Chutes

     "Mother, I'm bored," I told Mother as she worked at the control panel and crushed yet another group of hopeful heroes that were trying to destroy us to save humanity.
     Mother's kind of an ass when it comes to dungeon design. It isn't fair in the slightest. She litters the dungeon with treasure boxes that contain really awesome equipment. Seriously, I don't know where she got it, but it's amazing. Great swords, great armor, etc. They drag on through this dungeon that really spared no expense. She has powerful monsters around corners, traps on the ground and in the walls, but most people tend to make it through. Again and again.
     But soon the people learn that her dungeon even without traps and with a map of the dungeon that is perfectly mapped out for a good route will take them about six days to get through. So after exhausting yourself beyond all belief, you finally get to the middle of the dungeon and realize "oh crap, I need more food/water." But it's too late. Mother kills everybody by dehydration and starvation. And if you don't die of that, then on the room before you reach her (us, I suppose), Mother pushes a button that collapses the entire room and crushes the life out of everybody in the room. She's only done that once. The downside is that the dungeon suddenly becomes one floor shorter. But still, only once. That guy brought rations with him. He will be missed.
     Sephy, I like that you are talking about me being cool. Am I your favorite mother?
     "No. And I can say that truthfully as I have two mothers. Sorry, Mother, but my dead mother that I never knew being that she died....I like her better."
     But you loooove me! Aww, how sweet, Sephy!
     "Sure. Whatever. So Mother, how is your game going? The World According to Cloud or whatever it's called."
     Oh that. I beat it. And lemme tell ya, TERRIBLE ending. So I needed to go into this crater, right? To find you and kill you. We split up, regroup in the center, and finally get to the final set of battles! Then I go up against this hottie "Jenova" and lose like you're supposed to. And that's it! Game over! I was like, "Lame!" Just like that! Talk about a letdown!
     "I don't know if that's how it ended. I'm pretty sure Cloud defeated you, then I let them win because I'm a gracious host."
     Oh really?
     "I think so," I said.
     OH REALLY!? Nothing about how sad you were that your mother was pretending to die and even though she didn't die it sure looked like it because of her amazing acting abilities that are on par with the greats like Jackie Chan and that guy who does all those Kung Fu movies?
     "Jet Li?"
     No! Jackie Chan! Gosh, Sephy. You just don't understand and love me!
     "That's probably true."
     I don't believe you!!! And so, you must prove your love for me!
     "I think you misheard me. I said--"
     Don't change your story now, boy! To prove your love for me, I banish thee! Ye shall fight thou way through mein tower and when thouest reacheth the top, thine love shalt be knowneth.
     "You just slipped German into--"
     Yo momma! Oh burn! I mean, "Oh bureth!" Now go! And return to me, my loveless son!
     "Can I grab a water bottle and a box of poptarts first?" I asked.
     No! Cold poptarts are one of the things that disgust me about you, Sephy. Learn to use an oven!
     "Oven?" Before I had time to grab water or poptarts, the ground beneath me gave out and this long chute --obviously designed with Chutes and Ladders in mind because of the color and shape-- appeared below me. It snaked all the way to the entrance. Only problem was that I can fly. So the ground not being below me was not a horrible thing. Eventually she got me though. This giant plunger above me started pushing me into the hole. Of course, once I was in the hole, it only sucked me back up, because that's what plungers do. But when she threatened to replace the toilet plunger with a pinball plunger, I decided to just enjoy the long slide down about six-hundred floors.

     .....You know how slides are awesome because they're a couple of seconds of "whee!" followed by the end? Well now I know that a slide that takes about six hours to reach the bottom loses its fun at a certain point. I would have taken a nap, but the tunnel on the way down was designed to be just like the boat tunnel on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Or was it Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory? It was whichever one was the good one with Gene Wilder. None of the images were terribly disturbing, but they were certainly loud and bright. I tried sliding on my stomach to avoid watching, but sliding on your stomach is never the smartest idea. It's just painful.

     For story's sake, I'm skipping to where I landed at the entrance to the dungeon. It was interesting to see that a pack of new adventurers was starting the maze right when I landed. They pulled their terrible weapons out and engaged me in combat.
     "Sephiroth, prepare thyself!" the leader said. I don't know what's with people and their old English today. . . .
     "Knock it off, I'm leaving," I said. I tried the door, but of course, it was locked. Even attempts to destroy the door to the outside world ended in failure.
     "How did you get here? Through a secret path!?"
     "Yes," I said. "But it's a chute. Not a ladder."
     "You're lying!" he shouted at me. I wish people wouldn't shout in the morning. It gives me a headache. More than sliding down a six hour slide through recycled footage of a movie from the 70s. . . . That might be a lie. I had a terrible headache before the shouting.
     "Go ahead then," I said. I pointed him toward the chute. I couldn't believe it, but he and his gang ran inside and immediately started climbing the chute. I used to climb slides the stupid way before, too, but it was fun when you could reach the top in a couple seconds. God only knows how long it would take them. But they were going for it, so I left them alone.
     That's a lie. I let them climb what must've been about two stories up, then booby-trapped the bottom with sharp objects. I don't want people this stupid to reproduce, so I took desperate measures. You understand.
     After creating my deathtrap for those people, I headed through the maze. Not sure why. I know I can't survive, but I was curious about what was in here. The first floor had a lot of dragons. You wouldn't believe it. Mother actually found out what constitutes "too many dragons." The answer is "so many dragons that they can't even move." The dragons were packed so tightly that they couldn't move. Have you ever seen those Peta videos that show the pigs packed into pens and the pigs die because they can't eat and they get trampled by the other pigs? It's like that. Almost exactly. I hacked away at some of the lead dragons, only to find the next dragons in the set were already dead. Mother's dungeon is full of dead monsters. Lovely.
     After fighting a lot of dragons, I was on to the next floor. I know you're all wondering about the consistency. "Sephiroth, you've already gone through Mother's dungeon." Well, it's different. It's at least four hundred stories taller. I don't know how, but her dungeon actually grows. I've been with her for the past few weeks. Mother is not doing anything. Neither are Kadoz, Lazoo, and Dufus. And we're the only people here, aside from the beautiful people that live in the enclosed island of beautiful people. They're fun to watch for a while. But seriously, nobody is doing construction. Not to mention that these floors tend to be added to the bottom of the structure. Time to digress.
     Floor two had lava. Like, seriously. I can almost understand lava on the first floor, but how is there lava on the ground when this is the second floor?
     Do you want the answer?
     "You can still talk to me, I see," I said aloud. "Yes. I want the answer for once."
     Beavers. I had a bunch of beavers in here that built a lava dam. Is that so hard to understand?
     "Yes. What was the dam built with? Trees?"
     Trees? Stop lava? Oh Sephy. . . .
     "Then what with?"
     More lava! Like, duh! Sephy, you might be too stupid to live. Maybe I should just drop Floor 3 on you and end this. Don't worry, I hear it doesn't hurt after a few hours.
     My favorite part about the lava room was that I couldn't hear Mother in my head over the roaring lava. I'm lying again, and I'm finally sorry for it since Mother is now yelling in my brain. Nobody has experienced a headache until they've had thoughts shouting. I'm having the worst headache today. And Mother wasn't helping. Nor was the roaring lava. This isn't personification either. The lava really was roaring. Like a bear. A bear fighting a lion.
     They're still alive!?
     "Who?" I asked until I saw a giant lava bear fighting a giant lava tiger.
     WHAT A TWIST! It was a tiger! But I knew. Because of the foreshadowing.
     I decided that since both of them were fire-based and probably absorbed fire damage, they were probably being healed at a rate greater than the attacks they did to each other. And hence a lava bear and a lava tiger were locked in--
     MORTAL KOMBAT!
     In mortal combat. With a c. Like how people spell.
     Whatever, Seff.
     At the end of Floor 2 was the first of many treasure boxes. I couldn't wait to find out what was the wonderful item inside. I hate that I sound so needy, but I did leave everything upstairs. I'm not even wearing my usual outfit. I have a robe on. It's black, and from a distance it looks awesome like my jacket, but when you can see that it's made of cotton, the effect is lost. And so I opened the chest and found it. It really was the best weapon. It was the Ultimate Ultima Blade, as the description on the hilt said. It weighed nothing (literally) and it cut through everything, including lava tigers. ......What? I had to kill one of them. The roaring was really annoying, and the bear is very content now, sleeping on his lava.
     So now I'm carrying around some stupid weapon that only an idiot like Cloud would use. It's gigantic and ugly, but it is massively powerful. And that's when I realized I was holding a weapon that cuts through anything.
     You're so slow sometimes.
     Anything. Which includes doors. Yes, I was holding one gigantic key to the exit. I'm so out of here.