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Entry tags:
Trade
Fandom: Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold + Dungeon Meshi crossover
Characters: Chloe, Marcille; background Senshi, Regina, Arianna, and Flavio
Word count: ~600
Warnings: None
Notes: I have never written Dungeon Meshi fic before and I don't know if I ever will again, but Kelli mentioned the prospect of this crossover and I couldn't not. Sorry, Marcille.
A human girl no taller than Chilchack was tugging on Marcille’s sleeve. “Trade you.”
Marcille looked down. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah. Let’s trade.”
Of course you couldn’t expect much sense from children, so although she was tired and running out of patience and had been unable to make herself eat any of this cafe’s truly horrifying cuisine, she tried not to snap. “Trade what?”
“Guilds. Just for a day.” The child pointed to where Senshi and the restaurateur – Regina, wasn’t it? - were engaged in a contest of knife skills. The object they were practicing on had too many legs to be a horse, and Marcille would not allow herself to look at it any more closely than that. She did not want to know any more. But this small pigtailed girl looked riveted. She even appeared to be… salivating. “I want to eat Mr. Helmet’s cooking.” She looked seriously up at Marcille. “I know magic. So I can take your place. And you’ll like Flavio.” Now she pointed at the dark-haired youth talking to Laius about dungeon ecology. “He’s neurotic too. You can complain together.”
Marcille didn’t think she would like anyone in this guild. Maybe not this entire town. She had tried talking to Arianna, but after some wonderfully normal mutual pleasantries about “I love your hair, how do you keep it so lustrous through all your battles,” things had gone downhill. Fast. Marcille had been compelled to make an exit when the woman guilelessly asked, “Have you ever eaten dragon meat?”
She could not put all of her objections into words. The best she could manage was a taut, “I can’t possibly live here. I would go insane and die.” Senshi at least made his creations look like normal food, if you managed to avoid thinking about the ingredients. Not so here. Here she had watched Regina plate and serve an entire, actual armadillo.
“You don’t have to eat the spiders,” said the girl.
You were not supposed to scream at children. So this was not, technically, a scream. “Why in the world would I eat a spider?”
Across the room, Flavio went pale and steadied himself on his friend’s arm. The girl shrugged and told Marcille, “There’s a normal bar down the road. Sometimes I get steak for dessert.”
Senshi and Regina were doing something appalling with a chicken breast and a gelatin mold. Marcille riveted her eyes to the girl in the hat and did not dare look elsewhere. She had never made a more urgent request in her entire life than: “Please show me this normal bar.”
As it turned out, Chilchack had already found the normal bar. Chilchack was already nursing a beer and chatting with the bartender and an older blond man – Marcille would have estimated he was about two or three hundred before remembering humans didn’t live that long. More importantly: why hadn’t Chilchack told her he was leaving? How could he abandon her with those lunatics?
While Marcille fumed, the girl at her side said quietly, “Oh. I forgot. If we trade, you have to put up with Trand.”
“Well, you would have to put up with Laius.”
“Your Mr. Sword? I like him. He’s smart.”
That sealed it. The idea had already been too awful to contemplate, but this one thing made it even more nightmarish: the thought of Laius and this girl joining forces. No one in either party would know peace for the rest of their lifetimes. “No deal,” she said, “no trade, no sale, nothing, sorry, no,” and started looking for the wine list.
Characters: Chloe, Marcille; background Senshi, Regina, Arianna, and Flavio
Word count: ~600
Warnings: None
Notes: I have never written Dungeon Meshi fic before and I don't know if I ever will again, but Kelli mentioned the prospect of this crossover and I couldn't not. Sorry, Marcille.
A human girl no taller than Chilchack was tugging on Marcille’s sleeve. “Trade you.”
Marcille looked down. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah. Let’s trade.”
Of course you couldn’t expect much sense from children, so although she was tired and running out of patience and had been unable to make herself eat any of this cafe’s truly horrifying cuisine, she tried not to snap. “Trade what?”
“Guilds. Just for a day.” The child pointed to where Senshi and the restaurateur – Regina, wasn’t it? - were engaged in a contest of knife skills. The object they were practicing on had too many legs to be a horse, and Marcille would not allow herself to look at it any more closely than that. She did not want to know any more. But this small pigtailed girl looked riveted. She even appeared to be… salivating. “I want to eat Mr. Helmet’s cooking.” She looked seriously up at Marcille. “I know magic. So I can take your place. And you’ll like Flavio.” Now she pointed at the dark-haired youth talking to Laius about dungeon ecology. “He’s neurotic too. You can complain together.”
Marcille didn’t think she would like anyone in this guild. Maybe not this entire town. She had tried talking to Arianna, but after some wonderfully normal mutual pleasantries about “I love your hair, how do you keep it so lustrous through all your battles,” things had gone downhill. Fast. Marcille had been compelled to make an exit when the woman guilelessly asked, “Have you ever eaten dragon meat?”
She could not put all of her objections into words. The best she could manage was a taut, “I can’t possibly live here. I would go insane and die.” Senshi at least made his creations look like normal food, if you managed to avoid thinking about the ingredients. Not so here. Here she had watched Regina plate and serve an entire, actual armadillo.
“You don’t have to eat the spiders,” said the girl.
You were not supposed to scream at children. So this was not, technically, a scream. “Why in the world would I eat a spider?”
Across the room, Flavio went pale and steadied himself on his friend’s arm. The girl shrugged and told Marcille, “There’s a normal bar down the road. Sometimes I get steak for dessert.”
Senshi and Regina were doing something appalling with a chicken breast and a gelatin mold. Marcille riveted her eyes to the girl in the hat and did not dare look elsewhere. She had never made a more urgent request in her entire life than: “Please show me this normal bar.”
As it turned out, Chilchack had already found the normal bar. Chilchack was already nursing a beer and chatting with the bartender and an older blond man – Marcille would have estimated he was about two or three hundred before remembering humans didn’t live that long. More importantly: why hadn’t Chilchack told her he was leaving? How could he abandon her with those lunatics?
While Marcille fumed, the girl at her side said quietly, “Oh. I forgot. If we trade, you have to put up with Trand.”
“Well, you would have to put up with Laius.”
“Your Mr. Sword? I like him. He’s smart.”
That sealed it. The idea had already been too awful to contemplate, but this one thing made it even more nightmarish: the thought of Laius and this girl joining forces. No one in either party would know peace for the rest of their lifetimes. “No deal,” she said, “no trade, no sale, nothing, sorry, no,” and started looking for the wine list.