Story Time with Puss in Boots

tells us your stories in a chronological order, as that would make it easier to understand and easier to read.

>>50099610
I'd go with that, but as you might guess, everything kinda kept happening at the same time, so I'll try to organize it in an order that makes sense.

First, the setting was as follows: the Realm of Riverstar (Which is my translation for "Ondétoile") was a peaceful mearchant Realm between the various Tales' worlds such as Agrabbah, the Fairies Forests, Wonderland, Dreamland, and the Badlands where evil Tales were banished. All was fine until the Tales all suddenly fell asleep, and woke up to find the city had been invaded by two sister races from another world, the Dahem and Eryos, which were nomadic shamanist demonfolks and militaristic high-elves, respectively, and basically they settled their grudges in order to go all "manifest destiny" on our asses. We surrendered, but then it came to light that the artifacts that allowed our people to travel between worlds (such as Dorothy's shoes opening the gates to Oz , for example) had been stolen, and that Fairies and Tales alike were trapped with the Dahem and Eryos, and that's where our story begins.

My sources told me that the Dahem and Eryo's (offscreen) forces had gotten weaker as of late, and that first bit of intel gave me the court's ear. Just like the French after WWII, we acted as if we never lost, and strategically placed our balls on the table. The Eryos kinda wanted to smite our faces, which they could have done since us tales are mostly jacks of all trades, and the Fairies were few in number and mostly twiggy magic user, but I already had made friends with the Dahem matriarchs, which meant their weak alliance with the Eryos became a non-aggression pact, and that if the Eryo broke the truce, Dahems would help us instead. As dumb as the pointy-ears were, they could do basic math, and math say they'd lose, so we got our independance because I managed to have the Dahem believe I knew everything there was to know and would give them good prices on intel.
Which they fucking bought.

While they were arguing over the colour of the drapes in the meeting room, with the Fairy Herald being the most annoying nitpicker I ever seen, I got all the time I needed to make friends with the other Tales, even evil ones, like th Big Bad Wolf, Blue Beard and Baba Yaga. They were decent folk, in an obviously evulz kind of way. Then came along the fairies, saying "Hey! Think you're a hero? Come pass our trials! If you're the true Hero of Riverstar, you'll win the King's magic shield!". I had nothing better to do, so I gather my Dahem buddies (two assassins and a witch) and started the trials.

First one, was the Trial of Pain, to get the drama out of the way. The Black Fairy Erik used his mind bullets to torture me and make me live all the pain I had inflicted. The dude was good, waving his wand at me and cursing me for ever heart I had broken, for every foe I had slain, bringing me down to 0hp, and I won't lie, with his black robes and voice as deep and smooth as a dwarven mine dug in a soap mountain, the pain came naturally to me, and yet, with a cry, I yelled "I'LL BE A HERO AND REDEEM MYSELF!"

And then I died.

After all, that's how it's supposed to work. But when the fairy wasn't looking, the Dahem witch used her blood magic to give me my HP back, and I came back from the dead. All the other idiots who took the test lost a life season (kinda like a life, and we had 4, 5 for some lucky ones)

After that, I started roaming the palace in order to get some more of them sweet HP back, and do some eavesdropping. It was quite instructive. First, you must know that there were three heirs to the throne (the king and queen having been found dead in their chambers), Prince John (the one from Robin Hood, so made into a backstabbing scumbag), Prince Augustus (can't remember where he was from. A nice guy if a bit sheepish) and Prince Gaston (the one from Beauty and the Beast, so a big macho man with strong arms, tactical genius and no brains for anything else).

What I learned, was that Gaston was promised to the Laurel Princess, but secretely loved Princess Vesper, who was happily married to Augustus. Meaning there was a Princess in who's pants I could probably get if I played my cards right. So I went to Laurel and asked her how she was doing, and since she was currently being ignored by her fiancé, she took me as her confident, because she was so lonely. "Welp" I thought, "That was easy". So I try to encourage her to do stuff and to be her own Princess, and to take the Hero's trial. So she took the same trial as I did. She almost died, crying, bleeding and shouting that she would never let people die in her place again, that she'd lead troops from the frontline, and suffer when her people suffer, bleed where her people bleed, and die standing side by side with her soldiers if that's what her people needed to survive. Not gonna lie, she impressed me.

After dragging her corpse to a healing well, she confessed that it was all bravado, and she was hopeless, fearing that she'd never make any change to anything.
"Y'kow, mylady, I don't know many people who would endure such a trial without saying 'stop' at any moment. You're a strong one. So yeah, you're probably no good in a fight, but look at me, I'm a cat! I can defend myself, sure, but I'm no soldier, and no good in a war. You, however, you're a noble, a future queen, and as a queen, you wearing actual armor and going into battle to lead the men, that could make a real difference, because just like you said, you'll bleed where they'll bleed. They'll fight for their homes knowing their righteous leader is with them, and supporting them, and guiding them to victory. All that matters is that you smile in a confident manner, point somewhere, and say 'kill'. Easy, really."

After that pep talk, I left her standing there. To the player's credit, she was very good at making dreamy eyes. She looked smitten. I had a place in her heart, and therefore, among the powerful. I was a cat on a mission: to make Riverstar great again, for glory and most importantly profit. There came the second trial, which had me write a poem to the people of Riverstar. So while I was trying to channel my inner angsty teenager, the Evil Tales tried to kill Prince Gaston in broad daylight.
I saved his ass, and like that I became his champion, and I started to wonder if anyone around here had any idea what I meant when I said that I was a professional con-man.

Anyway, after that, I went to give my poem to the Red Fairy, and she loved it, and I started to wonder if I wasn't becoming a mary-sue. From there on, the "heroic trials" became piss easy. I won the trial of laughter by tickling the Grey Fairy, the trial of craftyness by having the Blue Fairy believe I totally nicked that gold coin from a Dahem when I actually had it from the start, the trial of Leadership by summoning people who had debts towards me (because when I wasn't doing anything, I was selling intel, and since everyone was poor, I called in favors, and everyone owed me at least one).

And then came the final exam, where I had to tell them what were the qualities of a Hero, to show them if I had understood what those trials meant. If you want to know, I said you gotta be humble, selfless, curious, kind, and determined. But that didn't really matter because in the end, we were only three to pass all the trials, and the one they chose, was the one who could use a shield , because that was the prize, the King's magic shield. I was kind of frustrated, all this work had been for naught! If it had been any kind of hard, I'd have been really pissed off. But since I kind of bullshitted my way to the top and the fairies admitted I was the one deserving the shield, I let it slide.

That, and the city was attacked by zombies.

Not exactly zombies, actually. Blank pages. Tales who had lost their story, and were hungry for memories. So me and the two others winners, we made a pact to become the Heroic Triad! We were two tales, one good (me), one evil (Dark Prince Vazzard), and a Dahem Rainmaker (kind of wandering mercenary) called Roanan. We flanked the motherfucking zombies, arriving just in the nick of time, and what does that make us? Big damn heroes, sir. Our arrival gave the defenders hope, and we held back the horde, until they all disappeared as mysteriously as they came.

(Taking a break, got work to do, tomorrow: how I almost died again, did not get the girl, and saved those poor sods AGAIN)