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andrewk — Rayman The Island of Loss 2
Published: 2003-05-20 00:00:16 +0000 UTC; Views: 4577; Favourites: 51; Downloads: 59
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Rayman: The Island of Loss - Chapter 2Characters created by Michel Ancel
Written by Andrew Kaiko
andrewkaikoart.homestead.com
Here’s the second chapter of my Rayman fan fiction. Rated PG for about four references to dissing stupid people and some deep thematic elements. I do not own the characters and all related subjects. Rayman is © 2002 Ubi Soft Entertainment. The character of Rayman and all other characters and subjects are all trademarks of Ubi Soft Entertainment. All rights reserved.
Chapter 2
“No one can live with respect only. And even fewer can live with saving the world! Look at yourself. You have no home, you are always on the move. Yes, thinking of others is very good, yes, very good indeed, but don’t you ever take time to examine what you want?”
The words seemed to repeat again and again in and out of his head. Rayman felt himself regain consciousness. He started to open his eyes, but no words could describe the feelings he felt from what he saw.
In front of him was a forest that appeared to be the exact same one he visited last night, but this time, the trees and plants didn’t look as healthy. It was also quieter and calmer than he was used to. There were no Lums. There were no elusive matuvus, or other exotic creatures running around the place. No plums, no other cootmellons. Just the same trees and ground, which all appeared to look rather sick. He was also surrounded by various creatures, most of them who were not native to the forest, all lying on the ground, either asleep or knocked out. It was unusually cold- the temperature you would expect to feel high up in a mountain. But in a rain forest?
The most shocking thing Rayman noticed was the sky. The clouds were moving in the direction they were supposed to be going, but to Rayman, they were floating unnaturally fast! Unless they were lower in elevation, there was no way they’d be going at this speed! And there weren’t any heavy winds, either.
He struggled to boost his upper body so it levitated over his weary feet, and after a few trips from exhaustion, he wandered around. The cootmellon was left in the middle of the lifeless creatures.
It seemed as though all of time had stopped. He was hoping to see some form of life if he advanced further into the mysterious land, but there was still nothing. How did I get here?, he wondered. Was I unconscious for years, like Rip Van Winkle? Is this the future?
A few more stops and he noticed a large area that was cleared of trees to make way for, what USED to be, and what Rayman THOUGHT he saw, the ruins of observatories, labs, greenhouses, and machines. Studying this site, he gathered that this used to be a high-tech station for scientific experiments, and had adopted much of the same technology of how the robo-pirates worked. He found no alarm from that, though, as he was certain what was left here has been long gone.
Suddenly, movement! To his right!
Rayman’s head zipped directly to his right like a slingshot!
It came from a pile of rubble made of metal and steel. Under it emerged a creature whose features were blacked out from his silhouette. But as Rayman stepped closer, his face distorted, his temperature boiled up like a hot oven and his fists clenched!
It was the guy he had encountered in the race!
“You!”
“So you made it. Not too bad of a ride, I hope? Don’t worry about your energy. You won’t need it for where you’ll be staying.”
“ARRGH! I wish I had NEVER met you! You must’ve dragged me out to this crummy middle of nowhere while I was knocked out, right?”
“No. I tell the absolute truth when I say, it wasn’t ME who dragged you out here.”
“Can you please explain to me where I am?”
“Better yet, I’ll show you. Come with me.”
Rayman was not in the mood to follow someone who made him uncomfortable, but he was the only living creature here who he knew. And if this was the only way to find out the story behind this place, he might as well go.’
The man led him to a cliff. A different cliff than Rayman had stayed at last night.
The man smirked and asked, “Do you see anything unusual about this view?”
Rayman looked at the miles and miles of hills which turned into mountains in the horizon and said, “Well, nothing. Expect for the fact that the clouds are moving unusually fast.”
“And the ground is lower than I expec—“
It was like his brain had snapped! He saw what the man wanted him to see: “THE GROUND IS MOVING TOO. EVERYTHING BESIDES THE CLIFF WE’RE ON IS MOVING THE OPPOSITE WAY!”
“Exactly,” the guy hissed.
Rayman, now in a state of panic, rushed to another side of the land, crossing the lying creatures, and sure enough, another cliff.
He raced toward yet another corner of the land and he saw the same thing. A cliff, with a moving view of the land. And the clouds not only seemed to be gaining in speed, but in size as well.
“Too hard to believe? But it’s true! Your instincts are EXACTLY RIGHT!” The guy’s voice suddenly crescendoed up to a loud roar! “Everything surrounding this area is nothing but a dead end. And you know what that means.”
Rayman stuttered, with his body stiff. “We’re on an island?”
“What kind of island?”
“A. Floating. Island.”
“An island that used to be part of the planet, but separated and is gradually moving upward. Soon it will be out of the atmosphere and we will reach the stratosphere, and soon, conditions will be so harsh, that we won’t be able to breathe up on the surface. In which case, we will soon be heading downward underground- our little “ship”, if you will- and spend the time until we reach another planet.”
“What do you mean ‘we’?”
“You, I, and the hundreds of miserable souls who join us in our miserable pilgrimage to a better, MISERABLE life! Rayman”, he continued, “Welcome. Welcome to the ISLAND OF LOSS!”
The Island, like a floating boat in the air, gradually continued it’s unending quest, as Rayman was so speechless, that he wanted to be unconscious again.
But instead, he was outraged! Turning in front of the man and winding up for a wallop, he swung his fist with all his might- but it stopped, shielded by the guy’s equally strong palms, as he slowly shook his head, muttering, “You will not have a great experience here, I can tell.”
-
Globox frantically pounded on Murfy’s door.
Murfy lived near the other raymans in his own little “fairy house”. Fairy houses served the same purposes as birdhouses, and were about twice the size of a regular birdhouse. But fairy houses not only provided room to store food and shelter- they were a REAL home to fairies! They had all the furnishings and everything!
Murfy was in the middle of singing show tunes in the shower when Globox pounded on his door. He put on a bathrobe, sandals and a shower cap, saying gracefully, “Now, which one of my dear dear friends can be knocking on my door at this time of the day?”
He opened the door and Globox waved.
Murfy’s face dropped. “Oh, it’s you. Make it quick. I think I was finally about to remember Zero Mostel’s line in ‘If I Were A Rich Man’!”
“Murfy! I just found a letter from Rayman saying he ran away!”
“Oh, yeah. I got a letta’ from him too this morning. He also told me he was running away.”
”REALLY?! How many letters did he write?! Why didn’t you take action?!”
“Oh, you know he’ll come back soona’ or later! So he’s running away. So what? He’s always ‘running away’ from anything no matter where he goes, and you can bet that for every time he DOES ‘run away’, he’s always heading toward somewhere else at the same time! Unless he’s running backwards, of course, in which case, those two factors would be switched. But he never runs backwards, so it’s not of any significance to this conversation! Now if you’ll excuse me—“
“He also mentioned something he had inside his head…”
Murfy halted and turned around, as if he were hit on the head with a soda can. “What kind of thing? Not like a metal plate or anything? ‘Cause last I talked to him, he didn’t get any surgery.”
“I don’t know. His pencil ran out of lead as he was about to write it.”
“Do you still have the letta’?! Maybe it has some otha’ information!”
“Oh, uh, no.”
“Whaddya’ MEAN no?! What did you do with it?”
“I was hungry and ate it. Where’s your letter?”
“I threw it away, ya’ stupid goof! I’m certain he’ll come back! He always comes back here!”
“Well, he’s my friend! And friends are sworn to miss each other even when one of them’s away for a day!”
“Okay, okay! Think! I’m askin’ a pretty big favor, but THINK now! Was there anything ELSE he wrote that may imply what was ‘in his head’?”
“Um, he did ramble on about how he left the plumberry pie in the fridge, and how my kids always beat him in Tag. You?”
“Oh I envy you. I got his ramble on how he thought he made the wrong impression on a pretty girl at a department store and went back to the forest and started cutting sketches out of his diary.”
“Wait. He owns a diary?”
Just then, all the other raymans rushed toward the two and appeared to be extremely worried! They were running around and trying to decide what to do.
Murfy’s mouth gapped open. “Good Lord, how many letta’s did he have time to write?! Hmm, I guess I’d better change, huh?”
-
Rayman and the mysterious man gave each other the silent treatment for about two days as they spent their time on the surface of the island. All of the creatures were up and alive now, but far from their normal selves. They all seemed less interested in eating and socializing, and far more grumpily than before they landed on the island. Rayman also felt his spirits fade during that two days, the trees and plants were reduced to coiling strings of rot, and by the second day it got so cold that Rayman had to pull on his red hood, and even that didn’t do any good!
Indeed, everything the man said about the island was true. It was definitely moving like a space ship, farther out of the atmosphere, and toward a planet, which now, looked like just another star in the sky. Still, Rayman did not trust the guy for beans.
Rayman wondered how any of these creatures could be so sure that the planet they were headed for was one of prosperity and a new life. What if it was nothing but trouble? Where was the proof? No one brought any books, and no one was lively enough to elaborate into an entire discussion about the planet itself. Everyone instead called it Planet Z, and the only other thing Rayman knew about Planet Z was that it was a deep, deep orange, for that was how it looked as a star-sized structure in the night sky.
His knockout did not get rid of his unwavering thoughts about his so-called illness. At least, he though it was an illness. He pondered the thought- it all started with that guy he met on the race, right? He must’ve psychologically played with his mind into dismissing his usual interests, right? Or was he in fact the cause? What about the time Rayman glanced at himself in the pool, feeling uncomfortable. This was BEFORE he even knew the guy, so if he wasn’t the cause, what exactly WAS the matter with him?
All the clouds were gone now, and Rayman could feel his lungs working harder and harder to function. It was at that moment, after what seemed like two months instead of two days, that the man called everybody to follow him underground to save himself or herself from the climate. Rayman was about to ask someone how they would get underground, but it was answered immediately: an entrance carved out of the floors of the ruined observatory lay in the middle of the island, in which everyone had to step down into the dark hole and crawl their way underground.
The man informed the crowd that only a complete idiot would be stupid enough to jump headfirst into the pit, so he cautioned them to go slowly. A blue, lanky, buck-toothed, rabbit-like creature volunteered to go first, since he was the stupidest. “Follow the blue rabbit, I guess,” Rayman said to himself.
Rayman knew how to jump off of tall structures before, so he had no problem leaping into the dark ominous space. He felt himself getting warmer instead of colder the lower he fell. He landed firmly onto his feet when he hit the ground, while the other creatures just piled onto one another, groaning, “Ow, my hip!”
He saw a horizontal tunnel leading one way, which was the obvious way to go. Like a gopher, he crawled on his hands and feet for about half an hour, when he reached a light at the end of the tunnel.
He was relieved to breath fresh air again, so relieved that he didn’t even consider how oxygen could circulate underground. But the sight of this new surrounding was unbelievable! It was like a huge, blown-up ant farm, and they were the ants! It was a big, wide-open space that many people had obviously dug out, and was completely enclosed- there was no overhead window! You couldn’t even see the sky, and Rayman surmised that weather had no affect on this place. On the sides of the Pantheon-like ceiling were three floors of different rooms and compartments, all inhabited already by hundreds of creatures that all faced the fate Rayman face. In the middle of the dome was a huge central machine, which Rayman assumed must regulate the oxygen and carbon dioxide!
Also attached to the bottom of the machine was a time-counter, counting how many remaining days they all had left until they reached Planet Z. At this time, it counted 9 days.
Surrounding the machine were three floors of walkways that connected the rooms to the central areas and onto the main floor. Rayman wandered around the floor following the rest of the creatures, and noticed several things, like a café on the bottom floor, a library with a poor book selection, and the guide said that the machine could transform itself into a stage and entertainment theatre for nightly activities.
Each creature was led up to a booth headed by a beefy looking creature. Rayman was surprised to find that it was really a muscular lady! She assigned each of the newcomers an identification number in the form of a piece of plastic that could either be used as a clip or magnet, which ever material you were made of. Rayman received the number 9 and from there after, he was not going anywhere for very long.
-
Now Globox and Murfy wanted to speak to a being of superior intelligence, in order to find out where Rayman might have been, but everyone they knew lived so far away from them that they couldn’t reach them in this seriously urgent situation. They couldn’t reach Polokus, the spiritual being of the Universe, because you had to have all four masks in order to wake him up, and Rayman had used all those up in his quest to defeat Captain Razorbeard. The Fairy Council was too far away. So they turned to their only currently available resource.
“Welcome to Dr. Zchiendrich’s Shoppe of Dee Occult and Fortune-Tellinck.”
Murfy sniffed at the stuffy atmosphere. “Uh, and you must be Dr. Zchiendrich?”
The old geezer, who was also a rayman, had a long white beard, thick glasses and a robe, topped off by the hood of a mushroom for a hat. “Why, yees! Howeever deed you geess?”
Globox was immediately attracted to the various assortments of incense, candles, statuettes and books on the Occult. “Oh, look, Murfy! An Ouigi Board! I never used one before, but they say it can predict your future!”
Murfy didn’t even look at him. “Hey, fiddle with it! By all means! It’s your money.”
Globox skimmed over the instructions, placed his hands over the cursor and asked, “Will I be as smart as the Great Polokus?”
The cursor floated toward letters to spell out something. Murfy couldn’t wait, so he asked Dr. Zchiendrich if he could walk into the back room and give him some information about Rayman. He approved and they both walked into a hovel, where a crystal ball was mounted into the middle of a table.
Globox eventually pursued. “It said, ‘If I had a dollar for every time the word ‘no’ was the correct answer to that question in a billion years, I would be a billionaire.’ Must be something wrong with the merchandise.”
He waddled on over to the back room, pulled away the beaded curtain, and saw Murfy talking to the doctor.
Dr. Zchiendrich stroked his beard. “Veeeeeery eenterestinc! If Rayman must run a-way, what ees the pur-pose?”
Globox spoke up, “He, ah, also encountered a shadowy creature at the race that told him to think about this whole Big Picture, of what his true purpose is in this world. Oh, and in the letter he wrote, he told me he had something in his head!”
“Oh my!”
“What?! What did I do?!”
“Et ees veeeeeeery interestinc! You’re friend has what ees rumored to bee a case of Identity Alterinc Development Seemtoms! Or IADS, for short!”
“Oh, wonderful!” said Murfy. “I’m familiar with that disorder! Now we know the cause, so we can find the cure!”
“I am afraid dat ees not possible.”
“Why not?!”
“Number One: no one has found a cure for IADS on record.”
“Aw shoot!”
“And Number Two, and this ees the first time I’ve told anyone dis, but eet doesn’t eexeest!”
“Aw double-sh—WHAT?!”
“Yees! You see, the concept for IADS was made up by primateeve creatures long ago. As dey were maturing and growinc up, they were confused by the awkward biological and mental changees they went troo. Dey lacked the knowledge to realize dat what dey were goinc troo was compleetely normal, and SO, inseecure as dey were, dey beeleeved dey all had caught the SAME disorder!”
Murfy couldn’t believe such a dumb race would ever mistake growing up and thinking to be a disease! He barked, “That’s the best they could do?! They must’ve been SOME primitive creatures!”
Globox brightened. “Makes sense to me!” Murfy shot him a disconcerting look. Globox seemed to oblivious to his look and focused his attention more on how well these armrests would taste with salt.
“So, if everyone here believes in the disorder, how do YOU know that it’s not real?”
“Oh, as you can see, I am waaaaaay past my prime but I am experienced enough to know the history of the world! You peeople are very lucky to have caught mee een such an available moment. Um, eef you’ll bee so kind as too follow mee...” The doctor struggled to his feet and baby-stepped over to a tall bookshelf, where he took out a particularly old and tattered book. Murfy noticed that the spine was ready to fall off, and the words were written in Old Neotopian.
“Here ees dee proof. Translated, dis glossary of the race’s civilization reecounts their discovery on dee disease. And,” he continued as he got out a more recent glossary on the disease, “THIS one was dee very first book to state dat what dey tought was a disease was really a natural development! THIS book was never published, and no copies were made, so dat is why no one else here knew dee truth about the disease.” The last book looked more intriguing, but more unprofessional.
Murfy was shuffling in his seat, so he decided to hover instead. “Aw, double-great! Now we find out Rayman has a disease that doesn’t exist! So how are we supposed to cure him?!”
They both just stared at him.
Near the end, Globox thanked the doctor for his time, and bought the two books. He was the most worried.
“Murfy, that means Rayman might be beating himself up out of false beliefs!”
“Nah, he may not have a complete body, but he’s not THAT unstable. I can’t imagine him torturing himself out of a trifle little realization- it just isn’t him!” Murfy could see that Globox’s anxiety didn’t wane. “Okay, if it will make you feel better, we’ll go find Rayman! But no annoyingly stupid remarks, no unnecessary eating, and no poor excuses for physical comedy, understand?”
Globox nodded.
“Good. Now go say farewell to your family, grab the Lums, and we’ll be off. There’s no time to loose,” Murfy said passively. “(sigh) Why couldn’t I have just taken up knitting like my mother wanted?”
-
Rayman could’ve made a fuss about the harsh living and sleeping conditions underground the island, but he was so exhausted that he just relented. When night fell, an intercom voice erupted over the entire dome saying, “Tonight the Woodoo Sisters will be performing on-stage after dinner! It will end by 11:00!”
Rayman squinted. “The Woodoo Sisters?!”
(to be continued…)
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Comments: 18
The story doesn't have to be perfectly relevent thought, it's just something I thought I'd note.
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Maths my freind,
Rayman was 10 when he first appeared in games,says on the box,
we should all of heard that before, well he only has to be 2 years older and you got yourself an adolecent.
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I can relate my self with the so called 'IADS' but Rayman not bieng Human, I thought wouldn't be so effected,it does explain his sudden change of behaivior in R3 though.
(yes I know you made the IADS thing up.)
Ahh and if Rayman is a teen in this, he'd still be wearing his bandana and would still be straitening his hair,(at least I think he straightened his hair.)
I think he got his hood when he was about 18, and that seems a bit late to be suffering from 'teen syndrome' as it's known here on earth, and IADS on his planet, I'm 13 and I already got over it.
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How do you know all this about Rayman?
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Yet again, I am wowed by your gold pen of Rayman Fan Fiction.
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Sheesh, this is a good reminder to fave this thing, don't know how I missed doing that before...
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Hey I thought you posted this before...or did I read it on fanfiction.net? *confused* Ho hum....an excellent story!
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Well it's showing up on my devwatch as a new deviation, but I'm sure you've loaded it up here before now @_@
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Huh! So THAT'S why that happens!
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Heh, I love the stuff about all the notes Rayman wrote to people as he was about to sneak off unnoticed!
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Yeah, the blue rabbit thing immediately struck me as Lac-Mac..... LOL!! This is so funny! I literally
at all the jokes in there. And the accent of that doctor is too hilarious!
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Blue rabbit like thing...sounds like Lac Mac (I doubt if it is though)
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