At the next stop, a guy breathing heavily and sweating profusely was the first onto the bus. He was holding his suit jacket in his arms, exposing his drenched baby-blue shirt. He had clearly run here to catch the Humanbus. Unlike the obvious Skinstealer seated behind me, he seemed normal.
[Ticket]
29 — ‘Stewie Johnson’ — Advertising Consultant
Blue — Pastrami Sandwich
Periwinkle Ave — Bubba
3612 — No
Besides the jacket in his arms, he wasn’t carrying anything, but Tina still had him spin around.
“Could he be Gllarhtna the Soft-Skinned?” Panda wondered. “He seems a bit too normal for this crowd.”
“What’s that in your back-pocket?” Tina asked suspiciously.
“It’s my inhaler,” he replied.
“Inhaler!” she exclaimed, shocking him.
[OH NOES! NO PERFORMANCE ENHANCING DRUGS ALLOWED! INHALE THIS!]
A hole opened in the side of the Humanbus, and a powerful gust of wind sent Stewie flying outside. His head bounced against the metal roof of the bus stop, and he collapsed onto the pavement like a sack of potatoes.
The next person in line was a twitchy cockroach humanoid.
“Urgh,” I groaned in disgust.
He had a reddish-brown carapace, and a wing case covered his wings. His antennae brushed against the ceiling of the bus and his mandibles and strange mouth arms kept moving erratically, like he was nervous.
“He’s not on my list,” I said.
Tina had him spin around and open his wing case to show his wings, but he wasn’t hiding any prohibited items inside.
I leaned over to see the ticket he’d given Bee.
[Ticket]
2 — ‘Poop Stench’ — Bartender
Brown — Detritus Smorgasbord
Something Stinks Drive — Sniffles
0210 — Yes
“He’s clean,” she concluded.
“Do we really have to let him in?” I asked.
“Don’t be racist, Gambit,” she replied.
“But he’s part of the Great Game! There’s nothing racist about it!”
“I’m just following orders,” he said nervously.
I frowned. “Of course you are.”
“Cut him some slack, he’s just a bartender,” Panda said.
“Fine!”
“Good Passenger!” Bee exclaimed and he walked past us to sit at the far back
Correct!
A Good Passenger has entered the bus.
1/5 remaining.
The last person in line looked like an honest-to-God witch. She had a wide-brimmed hat with a tilted peak at the top, a long crooked nose, and robe-like clothes covering her body. In her right hand was pink candy floss wrapped around a paper cone.
“Messy snack!” Tina immediately exclaimed.
[EWW! GET IT OUT OF HERE! NOT YUMMY!]
A hole opened in the roof of the Humanbus and the section of floor she was standing on shot her up like a powerful spring, sending her flying with a squeal into the air.
I didn’t see how she landed, but from the sound she made I could guess it wasn’t pretty.
The door and the ceiling hole both closed and we continued bumbling down the street. I had no idea where in Madeville we were, but I also didn’t know the town that well, aside from the area around the town hall, which the Twine brothers had turned into a Safe Zone in the previous dimension.
“Just one more and we win,” Bee said excitedly.
“This will definitely be the part where they try to trap us,” Panda commented.
The Humanbus took a corner so fast that only the legs on its left side touched the ground, and all of us had to brace against the walls and seats. As it slammed back down, it quickly screeched to a halt next to a bus stop.
Three new passengers got on.
The first one was a woman with messy and fiery red hair, as well as colorful splotches on her face and clothes. She wore a grey apron over a denim onesie. Her irises were like tiny pinpricks in her blood-red eyes, and she was foaming at the mouth.
“I think this is Feral Freya,” I said.
“Spin around for me,” Tina said, clearly enjoying her power, which surprised me.
As the woman turned on the spot, I saw a paintbrush with green and blue paint on it that were clearly still wet.
“Bad Passenger!” I exclaimed.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
One of the bus seats disconnected from its row and hopped towards Feral Freya, its human-skin cushion opening to reveal a mouth. The Bad Passenger turned to run out, but a tongue shot out from the open maw and coiled around her waist before pulling her into its mouth and chomping down.
Crunch! Crunch! Splat! Crunch!
I shuddered. It was not lost on me that this could be the fate of one of us if we got the next guess wrong.
The second person stepped forward. He wore a dark-blue suit, and his black tie was slightly disheveled along with his brown hair. He carried a suitcase like the Skinstealer behind me and Tina had him open it. Inside was a bagel.
Tina nodded. “No seeds on that bagel, so it’s not messy.”
The guy also didn’t match any of my Bad Passengers, but he seemed a bit too ‘normal’ to fit in with the characters that’d been allowed to enter, which raised my suspicions.
I leaned over to look at his ticket.
[Ticket]
42 — ‘Grant Hall’ — Salesman
Dark-blue — Hamburger
Main Street — Manfred
1415 — No
“He seems like he’s a Go—” Bee started.
“Me-ow!” Lordie exclaimed, interrupting her with his deep Morgan Freeman voice.
“Really?” I asked.
“What?” Panda and Bee asked simultaneously.
“He’s saying Grant Hall is Gllarhtna the Soft-Skinned,” I translated.
“Nina said nothing about that,” Tina commented.
Bee looked back down at the ticket again, scrunching her brows in contemplation.
“Wait!” she then said excitedly. “Grant Hall is an anagram of Gllarhtna!”
“Bad Passenger!” I shouted.
“Aww shucks, ya got me,” Gllarhtna said, his voice like a thousand screams deep within his body converging to form the words.
Before the Humanbus could grab and devour the Absolute Spawn, his suit, body, and suitcase all popped and turned into baseball-sized balls of flesh with four bone legs. They all landed on the floor and skittered out through the open door, the Humanbus unable to catch any of them.
[I WILL GET YOU NEXT TIME, YOU TICKET CHEATER!]
Outside the window of the bus, the skittering flesh balls came together to reconstitute themselves back into a humanoid, although this time it was a pale-green face with three eyes on the left side stacked above one another and an angled S-shaped mouth on the right side.
Gllarhtna lifted a four-fingered and clawed hand and waved at us, then he just disappeared.
“I guess he had to be outside the bus to actually use his special abilities,” Panda remarked. It explained why he’d left the vehicle first instead of just teleporting out from inside.
The last person in line stepped up to our desk like nothing had happened. She had a swaddling cloth around a hissing possum. The right side of her face was scarred from a chemical burn, and she had no eyebrows. Her eyes also glowed green, and she had an upside-down crucifix carved into the skin of her pale forehead. She wore a nun’s robes just to really drive the theme home.
“Is that possum baby feral?” Tina asked, returning to business as usual.
“Peter is very kind,” the woman said.
Peter the possum hissed loudly in agreement.
I sighed. “She’s probably fine,” I said.
“Her ticket checks out too,” Bee added.
Just to make sure, Tina had her spin around, but she didn’t have any prohibited items on her.
“Good Passenger!” Bee said excitedly.
The weird Satanist nun found a seat two rows behind us.
Correct!
A Good Passenger has entered the bus.
0/5 remaining.
You have completed “Tickets, Please”!
The Humanbus immediately came to a stop and the door opened in the side of its head.
“We did it!” Bee cheered.
“Good job, everyone,” Panda said.
“Lordie really saved our asses,” I replied, patting the hand-spider on my head.
“Me-ow?” he asked.
“Not a chance,” I told him.
The desk, list, binder, and ticket template all vanished, as did the Good Passengers, leaving just ghosts behind.
[Congratulations! You have unlocked an achievement! x ]
‘Tickets, Please!’
Completed a Humanbus puzzle game.
I hear Gllarhtna likes to participate in this Game.
That guy always shirks his actual duties.
When you meet him next, make sure to kill him, no matter what he says.
Also, I’m supposed to commend you for not losing a single person on your team and beating the Game without cheating.
It says you already got this reward, but I don’t see any skills associated with it in your possession, so that must be a bug.
Rewards: ‘Humanbus Brain’ & 150x ‘GAME Coins’
[‘Humanbus Brain’ x ]
Item
The brain of a Humanbus. An ember of sentience still swims around within this pink ball of flesh.
In order to access the power trapped within, you have to give it a name and kiss it on its forehead.
Weight: Approximately one
[Congratulations! You have unlocked an achievement! x ]
‘Kneeling at the feet of the Absolute’
Met an Absolute face-to-face and survived to tell the tale.
You were supposed to receive this achievement immediately after returning from the All-Mother’s Garden, but since you caused a disruption that made all the employees flee the office, the guy in charge of pressing the ‘send’ button failed to do his job.
They punished him by sending him to my new office.
Turns out that Lordie was right, cicadas are quite tasty.
It says I should talk about how lucky you are to have survived meeting an Absolute, but from what I understand the All-Mother isn’t one of the ones whose very presence obliterates everyone in the vicinity.
Of course, it’s still quite easy for her to kill everyone around her if they’re not careful, so I guess you were lucky in a sense.
Reward: 500x ‘GAME Coins’
A gooey brain landed in my lap, as well as the laps of Tina and Bee.
“Did you get the Absolute achievement too?” I asked them.
“I did,” Bee replied.
“Me too,” Tina added.
“You’re getting quite a lot of Coins already,” Panda remarked. “I thought you weren’t meant to get those until after the first Game Event.”
“I don’t care whether we’re supposed to get them or not,” I said, “we need Coins for the Safe Zone.”
“Should we use the brains first?” Bee asked.
Tina was turning it over in her hands. Even though she had Nina feeding her information, it was still her first time seeing an item that was supposed to unlock a skill. Her ability to just play along with everything was quite commendable, but I supposed that was just the kind of person she was. Nothing much really seemed to faze her, after all.
“It’ll only give us movement or transport skills,” I said. “Let’s save them.”
I put the brain into my inventory and approached the front of the very-much-alive bus. I had a suspicion that we’d received the brains without needing to kill the Humanbus because of Billee’s interference. Every other transport monster’s brain I’d received so far had been after killing them, not before.
Still, I wouldn’t let the opportunity go to waste.
I pulled out an item from my inventory as I approached the brain that took up the driver side at the front of the bus.
[‘Safe Zone Sphere’ x ]
Item
An object capable of transforming almost any place into a Safe Zone. The duration of the Creation Event is based on the area chosen to be transformed.
During the Event, Enemies and Bosses within and near the area will be attracted to the Sphere, seeking to destroy it.
Status: INACTIVE
Weight: Approximately one
“Here goes nothing.”
