#tboi shopkeeepr

[ask-the-king-baby]

In a small, locked, wooden room, buried deep underground, a dried-up corpse sits, motionless. Its eyes are empty sockets. Its skin is grey and withered.

Before it sits a variety of objects. A key, a bomb, a still-beating heart, a tarot card, and a small ladder, all marked with prices in cents. In one corner of the room sits a machine with a large sign, reading "DONATION", above a three-digit counter and a coin slot. The number is somewhere in the three hundreds.

In the other corner sits a similar machine, but different. It bears a scuffed, but sleek dark blue appearance, and some kind of digital monitor, which appears to be powered off. It, too, has a coin slot.

The room sits quiet. Nothing moves, save for a couple tiny flies.

Then, suddenly, a scuffle can be heard a couple rooms away. Grunts and impacts. The growls of strange beasts. Continued footsteps. The noise draws closer and closer, and pauses outside the room. A faint jingling is audible, and then the door is unlocked.

A girl with long, black hair enters. She seems mostly unremarkable, aside from a large-ish red fly circling around her, following at a distance. She looks at the assortment of items on the ground and rolls her eyes. She looks disappointed. Reluctantly, she takes the key, dropping some pennies on the ground in its place. They seem to vanish. Before she leaves, she drops two more into the machine marked "DONATION". She briefly looks at the blue machine, but dismisses it.

After briefly locking eyes with the corpse sitting at the head of the room, she takes her leave.

The continued sounds of combat can be heard in the distance for a while, but eventually, they fade away to nothing. The room is quiet once more.

Quiet, that is, until the corpse suddenly lurches forward. Shuddering and trembling, it rises to its feet, hunched forward, before abruptly leaning back into a full-body stretch.

???: "Mreh… Took her long enough."

The corpse speaks, to no one in particular. It walks across the room, and leans down to the floor, feeling around for something. Then, it lifts up a floorboard, revealing a lever, which it pulls. Holes suddenly appear in the floor, and the left-over items disappear into them. New holes appear in the ceiling, and a new assortment of odds and ends deposit from them. Four in total. However, there appears to be an empty spot, and one of the holes in the ceiling refuses to disappear. The corpse examines the hole.

???: "…Hello? Anyone up there?"

A couple more moments pass. The corpse looks somewhat irritated. Then, rather abruptly, a small blue creature comes flying out, and instead of stopping on the ground, begins to fly about the room. The corpse chuckles and mutters under its breath.

???: "Hoo boy."

The blue creature finally comes to a rest, seated atop the "DONATIONS" machine. It appears similar to an infant, but with dark blue skin. Its body tapers off at the waist, with no legs to speak of; only a small, pointed, tail-like protrusion. It has no mouth. Its eyes appear to be cartoonishly X-ed out, as if it were deceased, and on its head, it wears a small, golden crown. The creature somehow speaks, projecting with great bravado and assuming a heroic pose.

KING BABY: "Fear not, loyal citizen! Your king has arrived!"

The corpse watches this with mild amusement before responding, in a somewhat insincere tone of voice.

???: "Well, hello, King Baby. What brings 'your highness' here today?"

King Baby chuckles.

KING BABY: "Why, you know why I am here! I am here to assist you, humble shopkeeper, to offer my services to your customers, to aid them through this labyrinth. Is that not why I am always here?"

The shopkeeper, smiling, makes a show of responding as if the King had pointed out something of great significance.

SHOPKEEPER: "Oh, of course. Excuse my ignorance, 'your majesty'."

King Baby seems to smile (despite his lack of mouth), his eyes arching upwards in satisfaction.

KING BABY: "Worry not, dear compatriot. I promise you, we will surely make a sale together on this fine day."

The shopkeeper regards King Baby with a smirk, before walking to the other end of the room to lean against the wall, stretching.

SHOPKEEPER: "Well, we've got some time to kill before the next customer. Make yourself comfortable. I need a hell of a stretch. Sitting still for that long really locks up the joints."

He scans the room as he stretches, only to falter for a second. It appears the blue machine in the corner has turned on, the screen now lit up.

SHOPKEEPER: "Huh?"

The shopkeeper approaches the strange machine. It displays some kind of command prompt console, with two short messages.

"CONNECTION ESTABLISHED." "AWAITING INPUT…"

The shopkeeper looks upon the machine in surprise.

SHOPKEEPER: "Huh. Well, I'll be damned. This thing finally works. Short Change will be pleased."

King Baby leans over from his perch on the other machine, trying to see the screen.

KING BABY: "Oh? What's going on over there?"

The shopkeeper chuckles.

SHOPKEEPER: "Oh, Short Change has been trying to get this machine running for a long time. Says it's some kind of fancy fortune machine he found on one of the deeper levels. Connects to somewhere else, and outputs questions and advice and stuff in response to what's around it."

King Baby looks on in awe.

KING BABY: "That sounds amazing! Can we talk to it? How?"

SHOPKEEPER: "Supposedly, this thing can just hear us. Maybe it can hear you right now."

King Baby's crossed-out eyes widen further.

KING BABY: "Woooow."

He excitedly waves at the machine.

KING BABY: "Hello, new machine friend! Do you have anything you wish to know of the mighty King Baby?"

King Baby and the Shopkeeper are now open for questions.

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