Yukipo Chronicles: 4 in 1 (Improved Collection)
Disclaimer:
This is all 4 Yukipo Shorts in one Blog Post. It has been significantly improved by RhetoricalHypothetical, who edited my original story and made it sound more cohesive and, in general, a lot nicer.
I am very grateful for him lending his Time to make my mess readable.
Anyway, enjoy the improved Yukipo Chronicles. °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°
Chapter 1: Foresting for your Soul
Ever since Yukipo first saw the light of day, she was obsessed with the beauty of nature. So, without being told, she knew both what her purpose was and what the meaning of her life was.
Most people would be scared, waking up in a strange forest with no recollection of how they got there, or who they even were. But Yukipo didn't mind, as she was gazing in amazement at the beauty of the flowers, trees and even fungi that surrounded her in this seemingly eternal forest.
She had never seen a tree before, or a flower for that matter, yet she knew what they were. Yukipo found them to be curious. She slowly approached, on twinkle toes, a group of red flowers surrounding a large oak tree.
She wasn't very tall, so even a Begonia would be bigger in comparison. Because of this, exploring the creations of nature was all the more exciting for little Yukipo. With her heart jumping up and down in her chest, she smelled the beautiful flowers. A sweet scent filled her nose. Yukipo was taking it all in.
The scenery made Yukipo ecstatic, and her excitement grew exponentially. Behind the oak tree was an even bigger flower field, located in a small tree-less valley within the forest.
Yukipos eyes started to glitter, her mouth widened into a huge smile. With all the might her tiny legs could muster, she jumped into the flower bed, full of innocent playfulness. Humming a faint tune, Yukipo explored and observed all the different flowers, and even the weeds growing in between.
After wandering for a while in the labyrinth of flowers, she stopped dead in her tracks. A small yellow and black striped creature was flying from flower to flower. She wasn't sure what to make of it, but it was interesting nonetheless.
She closely inspected the bee while following it to another tree. There, the bee flew into an oval nest.
Yukipo wanted to know more about the funny looking thing, so she tried to climb up the tree, but to no avail. Her rather small, timid body wasn't able to support her mounting attempt. Several failed attempts later, Yukipo sat down under the tree. A light melancholy crawled up inside her. It made her sad that she would never be able to see the creature again.
Just at that very moment, another bee landed on a dandelion just in front of poor Yukipo. Her sadness was immediately gone and replaced with the same happiness she had experienced before.
The bee, not minding Yukipos presence, worked on collecting the nectar from the dandelion. It was easy for Yukipo to see all the bee’s features. "Cute." Yukipo whispered in a shy and timid voice.
She continued to behold the cuteness of the bee, until it flew away again. This time Yukipo wasn't sad, because she understood now what it was doing. She knew the bees purpose, and now she also knew her purpose. This refilled Yukipo with a surge of vigor.
"I...I...," she stuttered," I shall protect this...forest."
She needed a better understanding of what she wanted to protect, so Yukipo decided to document all the different plants and animals in this forest. It was going to be a lot of work, but it would be worth it.
In the following days Yukipo traversed her forested area, proclaiming herself the Superman of everything living in its boundaries.
At this time, Yukipo did not know that the world was much bigger than the forest. She was just born after all, and her knowledge of the world small. Just as small as her own body size.
Out of all the different flowers of the forest she inspected, the flowers she was most fond of were the tulips. Yukipo loved their smell and beauty; she wondered how these things came to be. So she decided to carefully dig one of the tulips out of the ground. She had to use her tiny hands for this endeavor, which just made the process that much slower, but Yukipo’s burning curiosity helped her struggle through.
"Ooh." she gasped, looking at the roots of the tulip she just removed from its earthly home. Like lightning hitting a tree, an idea shot through her head. She understood the roots purpose. One could call it a natural talent of hers.
Yukipo was about to put the tulip on a flat rock for a better view of its intricate structure, when a loud mechanical noise echoed through the forest.
Sounding almost like a huge tiger, it scared poor Yukipo to her core. The only thing she had ever heard in the last couple of days in the forest were birds singing, wild pigs oinking, and the occasional squirrel cracking some nuts.
But this sound was very different. It was very loud and menacing. Yukipos legs were trembling and she was about to cry, when the sound appeared again, this time much closer to her location.
"No," Yukipo encouraged herself, "I mustn't be scared. I am the protector of this forest. I will...I must...save it. At all costs."
She collected all her volition and willpower. Fear wouldn't hold her back, so she strutted forward into the direction of the awful repetitive noise.
Chapter 2: Construction of the Inner Being
Yukipo couldn't believe her eyes. At the edge of the forest she called home was a giant, yellow, one-armed monster. It was this thing that emitted the awful crunching noises.
The Beast used its one arm to tear deep into the earth realm, ripping out everything that was beneath it. Animals, Plants and Trees alike fell victim to its destructive wrath.
Yukipo watched in horror as the devastation occurred right in front of her. The Yellow Monster was huge. It was bigger than most of the trees, and it certainly towered over most of the plants in the forest. It was many times bigger than tiny Yukipo, who was a mere speck in comparison to the rampaging, yet cold, animal.
"Stop," Yukipo shouted with all the air her small lungs could muster," Stop! You're hurting the other animals. Let us talk this out, okay?"
Yukipos meager attempts at soliciting the thing into a formal conversation fell on deaf ears. So, Yukipo decided to get a little bit closer to the strange animal. Maybe she was just too far away, she thought.
Now standing just 20 feet away from the rumbling, crunching, and digging, Yukipo tried again.
"Stop! There is no reason to be mean and go around breaking fellow friend's homes. Can we not talk about why you are angry? Maybe we can find a solution." Yukipo put on her most innocent smile, as she attempted to appeal to the monster’s emotional side.
Her desperate inquiries were gone with the wind, as the monster continued to shred its surroundings. Yukipo then noticed thick black smoke slowly spreading through the desolated area.
The smog irritated Yukipo’s eyes, and all the plants in close proximity let their heads hang to the ground.
Yukipo couldn't take seeing her friends being hurt. Friends, that were unable to fend for themselves. "You mean bully!" Yukipo had had enough of the rampaging monstrosity. It tore out trees and plants; and now it even shot disgusting substances into the air.
Yukipo, now being aware of the fact that this thing wouldn't listen to reason of any kind, decided to gather all her strength and courage. It was time to face it head on.
She waited for the beast to turn away from her and slowly, but steadily, approached, from what Yukipo assumed to be its behind.
During her days in the forest, Yukipo figured out how to build useful tools. Tools that aided her in her management of nature. Among them, a grappling hook.
Yukipo positioned herself just right, so she could reach a nice opening to latch on to with her hook. The noise, in the meantime, had gotten louder and Yukipos ears hurt like crazy. She ignored the pain, though. Saving her friends was a more pressing issue.
With this thought, she threw the hook and hit a lucky spot. The grappling hook got caught at one of the disgusting mouths of the smog creature.
"Yes!" She was very happy with herself. All that tree climbing had finally paid off.
Like a mountaineer she, in a few minutes, pulled herself up the vine and onto the main body of the creature.
It took Yukipo a while before she managed to find good footing on the hard, vibrating surface she encountered. "Odd." She thought, while inspecting the monsters skin. It was harder than anything she has ever touched, and much colder too.
Hitting it resulted in a muffled resonance. This made Yukipo suspect of the animalness of her enemy. But she had no time to think about this now, because she had to find a way to stop it. The ever growing number of fallen trees only managed to embolden her in her mission.
The hard nature of the skin she walked on reminded Yukipo of the turtles who were living at a pond in her forest. Near the pond was a small hill with a light waterfall drizzling down into the turtles habitat.
"Of course," Yukipo spontaneously erupted, "this animal must be like a turtle. The real animal is inside this shell.”
Yukipo had to find a way inside. She looked all over the yellow surface. A lot of tiny slits, but Yukipo couldn't fit through those. The first time she was too big for something. This brought a short lived smile to her face.
As quickly as it came, the smile disappeared again, as she spotted what appeared to be a cavity of the outer skin. Yukipo had finally found a way in. This opening did not seem like it was originally supposed to be there. It looked like something crashed into the shell and ripped it open.
Yukipo couldn't believe her luck.
She took a quick glance into the hole. It was pitch black, and Yukipo only had one make-shift torch with her.
"This has to do," she thought, while putting on her best war face, "I must do it for my friends in the forest."
With all her bravery, she took a step back and jumped, legs first, into the pitch black hole; deep into the inner guts of the horrible creature.
Chapter 3: Noxious Guts
The fall was surprisingly short, and the impact appropriately mild. Not that it would have mattered much. Yukipo landed on something soft and slimy.
Shocked by the unusual consistency of her accidental saviour, she quickly rolled off the black blob of goo. Thankfully, the Blob did not seem to have a mind of its own, as it did not appear to be bothered too much by something dropping on it.
Even though the Blob thing did not mind, Yukipo did. Her nice white dress was now covered in a greasy black substance, with a smell worse than the common stinkhorn.
Although Yukipo liked her dress much, she had no time to be sad about its dirtying. She came this far, so she wouldn't let some grease on her clothes stop her. Besides, Yukipo was used to it. Whenever it became night in the forest, Yukipo always dug herself a hole to sleep in. Wet and mossy soil was her favourite. She didn't quite know why, but sleeping underground regenerated her and made her feel energetic in the morning.
"Yuck." A combination of disgust and fear rushed through Yukipos body, while observing this strange mess of a slimy pillow. She touched it slightly, only to quickly pull back. The texture made her spine tingle.
Since the gooey blob did nothing but lay around, Yukipo diverted her attention to the rest of the place she just dropped into.
The atmosphere was bordering on unbearable. The air here was warm and smothering. Yukipo was sweating from just standing. Breathing was possible, but the air’s unhealthy and mucky nature prohibited any strenuous tasks.
The atmospheric condition was mirrored in the design of the surroundings. It wasn't as dark as Yukipo thought it was going to be, but that did not make it much better. The site was wrought with cylinders of different lengths and thickness. Yukipo thought they looked like versions of tree trunks, except smooth and warm to the touch.
The floor was covered in numerous grids, through which light illuminated Yukipos location. Her understanding of the source of light was lacking, but she did know that this light was not natural.
Looking down through the spaces between the bars, Yukipo saw a yellowish, magma-like river. This slow moving river was the source of not just the light, but also of the tremendous heat, which was thankfully a lot weaker above the grid.
The light was just enough for Yukipo to make out a corridor through the unnatural tree trunks. A corridor which was just spacious enough for Yukipo to walk through.
The big, static, iron worms in this corridor seemed to have a flatulence problem. Once in a while, they hissed and shot out a stream of very hot air, often almost burning Yukipo while she traversed between them.
Not that she was able to touch these worms anyway; they were incredibly hot. Yukipo had to, as swiftly as possible, crouch under or jump over them, always timing her next move just right so that she wouldn't get hit by another blast of hot air.
"This...this...is not an animal." she stuttered fearfully.
Yukipos anxiety level rose the more she pushed on through the corridor. It wasn't a very long corridor, but because of the tight spaces between the unmovable torrid worm-like tubes, Yukipo had some trouble fitting through them.
Luckily, she made it to the other end of the hallway, but not without some physical pain. Her right knee had been wounded by a sharp screw sticking out of the tubes, and her small arms and legs suffered multiple slight burns.
The scrape on her knee wasn't too bad, but Yukipo couldn't afford to take any risks. She pulled out a couple of plantain leaves she had turned into bandages. Yukipo hurt herself on a regular basis in the forest, so she always had some of them on her.
"Porcupines are very stingy." she whispered to herself, while putting on one of the bandages.
Even with her knee all bandaged up, Yukipo needed to take a short break. At the end of the worm room was a junction, which was not as hot and sticky as the rest of the room, mostly due to some tiny air-holes to the outside. This was a good resting place for now.
The insides of that beast took their toll on poor Yukipo. Her eyes were red and burned from the toxic air, she was covered in a greasy, smelly substance which made her sick, and her entire body hurt from all the little burns she had suffered. Not to mention her knee.
Sitting near the air-holes, Yukipo, in her mind, went over several plans on how to take out the one-armed felon. She needed to find its heart, if it had one, and destroy it.
She hated having to do that. She would have preferred to talk it out, if she had been able to. Sometimes, though, the well being of the many stood above the well being of one evil monster.
After a few minutes, Yukipo picked herself up. She still had not recovered all of her energy, but that was impossible to accomplish in this environment.
The only hint Yukipo could go by in finding the heart was her small biological knowledge about the nature of hearts. "They pound." She thought, looking around the junction she was currently in.
She could either go left or right. It seemed that both ways had been labeled, but Yukipo couldn't read the signs.
"Eeny, meeny, miny, moe." Yukipos finger ended up pointing to the right.
"Alright, right it is." Her confidence was slightly shaken by her preceding experiences since coming here, but she was still far from done; considering what was at stake.
With a proud strut, hiding her short-windedness, she turned to the right, following down the next dark way deeper into the belly of the beast, and passing the sign she could not read, which said: "Engine-Room."
Chapter 4: Heart of Sludge
Yukipo followed her chosen pathway without being distracted by any of the weird, scary, and unnatural constructions entering her line of sight. Under normal circumstances, she would have taken her time examining the entire inside structure that opened up to her. Unfortunately, the circumstances were not normal, and in fact very dire, because these insides belonged to a creature that was, right now, destroying Yukipos home.
Thus, these interesting appearances and designs disappeared as fast as they showed up, as Yukipo was running past them.
Because of her injured knee, Yukipo wasn't running as fast as she would have liked to. The pain was drilling itself into her leg while Yukipo forced herself to not focus on it. Luckily, this was rather easy to do right now, since her love for the forest she cared so much about kept pushing her forward, giving her the endurance to overcome any kind of pain she felt right now.
She moved along the rusty old hall, until she was met with a big brown iron door, which was just too big and heavy for Yukipo to pull open. She did notice the age of it though, and the possibility of being able to tear a hole into the rather old material.
The further Yukipo had gone into the belly of the beast, the more dilapidated the whole structure became. The structural integrity of the place was so neglected, in fact, that even the floor was unstable. Yukipo had to carefully make sure to only step on floor parts that still seemed relatively intact. Thankfully, Yukipos own weight was very helpful in this regard. She barely weighed anything, so the floor was much more forgiving than it would have usually been.
Also, thanks to the manginess of the pipes, some of them were so loose, they could be easily broken off.
Yukipo used this to her advantage and started pulling on the more loose pipes. To her surprise, the Pipe actually broke off and fell to the floor.
Bewildered, she picked it up. "Maybe this is why the monster destroys everything. Everything is so rotten here, it can't be healthy. It must be in a lot of pain." Yukipo wondered as she was looking at the ruffled end of the pipe she had just ripped off its original spot.
With her hands, she groped the doors surface, inspecting it for any weak section. It did not take long for Yukipo to discover a part of the door which was extremely thin and breakable.
Yukipo lifted her pipe up and positioned herself right for a nice hit at the iron door.
Like a golfer, she swung the metallic tube with all her might against the door. One time, two times, and even three times.
The door had given in a little, but not enough for Yukipo to force herself through.
The swinging had made matters worse for Yukipo. She was already exhausted before, but now she was breathing heavily and the toxic atmosphere had filled her lungs with nothing but smog, making her cough involuntarily.
Her arms were too tired for another swing, so she instead opted for using the pipe as a battering ram, with which she intended to break through the already dented door.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaah!" Yukipo let out a small battle-cry, overshadowing her tiredness, and ran, or at least limped because of her hurt knee, towards the door.
*crunch*
The door had finally completely given in, and Yukipo broke through it like the Kool-Aid Man.
The pipe Yukipo used as a ram fell, because of the velocity of her door slamming, out of her hands and down a black pit in the room beyond the door.
Further inspection revealed that the pit was inhabited by another weird creature Yukipo had never seen before.
This one was made out of a bunch of strange zigzagged circles grabbing on to each other and slowly spinning. The spinning created a clunky clicking sound that echoed throughout the entire hall.
This was the rumbling Yukipo had felt earlier, and which she had thought to be a beating heart. This was definitely not a heart. Every part of it moved, and its dark oily outside made it look like a nightmare. Yukipo gulped.
A long grim chain connected the clicking nightmare with the ceiling. This was convenient, because Yukipo had to get there anyway. To the best of her knowledge, this could be the heart she was looking for.
The several links in the chain were rather large compared to Yukipo, so it made it easy for her to climb down. Still, she needed to be careful not to slip and fall. The bottom of the pit was so far deep down, that she wasn't able to see it. Falling from such a height would definitely result in an uncomfortable landing.
The chains were sticky and rusty, something Yukipo was used to by now, and slowly climbed from one link to the next, always making sure she had enough grip and good footing.
On her way down, Yukipo came across her old pipe she had taken earlier. It was laying on a small jut in the wall of the pit. Yukipo needed some kind of weapon to take the heart out, so she picked it up again and tied it with some left-over bandage to her body in a way that wouldn't bother her mountaineering.
There were a few times during the climb where Yukipo almost slipped. Some of the chain-links were oilier than others. She did not know what this substance was. The only things she knew about it was that it made her clothes dirty and it smelled awful.
"There...we...go." Yukipo was relieved as she took her last step down the chain and finally managed to put a foot onto the Heart of Sludge. Gears were spinning all around Yukipo now. The spinning made the ground vibrate.
The young adventurer examined the several gears and came to the conclusion, that they must have something to do with the inner workings of everything she had encountered so far. She had to stop those gears from spinning.
Yukipo carefully slithered around the gears, looking for a place where she could turn the Heart off. She found nothing. But not all hope was lost as, instead, she found a small hole in the middle of the structure.
Through the hole she could see more gears, but these gears were a lot smaller and looked more fragile.
"Yes." Yukipo brashly unsheathed the pipe she had carried down the chain and inserted it into the gap in the ground.
As she intended, the pipe deadlocked the gears, and they almost stopped moving. Well, they still moved, but it was more of a struggle to move than actual moving, because the metal-pipe made any movement in either direction impossible.
The forest-dwelling Yukipo pushed the pipe deeper into the gear-set until, with a surprisingly loud bang, the gears stopped moving entirely.
This, as a consequence, made all the other bigger gears stop dead in their tracks as well.
"Is it over?" Yukipo wondered as she looked for signs of a possible halt.
Out of nowhere, the ground Yukipo was standing on, and everything else, started shaking much more violently than before. The constant noise the beast emitted had changed into a screeching, accompanied by what sounded like a Starlings whistling.
The shaking got worse by the second, and Yukipo was desperately trying to get a hold of the chain again to climb back up. This proved to be an impossible endeavor. The Sludge Heart was swinging around the pit like a pendulum. Poor Yukipo held on to some gear she could reach, in order not to fall off.
At this point, the hissing of the other pipes got also worse and one after the other ruptured from the immense pressure mounting up in them. In tiny explosions, very hot air shot out of hundreds of crevices in the walls. Crevices that were not there before.
"Aaaaah!" Yukipo was frightened from the sudden scary turn of events. She held on to the gear for dear life, until the chain, on which the beasts heart hung from, broke.
"Nooooooooooo!" Together with the entirety of the apparatus she had just stopped, Yukipo fell deep down the pit.
...
"Huh, what...what happened?" Yukipo was laying with her back on a small hill near the desolated site the monster had devastated.
She had been unconscious for a while, and she did not know how she got out.
From the hill, Yukipo could still see the beast, but it had stopped. Much more than that, it was burning, and black clouds of smoke puffed out of it.
This made Yukipo a little bit sad. She did not want to take the creatures life. Killing is awful. But Yukipo had no choice.
Her temporary melancholy was quickly overshadowed by happiness. Happiness over having saved the forest. "I did it." Yukipo smiled.
This adventure had damaged the forest savior badly. She was bruised everywhere, had burns on her arms, red watering eyes, and oily black clothes. After trying to get up several times, Yukipo also had to realize that she was missing a leg.
"Oh, no…" Yukipo frowned, "this hurts."
With her last bit of strength, she crawled with both arms, pushing her forward, back into the forest, where she quickly dug herself into an abandoned rabbit-hole. It had to do, as Yukipo was on the verge of fainting and could not wait any longer.
Deep in the former critter burrow, Yukipo curled up on the wet earth and fell asleep.
THE END