Great Busts and Nonplussed Fairy Dust
PART IX
Featuring @gargoylesister! Thank you for joining us! C:
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“Wah?!–”
Danmalaak’s eye snapped open as he sprang to his feet, trying to figure out who or what had just bellowed in his ear. So far as he could tell, no one was about. The drenched things as thickly as ever, rendering the building’s glow-lamps nearly useless, and everyone in their right minds were still curled up in bedrolls inside.
So what in Hyrule was that ROAR?
The goron turned as the door to the sky tower shot open. Cironus splayed across it, arms grabbing either side of the door jamb, his knee bent as though crouching for a racer’s start. He glanced from side to side, eyeballing the same as Danmalaak, before looking down to the goron himself.
“Take it you heard that?”
“Yeah. What was that?”
“Not sure,” said Cironus, scanning the encampment again. “Let’s just say I hope it’s not what I think it is.”
Danmalaak grimaced. “That bad?”
“Yeah–Dad, wait–OW–”
Fat Fin strode out of the tower, pushing Cironus’ arm out of the way like it was made of so much tissue paper. He looked about, acting as yet another sentinel, and sniffed, wiping already-drenched hair from his eyes.
“Dad, NO!” spluttered Cironus. “You’re six feet and maybe three-twenty soaking wet! If you go charging for that and it’s what I think it is, I don’t think my healing magic can–”
“We’ll talk about it after we’ve found your brother.”
Danmalaak could see Cironus blanch even in the rain-drenched twilight.
“Din’s balls - Sona, too! Let me get my guitar–”
Cironus dashed inside to do so. His hands had barely closed about the instrument’s neck before another ROAR bellowed through the station. By the time he’d darted outside, Fat Fin was nowhere to be found - but Danmalaak was already pointing eastward–
“He went that way!”
–guiding the two of them forward as they ran.
[[MORE]]
Sardon stared at the monster as it roared, doing his best to ignore his bowels turning to water while looking for weaknesses that he could bring to bear. It was a daunting task: hinox war cries often carried a resonant frequency that made the average Hylian’s skeleton rattle. Sardon’s mind had just enough processing capacity to bemoan that this never seemed to affect stalnoxes, even with all their own bones exposed in their undeath.
Still.
Skeleton.
Moving, sure, but skeleton…one which had been buried before now, which meant–
YES.
“…Sona,” said Sardon, his plan forming as the stalnox stomped forward, “when that thing comes swinging, I want you to run and find my dad and brother. I’ll keep him distracted in the meantime. Okay?”
Sona, nearly petrified with fear, squeaked out an “okay” and braced herself to run.
Sardon rolled his neck, cracking his knuckles and relishing the pop as they gave way. The stalnox paused, looming above him, arms wide, its single eye blinking in what Sardon assumed was confusion. After all, most Hylians did flee before advancing giants if they weren’t wielding both a blade and a solid inch of plate mail. This half-dressed Hylian, armed only with his fists, standing before it without voiding his bowels must have been a novelty, even in the creature’s simpleminded undeath.
Of course, when that novelty wore off, the stalnox spared no time stretching into an exaggerated arc with its hands. It reached up high, then slammed them down, flattening him with open-palms.
At least, it tried to.
Sardon sprang the moment the skeleton launched its attack, moving for a brash football-style tackle against its fibula. Six and a half feet of Lurelin-fed Hylian shoulder-checked the stalnox as its hands hit the earth, and the momentum between its hands and the Hylian’s shoulder sent its foot skidding along the mud by nearly a foot.
It wasn’t much, and it felt as though a firework had gone off in his shoulder a split-second after contact. The creature was three times taller than him, after all, and who knew how much heavier. The fact that there was any give was a surprise, though - one he celebrated with a hearty guffaw.
“HAH! Got you now, you ugly sack of–”
Several hundred pounds of bones then collapsed on top of him.
“OW!”
They didn’t brain him, at least. Chessica had done a great job with his outfit, too: his vest, comically small as it was, nevertheless covered his vitals enough that he was only mildly pummeled by the stalnox avalanche instead of being stabbed or sliced by its ribs. He had only to endure a coconut cavalcade as they piled around him, and not get distracted by the ridiculous xylophone noises that came as a result of prying himself free. He’d have to thank Chessica the next time they passed through Lurelin, if only because that vest’s material seemed tougher than lynel hide.
“Oh, you think you’re funny, do you,” he snarled. He grabbed one of the stalnox’s ribs before the skeleton had a chance to reform. “Well, let’s see what you make of–THIS!”
Sardon wrenched the bone from its joints and hefted it above him. Pausing only to glance at the pile at his feet, he drove the rib down, slamming the sharp end towards the pile as though planting a giant croquet wicket. The impact jammed his wrists, making his eyes water, and the bone quickly skidded and squelched into the mud, but the resulting CRACK and spiderwebbing along the undead’s femur was enough to make him grin.
“YEAH! That’s what I THOUGHT!” he bellowed, ripping it out of the ground and stabbing again. “Stop–hitting–yourself–stop–hitting–yourself–”
Those taunts turned to indignant surprise as the rib wrenched itself out of his hands. It dealt a glancing blow to his chest as it twisted, trying to reconnect with the stalnox’s sternum and spine. The bone seemed possessed of its own motivating force, only temporarily disabled by the skeleton’s abrupt collapse - and now that it was reassembling itself, that was back in full force as the skeleton rose once more above him.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING, BOY?!”
Sardon started at Fat Fin’s shout, wrenching about to see his father tearing into the clearing behind him. The reaction got him cold-cocked by the stalnox’s fist for his troubles, and the zorca-turned-Hylian flew a good ten yards before sliding into a mud-caked heap at his father’s feet.
“H-h-hi, Dad,” he said, eyes slightly crossed as he stared up at his father’s gut. “I’m stabbin’ skeletons, how’re you?”
“SARDON!” Fat Fin bellowed, wrenching his son out of the mud. “What’d I tell you about fighting stals, boy?!”
Sardon hugged himself for a moment. The full-body lift had snapped him out of his stupefaction, but he still winced from the stalnox’s blow even as his father set him back on his feet.
“Um…don’t?”
Sardon’s apex wrester of a father just looked at him. He suddenly felt very self-conscious in ways completely unrelated to the approaching bone beast.
“Oh…uh…no. Duh,” he said, trying to shake off the embarrassment. “Don’t…try…to stab them?”
His father grabbed him by the shoulder, wheeling him about by way of reply. The two of them dove out of the way as the giant skeleton made for another sweeping blow with its arms.
“SKELETON! RIBS!” Fat Fin roared, using his own momentum to roll through the muck. He then vaulted for the lowest set on the stalnox’s ribcage. “SKELETON RIBS!”
Sardon blinked, as much as in confusion as to wipe the muck from his eyes. What…
And then it struck him.
Of course he was shouting about ribs! The first thing Fat Fin saw arriving on scene had been Sardon trying to stab a pile of bones with another bone. He might as well have been trying to cut a fishing net by stabbing it with a sword. Sure, he might hit a single strand, but unless he swung it laterally…
All right, fine. I need something heavy , he thought, scanning the wrecked lab equipment around them. Like the rib, only not connected to this thing…
He spotted the cucco-shaped weather vane on the ground and paused, considering. The cupolas ordinarily indicating wind direction had shattered, being nothing but a fragmented brass ring at the top, but the vane itself had been a tethering post for table canopies. That centerpiece had been a thick steel pole, too. Maybe if he wielded it like a quarterstaff, he could…
His eyes lingered on the cucco-shaped silhouette at the pole’s top…and on the beak’s sharp hook shape.
What was it Sona had said?
Oh, right – those animals were “dangerous in real life though…”
He grinned.
========
As Sardon dashed for that weapon of choice, Fat Fin launched his own attack, using his grip on the skeleton’s lowest rib as leverage to land some vicious stomps on the creature’s pelvis. The creature recoiled, stumbling once more in the muck. Cracks formed in the bone where the ball of Fat Fin’s foot smashed into it.
The creature did not take this well, based on its screech (or, perhaps, the one its bones made). It reached for its groin, looking to grab the wrestler before he could do any further damage (and, perhaps, break him in half along the way). Fat Fin had already vaulted to the creature’s spine, however. Another jump later, he was on its sternum, scrambling up the interior of the stalnox’s ribcage as quickly as his limbs would take him.
In the midst of this, Cironus and Danmalaak finally reached the clearing. The two of them stared, baffled at the creature punching its own ribs in a macabre imitation of heartburn.
“What is your dad doing?!” asked Danmalaak.
“I, uh–” started Cironus.
Fat Fin answered the goron’s question far better than he ever could, though, pausing between each ladder-step on the creature’s ribs to land a punch on the joints holding said ribs to their sternum. Each callus-fisted hammer blow twisted the bone holding the ribcage together back and forth, looking increasingly likely to tear free at any moment. It gave the creature’s own chest-beating a new meaning; each thump was clearly an attempt to straighten the damage as much as it was to rip Fat Fin from its insides.
“I think…he’s trying to kill it from the inside,” Cironus finally said.
“HE’S MAKING A SLOW JOB OF IT!” bellowed Sardon - and a moment later, the family’s second professional fighter was charging in, swinging the weather vane in a heavy arc that smashed into the creature’s femur. The steel cucco beak struck square into the bone, biting into a crack he’d already made with the stalnox rib. Both bone and beak ripped away, leaving a massive gash in the creature’s leg.
Though he’d never seen the vane himself, Cironus would have sworn that the sound it made was a deranged, high-pitched, “BUG-GAWWWWK?”
“HAH-HAAAHHHHH!” Sardon bellowed, hacking again and again at the splinter point. “Take THAT, you ugly pile of bones!”
The stalnox was not taking this lying down, though. Sardon’s blows fractured the creature’s femur, but whatever motivating force kept it together was not about to let up just because of a few splinters to its form. The figure remained upright, a little worse for wear, and it responded to Sardon’s attack by leaping backward in a vicious butt-stomp.
Sardon jumped aside, catching a glancing blow leaving him spinning. Fat Fin was not so lucky: the lurch caught him by surprise, and the creature’s rear landing had finally dislodged him from its sternum. Fat Fin smashed against the back of its ribcage, rolling into the bowl of its pelvis. It was only by a chance grab along its rim that he avoided falling out of the creature altogether.
“DAD!” cried Cironus, crouching to join the battle, but his father held up his other hand.
“I’m FINE!” he yelled back. “Keep us in the fight, all right?!”
“Er–yeah! You got it!”
Cironus raised his guitar, slid his fingers across the strings, and licked his lower lip, considering his options. A pang of fear lanced through his innards - the guitar felt so different, so much taller and broader with him in his current form, that he was finding it difficult to balance across his hands. Making it worse was his inner thoughts: would his abilities even register with him in his current form? Was it something that would only work for him in his original zorca body? Would this Hylian transformation mess it up? What if he fouled it up - what would a misfire from those strings do under these circumstances?
His fingers slipped on the unfamiliar surface, playing a discordant jolt. Back at the fight, Sardon winced, missing his next blow - but a bright blue electrical arc lanced from Cironus’ guitar, narrowly missing his father as it struck the stalnox in the toe.
“GET YOUR HEAD IN THE GAME, CIR!” bellowed Sardon.
“Sorry! Just a sec!” Cironus shouted back.
Well, that answers that.
He fought to center the instrument, fumbling again at a power chord as the creature got back on his feet. It just felt so off - the distance between the frets was so strange, the strings so thick, that it was throwing off his rhythm. Nothing was going right! His brother and father jumped into the fray without a second thought, his dad acted without missing a beat - why was he, Cironus, failing so hard at getting a single phrase out?
He preoccupied himself so furiously that he nearly jumped out of his skin when Danmalaak tapped him on the shoulder.
“AAAAHHH–”
“Sorry!” Danmalaak yelled, holding up his hands. “Just–I saw you were having some trouble there, and–”
He mimed holding the instrument upright.
“Try playing it like a bass?”
Cironus blinked.
“That…could work.”
It did make sense. The frets were wider, the instrument that tall, compared to himself. He looked at the junk scattered around them. If he just had a flat spot to balance it on…
Danmalaak grabbed one of the nearby tables, shoving the instruments into a pile, and flipped it upside-down, sliding it across the mud to Cironus.
“I gotcha, man,” he said, grinning.
“Thanks!”
The Hylian set his guitar on the table’s underside, grasping the neck and feeling it out. It wasn’t bad, now that he had a proper grasp. He’d still have to consider the change in positions and improvise accordingly, but if he could work around that…
Cironus grasped the instrument tightly.
He considered the battle - his father wreaking havoc within the stalnox, his brother wailing on it from without.
Flexed his fingers.
Took a breath.
Then his eyes lit up and he grabbed the frets, slamming a power cord that illuminated his father and brother in the same blazing-green energy that sent Danmalaak cartwheeling over the landscape just a day ago. Sardon and Fat Fin both jolted with energy burst, and a wide, manic grin spread across both their faces as they sprang upright - Fat Fin with an upward leap, Sardon with a mad forward dash.
“FARORE’S GAMS!” bellowed Sardon, leaping and slashing at the stalnox’s backside. “THAT THING PACKS A WHALLOP!”
“TOO MUCH?” yelled Cironus.
“YOU CRAZY?! KICK IT UP A NOTCH!”
Cironus didn’t question it. The moment he recognized Sardon’s approving response, the music took over. His fingers worked of their own accord, fretwork and string-slides adjusting on the fly, and he slapped his guitar’s neck and body with a frenetic percussion whose addition colored the magic infused in his family.
The magic worked, softening bruises, knitting wounds, and above all, filling the two of them with wild vigors demanding expression in the wildest, most over-the-top pummeling ever. As Sardon leapt into a quarterstaff-swinging frenzy, Fat Fin leapt back into action, scaling the stalnox’s spine with the speed and mania of a pinball in a bumper cluster, striking bone and joint with wild, gleeful abandon.
“DAD!”
“WHAT?!”
Fat Fin glanced at Sardon, leaping away just in time to prevent being caught in the increasingly furious Stalnox’s grip.
“THE CRACKS, DAD! HIT ‘IM IN THE CRACKS!”
Sardon dodged a leg sweep, finally swinging at the points he’d seen so early on: a series of deep, spiderwebbed fracture lines in the creature’s spine and clavicle where scavengers had clawed and natural rot had festered during its entombment. Each swing of the vane left it a little more brittle, a little more bent - but they were also accompanied by bright blue FLASHes of light where that motivating stalnox energy worked double-time to to keep its body intact.
Fat Fin didn’t question it. He leapt to a battered vertebra on the lower spine, wrung his fingers in windup…and in one magically-enhanced frenzy, let loose callused, hardened Hylian knuckle-dusters against the splintered, softened bone. Enamel fragments and marrow popped apart, and in a brilliant blue FLASH the entire vertebra exploded, leaving only a flickering turquoise haze holding those bones together.
“HE’S ON THE ROPES!” Fat Fin bellowed. “KEEP IT UP AND–”
That was when the stalnox finally grabbed him.
“DAD!”
Sardon and Cironus screamed in near unison as a hand wrapped itself around the big man’s torso, putting the squeeze on in such force that it wrenched the air from his lungs. Fat Fin’s spineward grip was no match for the giant’s own strength, and he found himself torn at last from the creature’s interior. One lurching pull later, Fat Fin met the creature face to face, eyes-to-eye, its knuckles digging so deep into his flesh that he could feel those striations threatening to break his spine in half.
“SARDON!” screamed Cironus. “DON’T STOP–”
“DAAAAAAAD!”
Sardon lunged for the skeleton’s legs, swinging for their weak points in a wild frenzy. The vane snapped after the first swing, finally splintering in a jagged line along its center, but this did not stop him. Indeed, he grabbed half of the instrument in each hand and stabbed their jagged edges into the creature’s marrow, wrenching them apart in a scissor thrust that shattered each fault line along its edges. Each point popped with a brilliant flash, causing the creature to stumble just a little bit more - but the stubborn monster would not fall, would not collapse, would not release Cironus’ and Sardon’s father.
Its grip squeezed all the harder. Fat Fin gasped, spots erupting in his vision, and he hammered at the creature’s knuckles, knitting his hands together in great sledgehammer blows against its claws.
But the creature would not relent.
Would not stop.
Would not relinquish that vicegrip on his chest.
Cironus flinched as one of his father’s ribs cracked, feeling the break as a jolt of magical feedback between his fingers even as Fat Fin could only wheeze in response. Cironus jammed all the harder, pushing against the pain and the fear, lunging forward step by step, pushing through the deluge as though it were a physical force. His healing shifted in response, forming of a wall of force around Fat Fin’s body, providing him additional resistance against the stalnox’s claws - but the creature’s grip was inexorable, using every last fiber of its strength to take down at least one of the zorca before its own strength failed it.
“Hang on…Dad…” Cironus wheezed, feeling his father’s pain as though it were his own. “You gotta–hang on–we can…do it…”
And then, a great, dazzling font of light struck the creature in the eyeball.
The creature howled, dropping Fat Fin in a desperate attempt to shield its face from the blinding assault. Cironus gaped, whipping his head from the brilliant blast to trace its source - and found it at the top of the Necluda sky tower, where a lone figure, cast in silhouette, was holding something too brilliant to see behind an enormous focusing lens.
He almost forgot to keep playing as he realized who it was.
“…Sona?!”
It was. Sona’s blast caught the stalnox completely unawares, and, having dropped Fat Fin to the ground, was now writhing in pain, completely vulnerable to Sardon’s furious, borderline rabid attacks. Blow after blow rained upon the creature, splintering bone and marrow alike, and before long–
CRASHHHHHH
The magic holding it together finally disintegrated, collapsing into a pile of inert bone.
=========
Fat Fin wheezed as the hand released its grip, individual bones slowly shedding from him as he fought to breathe through crushed lungs. He made no attempt to hurry the process or to get up, and for a moment, Cironus was certain he’d been knocked unconscious.
“DAD!”
Cironus beat feet the moment the skeleton collapsed, bearing his guitar as though it were a greataxe. Danmalaak followed, raising Cironus’ table as an improvised weapon - but upon there being no immediate danger, he instead tossed it to his friend’s feet.
“Keep playing,” he said, pointing to Fat Fin. “I’ll go check on your brother.”
“Got it.”
The guitar slid into bass formation again as Cironus played, changing from a hard-rock stance to a classical pizzicato as he concentrated on his father’s wounds. The blue haze formed around Fat Fin’s body again, magical tendrils poking at his back and shoulders like acupuncture needles as they probed the points where the stalnox’s bone had creased against his skin. Everywhere they touched, the skin tightened, his inflamed flesh beneath flattening and cooling, and his father winced, jerking his neck with each hiss and pop.
“I thought your healing wasn’t supposed to hurt,” Fat Fin muttered, his voice a low rasp.
Cironus exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
“You’re awake!” he exclaimed, wiping his forehead sweat against the guitar neck. “Sorry - I thought you wouldn’t be able to feel that, I can make some adjustments–”
“No, no. Pain’s good,” Fat Fin grunted, squeezing his fists experimentally. “It means it didn’t snap my neck.”
Cironus’ gut roiled at the thought.
“Anything else, well, that’s Easy Street for you. Right?” his father continued.
“Er–yeah,” Cironus stammered, surreptitiously adding a few blues licks to his song to help stifle his father’s pain.
It did look like Fat Fin had lucked out. The tug and twist of his spirit playing on Cironus’ fingers certainly informed him that Sona’s attack had hit in the nick of time. Had she been even a few seconds late, Cironus’ wall would have come undone, and the stalnox would have probably crushed Fat Fin like an egg. As it was, there were a number of miniature fractures lining the wrestler’s ribcage, something that the wreckage about them reminded him of unpleasantly. He doubled down, rebuilding those fractures with a series of sliding fourths.
Sardon bounded back a short time later, looking a little wall-eyed at his brother’s playing. He was still holding the shattered vane in his hands; the cucco was nowhere to be seen, having been the first thing to go during their attack. It was probably just as well: with all the blunt-force trauma he’d inflicted on the stalnox, it was probably gnarled into some horrific abomination.
“How’s Dad?” he asked. “I was, uh, trying to do some cleanup, but– “
“Try asking directly,” Fat Fin intoned from his spot in the mud, making Sardon flinch in surprise. “Let the healer do his job.”
“Ganon’s pits!” Sardon muttered. “I’d’ve asked if I knew you were awake! You ever try sitting up, old man?!”
“Who’re you calling old-AUGH!”
Fat Fin’s complaint turned to a yelp as Sardon wrenched him into a sitting position. Cironus made a face at his brother, who shrugged in response.
“If he can whine, he can sit,” Sardon said.
“Take it easy on an old man!”
“Well, you’re feeling better,” Cironus said, finally allowing himself a relieved grin. If they were carping at each other already, it meant that the worst was mostly likely past. He could probably patch up his dad with a bit more work, then check out his brother’s bruising before Sona even made her way back to them.
Something was niggling at the back of Cironus’ head, though. He’d helped Link out in a few battles against the Stals during the Upheaval, and those had always been mad scrambles towards the end. Wasn’t there something they were forgetting?
“…Say,” he said, doing his best to be nonchalant. “You guys are positive this thing’s not going to spring back to life, right? Like, it is down for the count, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Sardon - at the same time Fat Fin said “Sure.”
“Abs-”
“Absolutely.”
“Totally.”
“Yeah.”
“Even double-tapped its butt-bone and skull,,” said Sardon, twirling the weather vane splinters in his hands. “You know, while you were with Dad.”
“Can’t come back without its eye, either,” replied Fat Fin. “And obviously you got the eye, right?”
Sardon paused.
“I mean, without a skull to attach to–”
Sardon yelped as Fat Fin grabbed his vest, wrenching him down to eye level.
“You did get the eye, right?” Fat Fin hissed.
“…Um.”
As if in response, the three of them jolted in surprise as the skeleton scattered about them pulsed once more with an electric blue haze. Bones lurched up, popping free from the mud of their own accord, and slowly began to drift towards one another, their joints popping together like molybdenum magnets as they reached critical ranges with one another.
Blood drained from Sardon’s face as the stalnox reformed itself above them.
“You have got to be KIDDING me–”
“The eye!” yelled Cironus, ceasing his play and wielding his guitar like an axe again. “Where did it go?!”
“I don’t know! I lost track of it after the light attack”
“UP THERE!”
Fat Fin pointed. Eighteen feet above them and two body lengths out of reach, the stalnox’s eye drifted forward, spinning madly in one direction before glancing in another. It hummed of its own accord, spilling a green miasma from its glowing, slitted pupil, and arcs of energy lanced out, connecting it to the various cranial shards Sardon had left in his wake. They rose as well, moving to connect with the monster’s vertebrae, and as the miasma flowed from the creature’s eye to those fragments, they flashed with an electric blue as they began to reform.
“Hit it with something!” Cironus cried.
“With what?!” yelled Sardon.
“With your stick - that spear thing–”
Sardon chucked both weather vane splinters in the eye’s direction. Despite its clear trajectory, both shots went wide; in response, it swiveled down to look at him, the skull it was seeking opening its splintered jaw in a wide, mocking leer.
“OH COME ON!” shrieked Sardon.
“I do not want to fight this thing again,” said Fat Fin, moving to unfold his limbs–
“HYAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!”
The sound of whipcracks were the only warning the trio got before Danmalaak made his presence known. The goron sped through the ruined observatory annex, rolling with such speed that his salt-rock dreadlocks lifted up and out, popping his body out of the mud like a spinning sawblade. He sped madly for the Hylian trio, racing for the stalnox - and just as he was about to collide with them, he jerked his head forward, slapping those dreadlocks down earlier and using the force of the collision to rocket his lightweight body into the air.
Danmalaak sailed forth, spiking skyward like some furious volleyball of doom, and connected with the eyeball with the force of a missile. The impact tore the eye from its skeleton-borne trajectory, snapping the tendrils of energy that connected it with the skeleton, causing the construct to sag. Before it could resume its path, Danmalaak snatched it out of the air, flying ever higher, and the Hylians watched the red-and-gray pinwheel sail another thirty feet before he reached his terminus.
After a moment that felt like an eternity, both goron and eyeball fell from the sky, still spinning, still screaming. Danmalaak clung to the eyeball with his arms and legs, the world lost to him in a blur of centrifugal force, his comparatively slight frame still providing more than enough force to counteract the eyeball’s magical levitation. Both spheres hurtled to the ground - and just before connecting, the goron shoved the eyeball down, pinning it underneath his feet even as it began to bulge from impact.
There was a brilliant flash of light–
BOOOOOOM.
–and after a magnificent green explosion, the skeleton once more fell from the sky, this time never to rise again.
Danmalaak stumbled drunkenly towards the trio, limbs splaying every which way, his eyes crossing every which way but the right one. He gave the table next to them a jerky thumbs-up, grinning like an absolute idiot–
“…Got it!”
–and then immediately face planted into the mud.
