[Adelie]

Before you say anything stupid, let it be known that I thought this was a bad idea, too.

It doesn't take a genius to recognize that when some sketchy-looking dude reaches out to you with his sketchy-looking device and asks you to take on a sketchy-looking quest for a couple of days, you're definitely getting yourself into trouble. Heck, I could probably find any random rock around here and they'd have the sense to sit tight and do nothing.

Hey, you there. You want to take this crystal off my hands? No? Good for you. You've got common sense.

But this human - oh, this human of mine. Every day I find new reasons to be disappointed.

[Adelie]

I learned recently that there's this human concept called an intelligent quotient. Apparently, they lock you up in a room for a few hours with a bunch of papers with boxes and squares printed on it, and then they tell you how smart you are based on how you score.

What an idiotic idea, of course. Only humans would come up with something so inefficient. Here, I'll do you one better - you have a crystal. The crystal, I should note, was given to you by someone you don't know, don't care about, and don't have a single attachment to. Suddenly, a bunch of creepy-looking mist-creatures appear and whisper to you that you should destroy the crystal. What do you do?

[Adelie]

The correct answer, of course, is you do nothing. You relax on the beach somewhere, sipping your pina colada - or whatever it is people drink these days - and you look at your empty, crystal-less hands and think about how nice it is that you weren't stupid enough to accept such a ridiculous and idiotic task.

But that assumes you have an intelligence quotient that's at least more than a single-digit number - and as I've already covered, the human's so far down the intelligence totem pole that he's probably pushing negatives. Do those things even go negative? I was never very good at numbers.

So, consider the situation. You are being threatened by some spooky mist things. They look hostile. You have the combat ability of an upended turnip. They are telling you to destroy the crystal - need I remind you, the crystal you don't care about - or face the consequences.

[Adelie]

What I'm getting at here is that any normal person would simply destroy the crystal. Between a promise to a sleazy-looking wannabe scientist and an entire race of mist-monsters threatening you with certain death, it's pretty obvious which one should be higher priority. You can kick the scientist's ass. You literally can't kick a mist creature's ass, because they don't even have those.

So what does the human do in this situation? Try to reason with them. I mean this in the sense that he straight-out called them 'Mr. Mist Guy,' backtracked because mist creatures don't have discernable genders and he didn't want to presume, apologized for his error, and then spent another two minutes talking in circles before explaining, as politely as a student making an excuse for not doing his homework, that he couldn't give up the crystal.

The mist creatures had none of that, of course. Of course.

[Adelie]

So now, the kid's getting chased around by a bunch of murderous mist creatures. I suppose saying that kind of discounts my point that this was the more dangerous option, but still - it's not like the mist creatures aren't trying. It's just a little bit of human ingenuity and me bailing the human out, repeatedly, into different situations.

But even I - oh, the great and mighty I - can't do everything, especially when the human in question is actively trying to sabotage each and every attempt at making one of those poor, neglected neurons in his head light up. For example, I suggested that oh, perhaps it might be a good idea to simply leave behind the crystal that started all these problems. It would stop being a burden while traveling, we wouldn't have to worry about keeping it safe, and maybe - just maybe - the mist creatures would destroy it themselves and leave us alone.

[Adelie]

And you know what that idiot said? But I promised.

You promised who? You promised what? You promised why? You're seriously going to put your life on the line for some guy who looks and acts like he'd sell you out for one corn chip? Again - like I said, an idiot. I could go on and on about this. I have gone on and on about this, but the point remains.

I actually asked him to clarify about the promise, too. Well, more like insulted him, but you get my drift here - that line of reasoning was so ridiculous that I just had to follow up on it. When you're stuck in a stupid situation like this one, you may as well take all the entertainment you can get.

[Adelie]

So he said, Well, I said I'd do it for him. He would be disappointed if I didn't follow through on that.

And I said absolutely nothing, because I was too busy laughing. You should've seen it. The absolute expression of sincerity on his face. The way he said all of that with a completely straight face, without even realizing just how stupid he sounds. It's even better when you realize that it's not like this is anything special for him - he'll agree to do anything if you just ask him. Tell him to go die and there's a solid chance he might just agree.

So I said, Okay, dumbass, and left it at that. Not like there was much time to do anything else, because just then we ended up walking straight into a living, writhing mass of shadow creatures and had to fight our way out.

[Adelie]

There's these things that show up in human media a lot. Sometimes people call them Cthulhu, or Lovecraftian, or Elder Gods, or whatever. Big tentacle creatures, all spooky and scary and eldritch.

I'm really not a fan of them, of course. It's tacky. Things don't need to look scary to inspire fear; the truly terrifying things in this world don't rely on cheap tricks like other-worldly mist effects and granulation.

Like me, for example. I might look cute and tiny and adorable, but you should know that I'm the scariest thing around these parts. Don't laugh, now. I mean it.

Anyways - point is, we ran into something like one of those. Apparently it's some kind of upper echelon of weird mist creature; when they get old enough, they just start absorbing each other like some twisted kind of cannibalism ritual.

[Adelie]

So they brought out the big boys for us. Like I said - I'm the scariest thing around, and clearly these mist creatures, unlike everyone else, have some kind of respect for that. One point in favor of them, at least.

Honestly, the mist folk aren't that bad. Well, they've got bad taste, and they can't exactly be reasoned with, and all they do is billow around looking spooky and scary, and they want to kill the human - and me, by necessity - but they've been pretty reasonable so far. They told him to destroy the crystal or die, and he didn't, so they're just following through on the threat.

I can respect that, I suppose. At least they follow logical reasoning.

[Adelie]

So, giant mist-blob. I took care of it, because I have to get everything done myself around here. Well, took care of it to a certain extent. Turns out mist is damn hard to actually beat, because it's mist. You cut it, it reforms around where it was cut. You punch it, it reforms around where it was punched.

Best you can do is scatter it as far as it can possibly go and then wait for it to come back to do the exact same thing. Here, I'll actually throw the human a bone. He's the one who came up with the idea of going somewhere with high winds, to make the whole scattering job just a little bit easier.

And that's the story of why we're here, I suppose. Why we're in the middle of the ocean doing nothing.

[Crystal Synthesis Complete]