glances out the windows of the store, across Seamont Park and at the skyscrapers of downtown. He's old sometimes.
"You should understand that I'm not used to things with your 'natures'. Neither are my customers. The most reasonable course of action seemed to be that I'd just whip up some privacy for us and we'd get to have a nice conversation. But, more than that, I have to admit I would have missed a huge opportunity in not learning more. So, before you both go on your merry way, maybe with a few more free chocolates of your choosing, could I extend your visit in my life?—Like, would you like to see how a chocolate factory works? Have you ever been somewhere like that? It's not quite like in the movies."
Maddie tugs on Keria's arm.
"C'mon, wasn't the point of this for me to have new experiences? It'll be fun. What's the worst that could happen; it's not like he can kill or hurt us."
Keria stops and thinks for a long few moments before slowly nodding.
"Yes, you have a point. I'm quite curious about this man, despite the... interesting introduction."
Keria leans close to Ruedi so that Maddie cannot hear the following very well.
"I know you're gonna try something. Be a dear and just don't. It'll save you a lot of hassle."
She smiles widely as she returns to Maddie and ruffles her hair some.
"We can have a bit of a tour, not like we have much else to do."
The man shakes his head and walks ahead to the door at the back of the store floor, opening the set of locks with two keys from his keychain. His hands are shivering.
"I'm so impressed by you that I'm offering you a tour of my company's secrets for no charge, and you otherworldly visitors are suggesting I'm some kind of wicked buffoon? Nothing I could say could really express how offended I am. Might I suggest that we start making amends? I'm just trying to get on your good graces in my lonely life. Isn't that obvious?"
He dips into his private office on the side of the hallway, which to begin with is obscenely long and quiet. Then he returns seconds later, and he continues to the last door. There's a muffled noise of someone talking behind it.
Keria leans against the wall inside the hallway, her arms crossed as she waits for Ruedi, beckoning Maddie over as they both wait for him
"I have no idea why he's still taking us on this tour, but hey, I'm not complaining. Who knows, maybe he's just gonna play it straight after all this."
Maddie tilts her head, one of her ears perked up into the air, the other flattened down. She listens, trying to hear the voice through the wall. She hears a person's nervous voice, one voicing prayers of desperation.
"Someone's... praying? They sound really nervous," Maddie whispers to Keria.
He unlocks the door to the factory, and he returns his hands to his inside jacket pockets. He leans on the door, pushing it open slowly, and Maddie and Keria enter the production floor. He coughs into his arm.
The whimsical colors and art deco design of the store are nowhere here. It's gray here, with sharp, cold edges and corners. Some deactivated, basic machines are in the center of the room—one seems to process chocolate in some form, and another seems to package chocolate into assorted wrappers.
The man Maddie hears praying is behind metal bars—a prison cell. There's at least a dozen of these, but the other prisoners were sleeping, crying silently, or laying on the floor silently. Now, however, they mostly turn their heads to Keria, Maddie, and Ruedi. Some of them shout at them.
Ruedi, with practiced sleight-of-hand, whips a white towelette drenched in some sweet chemical toward Keria's mouth and nose.
Reacting with catlike agility, Maddie pounces, flinging herself at Ruedi. With slightly too-sharp nails, she claws at his face leaving scrapes just deep enough to draw blood. She screams at him, staying on top of him face-to-face looking absolutely feral.
She barely even blinks at Ruedi's attempt as she turns to see Maddie pounce. Keria, after watching for a few moments, calmly walks over and lifts Maddie up by the back of her shirt's collar, not even breaking her smile from before. It's almost scary when contrasted with the prisoners that Ruedi keeps.
"Now now, Maddie. We knew this would happen. I assure you, chemicals like this do basically nothing. See, they work on a principle of human biology that—"
Keria interrupts herself as she grabs the towel with her free hand.
"Now likely isn't the best time to ramble... just observe."
She lifts the towlette to her nose and takes a long, deep whiff of the fabric, to no effect.
The prisoners holler and harass Ruedi as he wipes his right hand across his face, blood on his fingers. He stares at the ever-optimistic Keria comforting the catgirl and making a fool of him with his rag of chloroform. He pants. His voice is this gruff, loud thing.
"Go back from where you came, and tell nobody about this place! Can I have your word? Keria? Maddie?"
A particularly skinny prisoner with a long dragon tattoo on his neck says, "He's full of shit! Kill him!" A woman with dark nails says, "Free me. I'll do anything, just, please."
Maddie goes limp for a moment when Keria grabs her by the collar, but hearing the prisoners' pleas, she wriggles from her grip and leans over Ruedi.
"How do I open the cells? Where is the key?"
She plucks the chloroform rag from Keria's hand, holding it vaguely threateningly near Ruedi.
Blood drips on his eyelashes. He glares at Maddie, and he says, "Go home and drink your hot chocolate. You've waited long enough."
Keria puts a finger to her chin as she thinks.
"Well... I tend to dislike meddling in the lives of people from the various dimensions... I'm not sure I would feel right in doing much of anything about this. I don't belong after all."
Keria smiles slyly as she glances over to Maddie.
"However, I won't stop Maddie from perhaps freeing some prisoners. If she so chooses. Though I'm sure it will be bad news for our friend here."
Keria shrugs and walks on over to Ruedi, pulling a small bottle of alcohol and a clean rag out of her bag, setting them nearby to Ruedi.
"Clean off those cuts, don't want them to get infected!"
Maddie begins searching the factory for the key, ignoring the bleeding man on the floor. She finds a section of shelves, where various substances lie in beakers and bottles. Seeing one that looks vaguely like apple juice, Maddie walks over to it.
"Is this apple juice? I'm gonna have some."
She grabs the beaker with both hands, and chugs the contents of it. It's sickly sweet, and she has a sour expression on her face.
"That... was not apple juice."
Maddie clutches her stomach, feeling sick. A wave of nausea washes over her, and she stays like that, swaying, for a moment.
"Does anyone have a bucket…?"
She looks around and sees a large empty beaker, which for her purposes is good enough. She rushes over to it, bends down, and then begins vomiting into it. The vomit looks like a stream of chocolate milk, which is both humorous and disgusting. The beaker almost fills, and then Maddie groans, wiping her mouth.
"Why do you have that? Why do you have a drink that makes you puke chocolate milk? Oh by the way, do you want some, Ruedi?"
He stumbles back against the wall, where he takes the cleaning rag to the alcohol and cleans off his face. He's a freckled man, something he maintains from spending a lot of time in the afternoon sun when he hadn't yet inherited the family business.
"If you free these prisoners, Maddie, you're going to ruin my life. There will be no more 'Gobeli and Son's'. I'll go to jail. Speaking of which, do you even know who you're trying to free? I think it's time to explain myself..."
One of the inmates yells, "Good people!"
"No, not good people. These are people who have committed felonies." He points at the inmate. "He robbed stores." He points at the woman with black nails. "She raped her ex. This is an alternative for a life-sentence. I work with the local prison."
He stares at Maddie and her chocolate milk puke, unamused. "I use that on these awful people. It's a family recipe. They get to die, and I get to sell my famous chocolate."
Keria crouches down and stares Ruedi down, getting very close to his face and studying him for a long moment. She narrows her eyes at him and stands back up, looming over the man.
"I trust him, Maddie. He doesn't seem to be lying, so… do what you will with that. That said…"
Keria walks over to the cages and points at the supposed robber before crouching down to be on their level.
"Tell me, did you choose to be here? Would you rather be in prison? Surely just a robbery wouldn't deserve… this."
The inmate says, "I stole from a Ben's Footwear, think I want to be mutilated into fuckin' candy? Please get me out of here!" The other prisoners chime in on that request.
Ruedi sighs. "I read about you on the report the Seamont police department sent me for you all. You stole thousands of dollars of inventory of shoes. Keria, he's nothing but a third-rate criminal. Just leave this place and never come back."
"Locked up... for life... for stealing a few thousand dollars of shoes? And now you're going to kill him, for this? You think someone deserves death for this?"
Maddie carefully steps over to Ruedi and then scratches at his face once more, this time with much more force, leaving a set of bleeding gashes across his face.
"You're a psychopath! I sat, imprisoned on an empty world for a thousand years. I know what being locked up is like. It's awful. These people may be bad, but they don't deserve this. Maybe you should try some of your own juice. Do you want to become chocolate, punishment for the hundreds you've killed?"
She stares at him, with the pent up emotion of a thousand years of nothing.
Keria stands and slowly walks over to Maddie, standing between her and Ruedi, Keria's usual smile replaced by a sorrowful frown.
"Maddie, I… I know how you must feel, but… Killing him won't make you feel better. He may be a psychopath, but that doesn't mean you can take his life as he took the lives of so many others. You won't be happy, or satisfied, or anything of the sort."
Keria crouches down to be face to face with Maddie, her somber expression deepening even more.
"I'm… no stranger to doing something like that, and it's never once been worth it."
Maddie looks back at her, then to the blood on her hand.
"I- I wasn't going to kill him. I just wanted him to feel some pain."
She turns to Ruedi, slightly calmer now.
"Where is the key to free the prisoners? Let them out. If you are imprisoned and financially ruined, it's still a better fate than what you had planned for them." She points at the cells.
"Please don't hurt me anymore!" Ruedi shouts. He shivers, too stiff with panic to even address the fresh streams of blood on his expression. "I didn't choose anything you—you ungrateful twat. It's a family business; go talk to my great-grandfather. This is his doing!"
While Keria is distracted talking with Maddie about the morality of dealing with someone like Ruedi, Mr. Gobeli himself quickly whips out a syringe of the alchemical chocolate-making solution from under his jacket and jams it into Keria's arm. It diffuses throughout the druid's arm, and it becomes something brown and crumbly and not quite right.
He drops the syringe on the ground, then, and he wipes his face again with the cloth of alcohol. The adrenaline leaves him in an instant.
He says, "What if I don't let them out, Maddie?"
It takes Keria a few moments to realize what's happening, staring down at her arm blankly.
"Ah. That was really quite a tenacious move! Attacking the one trying to keep you from getting killed tends to be quite a bad idea, Mr. Gobeli."
Keria pokes and prods at her chocolatized arm curiously as she speaks.
"However, a family business is a useless excuse. Nobody forced you to keep doing this, the tradition could have died. It is not my place to make moral judgment calls, but at least think up a better excuse."
As Keria talks, as if it were nothing at all, she grabs her arm by the shoulder and just yanks it off. It makes a uniquely sickening crunch; halfway between the crunch of a thick branch snapping and the breaking of bone. She tosses the half-chocolate arm aside haphazardly as a small flower buds where the missing arm was detached from. The inside of her wound is... odd. It's a pale white much like her skin but nonetheless has a distinct fibrous, plant-like appearance. A new arm quickly grows out of the bud; it's extremely pale white, even moreso than her skin normally is.
Maddie looks at Keria, first with confusion, then wonder.
"That's... so cool..." She says, watching the new arm grow back. "You get to do that and all I get is vomit. Hmmph."
She turns back to Ruedi, looking down at him once more.
"Give up already. Can't you tell fighting us is pointless? Just give us the key and we'll stop bothering you."
The idea that they could search him has eluded Maddie.
Ruedi stares at Keria's regrown anatomy in a perverse fashion. The absurdity brings himself to chuckle.
He reaches for Maddie's shoulder again, too slowly to really connect. He then sits down on the dull concrete. He can't hear the prisoners anymore.
"None of you take me seriously. It's like I'm a joke. Like I'm not even worth your breath. What do you want me to tell you? I'm too much of a fucking coward? I could never free them. I'm even too scared to free myself."
He throws his other syringe in his pocket across the floor, where it cracks and pools the magical liquid on the floor.
"If you're forcing me to share my keys, I want you to then exonerate me. Like, kill me. Before I change my mind."
Keria turns around, crouching down to make eye contact with Ruedi, her face still dark and solemn.
"Mr. Gobeli, I see you as no joke... You are, as I see you now, a pathetic whelp of a man. But you needn't be. I can see in your eyes that your wickedness is not at the very core of your being. There is no way to atone for what you've done, but this does not need to continue. Instead of dying the death of a pathetic coward, why not use what you have left to make amends?"
Keria stands up and holds out her freshly grown arm, inviting him to stand up using it.
"I want you to go and release those prisoners yourself. Don't worry, I think I can make them... repress the memory of being here. I'm not sure how my companion would feel about giving you a second chance, but if we do I will be sure to check in frequently. I have all the time in the world, you know."
"What really are you, Keria? Are you God? Are you Mother Nature herself? Why are you doing this to me?"
He accepts Keria's hand after a long pause, lifting himself off the floor. He stares at the first prisoner in the line, a man who already lies down on a dirty blanket on the brink of death.
"Nobody who I have ever showed the factory to has told me that... That I'm not wicked at my core—what you said. I'm not sure I believe you. It's like 'Mr. Gobeli' is a name that changes people."
He sighs, patting down the inside of his pockets for the keychain and singling out one key. He unlocks the inmate's cell. He kicks it open. And he continues to the next cell, and so on. He gives time for Keria to use her magic on the freed prisoners.
"Do you understand how impossible your request is, Keria and Maddie?"
Keria reaches into her bag, waving what seems to be a small branch in front of the individuals as they leave the cells, muttering instructions to each of them quietly. None seem to resist Keria. Forgetting about this whole place is on the top of their priority list.
Keria wordlessly waits to let Maddie respond, certain the cat is still bursting with emotion.
Maddie, staying silent for the duration of their exchange, finally speaks.
"Can't you just like... make chocolate the way everyone else does? You know how to make weird magic chocolate stuff. Surely it wouldn't be that hard to just make normal chocolate."
Maddie gives him a quizzical look and then glances around, the look changing to a smile as she sees the prisoners leaving the room.
Ruedi stuffs his keys back away, watching the last of the prisoners shuffle out into the hallway. They'd be able to leave through the front entrance of the store, and he's more than aware that the Seamont Police would institute a very angry conversation with the chocolatier, possibly even fatal.
It crosses his mind that his assistant Clyde may notice the prisoners leaving, too. So, he sighs and enters back into the hallway himself.
"Leave me alone, Maddie."
Keria sighs and walks with Ruedi some, a look of pity on her face.
"Ruedi… good luck. Don't waste your second chance. I'll make sure to check in, and you had better not be doing this again. Trust me."
"I believe you, Keria. I believe you."