Chapter 9: Gaslighting Can Get Gaslighted
Dolphin cradled Sam’s dead body. “You didn’t have to do this” she said with tears running down her face.
But she soon noticed that Sam was wrong! The crown didn’t die just because he did… It was still in his lap, in perfect condition.
“Having your own willpower is so overrated” Dolphin said. And with that, she put on the Crown of Gaslighting and used its power to resurrect Sam. Because she still loved him, because she still needed him here. And because he was being fucking stupid and she needed to nag at him.
A bright magical white light enveloped Sam’s body and he looked around. “Whoa. What happened?” He looked in his pockets for his gun, but Dolphin Water Jetted it off the building.
He noticed Dolphin was wearing the crown.
“Whoah Dolphin, slowly take the crown off…” he said. Sam loved talking about makeup & girly stuff with Dolphin in the wee hours of the morning, but wasn’t sure that he wanted to do it 24/7.
To Sam’s surprise, Dolphin did as she was told.
“See?” Dolphin said. “You don’t need some damn crown to be influential” she said. “That was supposed to work the other way around right, but look at us. Our love is greater than the Crown of Gaslighting!”
They heard a man clapping in the shadows. His tone was half-mocking, half-empathetic and serious.
“True love really does conquer all, as cliché as that is” the man said as he made himself be known in the moonlight. He was wearing black cargo pants and a gray turtle neck sweater.
“But.. the Crown of Gaslighting is still 2nd in charge” he said, his raccoon-ish eyes looking down at the object.
Sam pointed at the man. “Cpig was the dude who had the third piece of the Crown!” he told Dolphin.
“I doubt you’d be able to take me in a fight if you hadn’t already had two pieces” Cpig said.
“Oh please, you’re like two feet tall” Sam said.
“Boys!” Dolphin said. “Knock it off right now!” She turned to Cpig. “Cpig, what do you know about the Crown of Gaslighting?”
“Not much more than you know” Cpig said. “Enables the bearer to morph the world to whatever they want, can’t be destroyed, and if you break it up the inevitable happens and it just finds itself again. One alchemist in the 1400s even managed to find a way to blast it into a billion particles but it found its way whole again” Cpig said.
“And now we know you can’t even destroy it if you kill yourself while wearing it” Sam said.
“So what, we’re all just screwed over by this thing?” Dolphin said. She refused to believe that.
“I have an idea” Cpig said. “The crown’s power needs to be… systematised.”
What a Te word, Sam thought. “Uh…”
“We need to have a competition between us” Cpig said. As a capitalist, he loved competition. “A battle royale with all the Adventurers.”
“Winner gets to wear the Crown of Gaslighting…” Sam said.
“Yes, but only for a year. Because we now know something that we didn’t know before: True Love’s power dilutes the power of the Crown” Cpig said. “Dolphin and Sam, hold hands again and think about how much you love each other.”
Dolphin and Sam held hands and thought about all the happy memories they shared online over the years. Sure enough, the Crown faded, turned a more copper color and looked weaker.
Dolphin tried to love Sam as much as she possibly could, to blow up the crown completely – but that didn’t work. As with Good, you need Evil – or something like that.
“So even if somebody like Absurd or k0rpsey wins the Crown of Gaslighting, we can just say our koombahyas again and stop them from being too nasty…” Sam said. He thought about it.
“Let’s do it” Sam said.
Dolphin felt torn. The hero in her wanted to not fight her friends, the gamma in her was like Bring it on bitches. Eventually, Dolphin nodded in agreement.
And that is how the Crown of Gaslighting became the ultimate tournament prize.
Cpig took the Crown of Gaslighting, now fully formed, and held it up in the night sky. Like Link holding up the Triforce.
~FIN~