End Intermission: The Rubbing of Alice

End Intermission:
The Rubbing of Alice

 

THAT NIGHT, Alan thought back on his earlier conversation with Fio. He’d asked if she wanted to tag along with them on their quest, and Fio had given it serious thought before deciding to stay behind and work on reviving the Elf Woods. Her new goal in life was to restore the once-thriving forest to what it used to be.

“I’m going to do my best and see this through to the end. So, um… Uncle Alan, I’ll be waiting for you here.”

Fio had squirmed a bit before looking up at Alan, wearing the expression of someone who had something to say, but couldn’t quite find the words.

“I understand. I plan on swinging by every once in a while and help out.”

“Th-thank you so much!” Fio said with a big smile, bowing her head up and down.

“That being said, all I can really do is physical labor.”

“Aaaaah! Physical labor?!”

Fio’s face suddenly turned bright red. She looked down at the floor and began to squirm, rubbing her voluptuous thighs together.

“O-okay… I’m looking forward to, um, experiencing your physical labor,” she said with a smile.

 

***

 

Why was she blushing? Alan thought to himself, but could arrive at no answer. He was as dense as they came.

Then came a knock. Someone was at his door. Alan opened it to find Alice, still not wearing a stitch of clothing.

“G-good evening…” she said.

A chill immediately ran down the miner’s spine. Déjà vu. Did Lithisia put her up to this? “Are you here to shovel?”

“What?! Y-you’re going to shovel me, too?!”

“No! As long as you don’t want me to, I won’t.” Alan had never been more glad to be wrong.

“O-oh, thank goodness…” Alice fell to her knees, relieved. “Please, listen. I tried to sleep in a warm bed for the first time in forever.”

“Mm. You deserve it.”

“But then Lithisia came crashing into the room with shovel in hand, smiling and saying ‘Shovely, shovely!’ …Please, I beg of you. Let me hide in here!”

The undead queen was on her hands and knees, pleading to Alan, and there was no way he’d refuse. Especially given how she was trembling in fear.

“Sure,” he said. “I don’t mind.”

“Thank you! Thank you so much! I’m saved!”

Alice looked even happier than she did when she felt the warmth of the sun on her skin the other day.

“But are you sure you wanna stick with me? What about Catria?”

“She’s a servant to the princess, is she not? Plus, when I’m near her, my body gets all hot… It’s scary.”

“Ah, that must be the power of her Holy Knight Shovel.” Alan had poured Divine Shovel Power into Catria’s shovel. Unbeknownst to Catria, like the safety first helmet, it would gradually empower its wielder with Divine Shovel Power over time. An undead creature like Alice would certainly find her unsettling.

Alan decided to let Alice use the bed, setting up camp on the floor himself. The carpeting in the elf castle was nice and warm thanks to the heating system, which utilized magma from hell.

“Er...”

“Is something wrong?”

“N-no, I, well, erm… Never mind. It’s nothing. I guess.”

Alice was clearly lying. Alan felt her glancing at him time and time again. In fact, upon closer inspection, she was lying dramatically close to one edge of the bed.

In other words…

“You want me to sleep next to you, eh?”

“?!”

She was very easy to read.

“I-I-I’m the queen of the undead! As if I would ever crave the warmth of another!”

“It’s fine, let’s just sleep.”

“Aaaaah! But Catria said you were super d-dense!”

It made perfect sense that a young girl who had spent hundreds of years yearning for warmth would desire a replacement for her parents. Alan scooped Alice up in his arms and got in bed. Once in bed, he slowly patted her head. Alice grimaced.

“I’m… I’m not a child… Ah…”

But her tone betrayed her true feelings.

“Just be quiet and enjoy this. As far as I’m concerned, you’re still a child.”

“I may look like one, but I’ve been alive for at least 333 years. I am Veknar’s successor and queen of the undead.”

“Well I’m 1,011 years old, so.”

“What kind of absurd joke is that…?”

“It’s true.”

He continued to rub her head.

“If there’s anything you want me to do, just let me know.”

“Er, no, I… I most definitely don’t want you to hold me.”

“Gotcha.”

Alan brought his hand down to her astral body’s stomach. It was warm. In an attempt to transmit some of his warmth into Alice, he gently caressed her skin.

“Gyaaah! You-you perv! This is against the law!”

“Weren’t you just saying you were 333 years old?”

Despite her words, Alice showed no signs of resisting his touch. With every brush of his hand against her skin, her cheeks grew slightly more pink. She was probably extra sensitive thanks to Lithisia’s shoveling. Her toes were shaking, too. She must’ve been enjoying this quite a bit.

When she finally spoke, her voice sounded strangely relieved.

“What am I going to do now…?”

“Just do whatever you want. You’re free.”

“Kind of an irresponsible thing to say, considering you did this to me.”

“Sorry, but I can’t tell other people how to live out their lives.”

Alan was just a miner. His only desire was to unearth buried things up, and that desire dictated everything he did. How could someone like that tell another person how to live their life? All he could really do was help them walk their path.

“You’re the one who has to decide what’s next, Alice.”

“...I know.” She nodded her head and then started to laugh. “I guess even you can act like a normal human sometimes.”

“Hrm? What’s that supposed to mean? I’m perfectly normal all the time.”

“Yeah, right.” Alice’s eyes were slowly sliding shut. “My goal…”

“Didn’t you say you wanted warmth?”

“I think I’m...okay now…” She gripped Alan back, tightly. “I can’t think of anything else…”

That was to be expected. She’d been granted a brand-new lease on life when she least expected it. “And that’s fine. You have plenty of time to think it over. Heck, I’ve been thinking about it for 1,000 years.”

“...Okay.”

It wasn’t long before Alan could hear Alice’s quiet breathing even out.

“Mm… Father….” she murmured in her sleep. Finally, she looked her age.

Could Alan really be the father figure that this girl so desired? Would that make Lithisia her mother? That’d spell bad news for her upbringing. Either way, he saved this girl’s life, and he would now do everything in his power to help her live it.

“Mm?! Aaaah, no! Noooo!” Alice’s expression began to twist and contort as she shook her head wildly.

Was she having a nightmare?

“No! No more shovels! It doesn’t feel good when you rub my ears like...that…”

It was in fact a nightmare.

A true nightmare (important enough to say twice).

 

***

 

“And so that’s what went down last night.” On the road to the desert nation the next day, Alan spilled the beans about the previous night’s events.

“Why are you telling them?!”

“I see! So you got shoveled by Sir Miner, too!” Lithisia was happy that another girl had joined her, uh, sisterhood.

“You’ve got it all wrong! We just slept together! There was no shoveling involved!”

“I call that the Sleepy Shovel! We should try it, too!”

“Alan! Alan! I beg of you, do something about this crazy shovel lady!”

“Sorry, no can do.”

There were things a shovel could and couldn’t do. Fixing Lithisia was first in the latter category.

“Alan, we’ll be hitting the border of Desertopia momentarily,” Catria interjected, ignoring Alice’s plight. Like the miner, she had also given up all hope of fixing the princess.

“Their borders are guarded, right?”

“Correct. They have a poor relationship with our nation.”

“Don’t abandon me! Pleaaaaase!”

Still ignoring Alice’s cries for help, Catria went on to explain that Desertopia was a military nation located to the northwest of Rostir. Most of its land was composed of desert, but the areas around its multiple oases were used as farmland. Its formidable military made it an apex predator, and it expanded its territory through waging war. Its relationship with Rostir, as a result, was incredibly rocky.

“Hrm, I can think of three ways in,” Alan said with confidence.

“I’d rather not hear you out, but go ahead.”

“The first way is to shovel up all the sand in the desert. The second is to fly through the air using my shovel. The third is to build a shovel battleship on the surface and blow up the checkpoint.”

Sizzle. That was the sound of Catria’s brain overheating, and it wasn’t the sun’s fault. It was working at maximum capacity to try and understand Alan’s words.

“...Alan, no more jokes. This is a serious problem.”

“I’m not joking.”

Catria sighed. He wasn’t joking. What the heck was a shovel battleship?!

“And wait, you can fly?”

“Of course I can.”

“‘Of course’, he says…”

“I basically straddle my shovel and fire out Shovel Power to propel myself through the air.”

“Don’t you ‘basically’ me! None of that makes sense.”

“But we do have a problem with these three options.”

“A problem? I’d say we have more than that.”

“They‘re all attention-getting. We’d be stoking direct conflict with all of Desertopia.”

“Hrm, so even the great Alan is scared of Desertopia’s military might, eh?” Catria seemed almost pleased by the prospect, but the miner shook his head from side to side.

“I’m fully confident that I could wipe out their entire military on my own...”

“Oh.”

“You’re shovely amazing, Sir Miner!”

“This is the man who annihilated my undead army in five seconds…”

“…but if I did that, I wouldn’t be able to do business with them going forward,” Alan finished. He was a jewel miner, which meant he needed people to sell his jewels to. “Let’s do this stealthily. Time to change our looks.”

“Excellent! A sensible plan for once!” Catria exclaimed, then trailed off as Alan lifted his shovel and pointed it at himself. “Er, what are you doing?”

“I’m going to disguise myself using my shovel.”

“Excuse me?”

Alan covered his face with the metal portion of the shovel. When he pulled it away, he had become Fio. His entire body, hair, face, and gender now perfectly mirrored the elf girl, down to the most minute detail.

“GHAAAAAARGGHHHHLEEEE?!” Catria screamed like a banshee.

“Shoveling shoveltastic!” Translation: Sir Miner is the bestest!

“No, no, no, no! C’mon! This isn’t even a disguise anymore!” Alan had become a beautiful elf girl. Why didn’t anyone else find this extremely bizarre?!

“There’s nothing strange about this. A shovel can dig things up, and it can bury them.”

“Your point?!”

“I ‘buried’ my face and transformed,” Alan stated with confidence.

Sizzle, sizzle. Catria’s brain was being deep fried in a vat of oil.

“Now come, Catria. I’m going to transform you.”

“Wow! I bet all kinds of hot shovel experiences await us inside!”

Ah, Catria thought to herself, Desertopia is doomed.