Ideas

Chapter 7: Saving You (Is Saving Myself)

Idea:

Liquidator pisses off a magical spirit, mostly due to his greed, and gets sent to another world until he improves himself. He lands in a desert and gets captured by a sorcerer, who imprisons him in a glass cage. He is presented to a king as a water demon, and meets the King's servant: Bud Flud.

The unmutated Bud Flud alternates between confident and cringing, manipulative in his own way but fully subservient to the King.

Once alone with Bud as his guard, Liquidator tries to convince him to unlock the cage. Bud asks why he would do that, what's in it for him? After a bit of back and forth where Bud holds all the cards:

-----

"Alright, fine. What do you want?" Liquidator grumbled, tired of this.

"Same thing as you." Bud shrugged. "My freedom. Take me as far from here as you can, after I free you."

"You have no way of knowing I'll do it." Liquidator reminded him of his own words.

"And you have no way of knowing this isn't a trick." Bud swung the key around on his finger, still so calm and casual. "In fact, neither of us do."

"We both must be pretty desperate, then." Liquidator smirked, earning a nod and a hum of agreement from the other.

-----

Unfortunately, the King barges in, angry to find his servant dealing with his prisoner. Bud fearfully tries to deny it, begging forgiveness, but is interrupted by a vicious slap from the King. He ends up whimpering on the ground, tail tucked between his legs, taking the King's abuse without even trying to fight back.

Meanwhile, Liquidator -- futilely throwing himself against the glass -- quite literally begins to boil, giving himself an idea. He hates messing with his own temperature, as it's hard and feels weird, but he pushes himself to get as hot as he possibly can.

The glass starts the get hot as boiling water hits against it again and again, causing everyone to look on in various degrees of wonder and terror. Focusing with all of his might, Liquidator near-instantly cools down to just-shy-of-ice levels, shattering the glass.

The sorcerer isn't there, and the guards ae useless against a living tidal wave, so Liquidator easily escapes with Bud in tow. Likky goes very, very far from the palace, collapsing behind a dune.

Bud timidly asks how he did that, saying he truly must be a water demon, and why did he take him with him? He didn't free him, didn't complete his end of the deal. Liquidator just groans and takes a look at the other's wounds.

It's only a few scratches, but Likky decides to clean them, getting a flinch and whimpered plea not to hurt him, but no resistance. He bids Bud farewell, starting to go his own way, but:

-----

"You're just going to let me go?" Bud whispered, causing Liquidator to stop and look back. "You really aren't going to hurt me, or keep me prisoner, or anything?"

"Why would I?" Liquidator asked, missing his salesman speech, but doubting it would do anything but confuse people here.

"I... You get nothing out of this." Bud said quietly. "You freed yourself. Normally when someone steals a slave, they keep them. If that's not your plan, and you're not going to hurt me for bargaining your freedom, why did you bring me with you?"

"Because the way he was treating you was wrong." Liquidator surprised himself by saying. He was a villain, he wasn't supposed to feel pity! He blamed the fact that this guy was technically him, bringing it back around to selfish greed.

"Wrong?" Bud blinked, genuine confusion blocking his fear. "The King is my Master, he was perfectly within his rights to-"

"Was your master." Liquidator corrected, eyes narrowing. "And no one is ever in their rights to do that to you. You should've fought back."

"I guess I'm not really used to fighting back." Bud muttered, then. "Was... I'm really free now, aren't I?"

"I don't believe in taking slaves, and there's no one else around, so the statistics are trending towards yes!" There, that wasn't too salesman-y, was it?

"'Don't believe in taking slaves'? You're a weird one, water demon or not." Bud chuckled, shaking his head. "I wonder what I'll do now... Where are you heading?"

"I'm not exactly from around here, so I guess I'm going to find the nearest city and figure out what to do from there." Liquidator decided, shrugging.

"You need a guide?"

-----

And thus, Likky and Buddy started traveling together. Eventually, Liquidator gets over his greed and gets to return home, leaving Bud and other new friends much better off then before they met him.

Bud is good at picking both pockets and locks. He wears a white robe with a hood, faded yellow outlining the rims.