Leave my Leaf Alone!

The rest of the days went quietly. I couldn’t help but sigh. An entire week spent inside a dark wooden channel really brings your mood down.

But the light was just around the corner.

When we finally reached the upper areas of Yggdrasil, the dark brown bark walls were replaced with vibrant green branching capillaries.

“Which way do I go, Captain?” Debra asked as we drifted closer and closer to a fork in the path.

“Follow the light!”

“But both sides are bright!”

“Uh, just keep going right then.”

I suddenly realized a problem we didn’t think of when we entered the root.

“Uh, how are we going to get out of the channel?” I asked. “We had to use a hole opened by Nidhogg in order to enter, just how will we get out then?”

My crew looked at me seriously.

“Captain, we thought you had an idea,” Egg said with a sigh.

“Well, I don’t.”

“What kind of Captain are you?!” Cheesus screamed in his mousy voice. Of course, to the rest of the crew, it only sounds like adorable squeaks.

“Debra, just circle around the place. Maybe we will find an exit eventually.”

I looked towards Jobs.

“Any bright ideas?”

“Yes, but I don’t know if it would work for sure.”

“What is it?”

“Remember that piece of Nidhogg Beatrix snatched? Perhaps its toxins are strong enough to erode the walls of the leaf. After all, the leaf structure is weaker than wood.”

“That might just work.”

“One major problem though, we would have to stop the ship completely and with the current, our anchors can’t grab hold of anything fast enough.”

“Crap,” I rubbed my temples.

“Can we tether ourselves to the walls?”

“I don’t think our hooks can penetrate it.”

“What if we used the Nidhogg poison as well?”

“It might not dig fast enough for the hook to burrow deep enough.”

“God dammit. We will try it anyways.”

“Got it Capt.,” Jobs nodded and left to his lab.

“Hey Egg, what are the chances you think this will succeed?”

“’Bout 50/50 I’d say,” Egg said while rubbing the stubble of a beard on his chin. “It’s the kind of odds we take daily.”

“Good enough for me.”

After an hour of navigating the branching channels, Jobs finally finished preparing the tethers and coated them with copious amounts of Nidhogg toxins.

He attached it onto Debra’s newly customized weaponized lower body. It looked like a giant spider with a cannon on its thorax.

Debra’s torso was screwed into the giant spider. She looked like a mechanized spider demon.

“How is it?” Jobs asked Debra excitingly.

“G-great Dear!” Debra replied shyly.

“OK, aim for the walls of the next branch where the gap is small,” I commanded.

“Yes, Captain!”

Debra’s eight legs came to life as she crawled onto side of the Sinclair Jr. She was completely vertical, hanging off the side with the cannon on her back.

“Fire away!” I shouted at Debra.

With a loud ‘Boom’ Two metal three pronged claws shot from her cannons. They penetrated the walls with a soft and strangely wet noise.

The ship slowed abruptly and everyone fell to their knees. After a few moments, the ship came to a complete stop.

“It worked!”

“Debra, reel the tethers in and check if they are secure!”

Debra nodded and started to retract the steel wires the claws were attached to.

Slowly but surely, the ship started to drift close and close to the wall. Soon, we hit the side of it with a soft bump.

“The walls are softer than I thought,” Jobs pondered. “Perhaps I could make something out of it…” He whispered to himself.

Debra clamped the tethers to the ship itself instead of her lower abdomen and crawled back up.

“Prepare the cutters,” Jobs waved his hands.

“Yes Dear.”

The spider body’s rear end opened up, eerily revealing a strange and sinister looking blade. It was glowing with a purple aura.

“God damn, Jobs, just what kind of alterations did you do to that thing?”

“You like it? It’s her new combat mode. It allows rapid 3rd dimensional movement. Also the access to eight legs means she could lose a few and still reach high speeds. This spider mode is perhaps my greatest invention yet!”

I looked at the completely insane Jobs brag about his invention, then I looked at Debra who’s now a giant spider woman. I could only sigh and shrug my shoulders.

I looked at Egg for help and he shrugged his shoulders as well. Looks like I’ll just leave Jobs and Debra alone for a while…

Debra climbed onto the soft walls and started to slowly cut into it with the poison tipped blade. It cuts into the walls like it was made of tissue paper. Although the walls were easily cut, it was extremely thick. We manage to burrow nearly a hundred meters into the wall before we could see the outer waxy layer of the leaf.

“This tree is just too damn big,” Egg complained.

“I thought you liked plants?”

“Yea, small plants. Big plants brings back bad memories.”

“Ah, I remember that. Island of Bocooh? Weren’t you nearly eaten by a man-eating plant?”

“Don’t remind me. I could still feel its prickly stingers stab into me as my body went numb.”

“Yea, Beatrix had to carry your numbed body back to the ship after we got you out. You were bedridden for like an entire week!”

“Never again, I hate big plants,” Egg scowled and walked back to his room. Guess he needed some alone time with his humanoid fruits.

“How long left Debra?” I shouted into the large hole Debra cut out.

“Almost there, Captain!” Her voice echoed.

“When you get back, convert the ship to land mode!”

“Got it, Captain!”

I grab her a thumbs up and walked away with the rest of the crew. Jobs was still analyzing the pieces of wall that Debra cut off.

“I need more samples,” He whispered to himself as he gathered the green soft pieces.

About half an hour later, I heard Debra call for us.

“We’re through, Captain!”

She waved as the blinding light cascaded through the hole she made.

“Lock down the ship for land mode.”

“Got it, Capt.,”

The side of the ship once again opened up, revealing two large wheels. They rotated and lifted the ship off the ground.

“Move slowly.”

“Yes, Captain!”

The Sinclair Jr. slowly rolled into the hole, towards the blinding light.

______

Moments later, we rolled onto the waxy surface of the leaf. The light breeze blew across the deck. The sunlight licked our worn out faces.

“Finally, no more dark tunnels.”

“Egg, go scout around.”

“Sure thing, Capt.,” He said as he climbed up the crow’s nest.

“I see some sort of settlement about 400 meters due north!” He shouted.

“The entire leaf is huge! But it’s so flat that I could see the edges!”

“Uh, Captain. We can’t move forward,” Debra said.

“Why?”

“We are being blocked by a bunch of long eared people.”

I looked down and saw like 5 short long eared fellows.

“Get off our land!” They shouted as they threw rocks at the ship.

“Where did they get rocks on this leaf?” Rigor wondered.

“I have no idea,” I replied. I leaned over the side and shouted, “Hey, what are you kids doing!”

“Get off our land!” They kept shouting.

“I’m sure they speak the universal language but it’s as if they’re pretending they don’t hear me.”

I look towards Rigor. Since Egg was up top in the crow’s nest, Debra is piloting the ship, Beatrix is probably asleep somewhere, Inky was reading, and Jobs was tinkering away with those green leaf parts, Rigor was the only person who was free to do stuff.

“Hey Rigor, can you go down and ask them what’s wrong?”

“Hmm? Sure thing Captain.”

His ghostly form fluttered down from the ship. The five long eared fellows panicked and started to run, but Rigor manage to snatch the neck collar of one of them.

“G-get away from me you filthy Niflheim undead!” It screamed.

Rigor sighed, “Just because I’m a ghost, doesn’t mean I come from Niflheim.”

“That’s a lie! I can smell the scent of fog on you!”

Rigor sighed even more. “That’s because we all had to pass through Niflheim to get here. Now tell me, why are you blocking our way?”

“You damaged the world tree! That is punishable by death here!” The kid screamed.

“Hmm, is it now?” Rigor’s face suddenly turned into a sinister grin. You can’t really see it since he has no face muscles left, but deep inside, you could feel like he was grinning.

“Well, we happen to only have 5 witnesses, it won’t be hard to ‘take care’ of them. Huahahahaha,” He laughed sinisterly.

The kid nearly wet himself as Rigor let him go. They ran away with all their might.

“All clear, Captain!” Rigor shouted back up at us.

“What did you say to them?” I asked when he got back on the ship.

“Nothing, just asked for directions.”

“We’ll we could see the village from here, so we don’t really need directions.”

“Oh, oh well.” Rigor shrugged. His boney shoulders lifted up and down.

“Oh well indeed. Let’s go Debra!”

“Yes, Captain!”

The ship started up once again and rolled smoothly on the waxy surface of the leaf. Rigor turned around to stare at the hole we created and smiled.

______

“How did it go?” The Dwarf South asked Hel.

“Just as planned,” She smiles sinisterly. “The participants have no clue about what’s going on.”

“Ahahaha, good. By the time that bastard Odin realizes, it would be too late.”

“Yes, we shall bring about Ragnarok earlier than that one eyed bastard foresaw.”

“They won’t be prepared at all, perhaps we might kill off more deities than originally planned.”

“Hopefully, my father won’t be happy if things plays out as fate determined it to.”

“And we dwarves also will get the short end of the stick.”

“Then let’s kill to our hearts content then!”

“Ahaha, I like your style, you frozen bitch!” South yelled as he dodged Hel’s ice strikes.

The two laughed maniacally into the foggy night.