The room was strangely dark. Or perhaps the previous rooms were strangely bright, given they were underground. Either way, they couldn’t see much of anything. While there were torches on the walls, all of them were extinguished, and the sole source of light was the door behind the two of them. The setup felt familiar to Tress, which is why she was utterly unsurprised when said door suddenly closed behind them, plunging the two fully in the dark. “Yep, figures.”
Reece and Tress weren’t really scared of the dark, but there’s still an edge to being plunged into complete darkness. The two stood motionless, just waiting for something to happen, when two beams of light shone down from the ceiling, illuminating a pair of slightly raised platforms in the center of the room. Recognizing the setup of platforms from the entrance, Tress climbed up onto one the lit platforms and motioned for Reece to stand on the other. Thankful she didn’t drag him this time, and much preferring to stand in the light, Reece obliged. However, the moment both stood on their respective platforms, the room plunged into darkness once more.
“Uh, what’s going–” Reece began to say, when the lights flashed on once more, this time illuminating the full room, “–on?” Reece blinked a few times as he took in what the room looked like. White electric light radiated from lightbulbs that stuck out of various colorful panels. A giant sign overhead said in loud, glowing lettering “Test of Friendship!” paired with inexplicable neon outlines of both Reece and Tress’ faces that hung on both sides of the sign. From the sheer implausibility of it all, they both accurately surmised none of this existed less than five seconds ago.
Before either of them could react to any of this
[1]
Which in this case was a very generous timeframe., a thick puff of smoke sprung up between them, which cleared to reveal an odd-looking creature. “Welcome all, to the final trial!” The creature shouted, its voice revealing itself to be Roc. Reece and Tress watched with quiet uncertainty as Roc hammed it up towards some empty bleachers for a non-existent audience.
Reece decided to begin with the least confusing part “…You’re a kangaroo?”
Roc turned on a dime to face the much shorter slime-bug “A feathered kangaroo! Important distinction!” Roc’s goofy grin caused Reece to lean back as he got close. Tress, watching from further away, noticed Roc had used this opportunity to slip some kind of device into his pouch. “What, were you expecting a bird or something?”
“Um. Yes, actually. Roc is the name of a mythical bird, plus there’s the feather, so…” Roc winced as he heard Reece mention a ‘mythical bird.’
“Ugh, is that misinformation still going around? I would’ve sworn it’s been long enough to…Oh, wait, you already know about the prize for this little test! My very own Roc’s Feather!” Roc gestured behind the pair, and while it was difficult to see behind the booths they were in, they could see a single feather inside a glass case on a pedestal. “But I must assume you don’t know what it does, right? I mean, if you knew it helped you jump higher, then surely you’d see right through that obvious lie spread around by those meanies! I mean, honestly, I don’t see why they told everyone I’m a bird! Everyone knows jumping is what kangaroos do, expecting me to be anything else would be frankly ridiculous!”
Reece decided to not comment on how this whole situation was already ridiculous, nor on how such logic could just as easily make him expect a rabbit, frog, or even a fish. Wait, don’t birds hop along the ground too?
Tress held in a small chuckle. There’s definitely some history there, isn’t there? Tress thought, deciding to ask more about this juicy drama after all the other stuff she’s got to do after the trial.
Roc noticed the skeptical looks he was getting, and quickly moved on to the next point of order "I'm sure you two are curious what your final trial will be, and I don't keep you two waiting. It's…" Roc waved one paw
[2]
Er, wing?above his head as he shouted at the top of his lungs "The Quiz! Of! Pals!" The silence that followed spoke volumes, lasting several seconds before Roc carried on. "…once again, name not final. You've already demonstrated such strong friendship, and while I would LOVE to give you your reward right now," a slight yet clear exhaustion crept into Roc's voice, before he returned to his normal peppy voice with a sharp inhale, "we, or well, just I in this case, am required to confirm one last measure of your friendship: how well the two of you know each other, through a series of questions!"
…Ah. Reece inhaled slowly to preempt his nerves. He barely knew anything personal about Tress, beyond his few anecdotes from the short time they were roommates. He supposed their “score” or whatever didn't matter much to him personally, but... Looking at Tress, he see could that she was psyching herself up for this. She’s so much more into this than me, isn’t she? …Well, I suppose I should try my best as usual, at least for her.
Roc pulled a few notecards out of his pouch "Now, I'm sure these questions will be nice and easy, so I kept this as lean on questions as I can." He turned his attention to his first notecard, and a bead of sweat all too clearly rolled down his face. His eyes skimmed back and forth, reading and rereading the question to make sure he read it right. With a short cough to clear his throat, he began, voice wavering "Uh, first… mandatory… question! Are the two of you, um…" Roc took a deep breath to center himself and decided to just ask directly. “Please tell me you two aren’t dating.”
Reece tried his best to keep his eyes from rolling. A few of his smaller eyes ended up rolling anyway. "Oh, this. Ugh. I'm aroace, so I’ve never been interested in dating really. …Which means no, we aren’t dating, if that’s not obvious," he answered flatly.
Tress, meanwhile, laughed at the question, "Oh, sorry, Reece is nice enough I guess, but he’s absolutely not my type. If I was going to date anyone it’d have to be a cool girl."
"Okay, good, just friends…" Roc gave a sigh of relief as he mumbled with unintentional clarity. Perking back up, Roc flipped to his next notecard. "Second question! Reece, how much do you know about what Tress was like when she was young? (Tress, you'll be asked the same question about Reece once he's finished.)"
Reece paused to consider the question. He supposed such a question wasn’t out of place, but he wasn’t sure it was the most comfortable question. Either way, he didn't know much, but there were a few things he recalled hearing from her. "Well, she was adopted when she was a kid, and was homeschooled by her mother until college. She picked up her interest in... 'treasure hunting' from a young age too, if I recall." Tress nodded, indicating what he said was accurate, but Reece didn’t have anything else to add. The two of them never really talked about their lives at college. As he thought about it, he wondered what Tress could even say about him when it got to her turn.
Roc stared at Reece expectantly. “Is that all you want to answer?”
“er, well,” Reece said hesitantly.
“I should… probably mention you’re allowed to ask Tress questions if you want. She is right there, if there’s anything you’d want to use this chance to learn about her…?” Roc offered hopefully.
“N-no, I’m good,” Reece said. There was certainly a lot about Tress he didn’t know, but to be honest he wasn’t sure what questions he could even ask. Roc shrugged and moved on to Tress’ turn.
"Well,” Tress began, “Let’s see… for starters, Reece was always a good student as a kid, so much so that he panicked for a week straight when he realized he was getting a C in Magical Studies 101. He didn't have any friends from childhood at college with you either, so I have to assume he wasn't a very sociable kid. He kept pawning packages of cookies from his parents off on me, so I assumed he holds some grudge against them, aaand his interest in archeology was from when he was a teen from what he told me once.” Tress paused here, before sheepishly turning to Reece. “Er, sorry, I hope none of that was too personal or anything. Was there anything I got wrong, Reece?”
“I… I got it up to a B in the final!” Reece said somewhat indignantly at what felt like the most personal attack on him. “All the Magical Studies classes sucked, I hate how many were required for an archeology major…” Reece stopped himself, realizing he might be coming across as whiny, “Uh, sorry, no that’s about right.”
Satisfied by the question, Roc moved on "Alright, question three! A bit more lighthearted maybe, but: What is the other's favorite animal? Tress first this time!"
Tress failed to stifle a laugh beyond turning it into a snort. "Oh, that’s an easy one. Reece likes dragonflies! He spent a ton of time putting together a Halloween dragonfly costume his first year of college." Tress gave Reece a playful wink, which he did not return with even one of his eight eyes. She wasn't wrong, though. Although Reece had never really given "favorite animal" much thought (he liked a lot of animals decently well), he definitely couldn't deny a fondness for dragonflies. Man, that was a good costume too… Maybe I should’ve tried to fix it up instead of tossing it.
Reece shook his nostalgic thoughts out of his head before they distracted him from his turn. "If mythological animals count, dragons. Er, the animal of course, not the concept.” He was thankful for an easy question; it wouldn’t take much for anyone who met Tress to come to the same conclusion.
...Which is why Tress' grimace caught him off guard here. "I... definitely wouldn't use the term animal for dragons. Like, dragons are cooler than basically everything else, so really, I don’t blame you if they came to mind, but they aren't really an animal..." Tress trailed off.
Reece gave Tress an especially blank stare "...huh? What else would a dragon be?”
Tress quickly tried for a lighter tone "A-again, definitely my favorite of a lot of things! Just, not animal, that feels like saying people are animals. I guess I'd say my favorite animal is… sheep? It’s cliché, but hey, you gotta pay yourself a compliment from time to time."
Reece held off from responding to buy time for Tress' explanation to make sense to him. It stubbornly refused to do so, and eventually he let a simple "...what?" escape. Is she, implying she’s a sheep? Looking over Tress' Extremely Draconic appearance, he definitely doubted it. She does have that fluffy wool scarf I suppose, and her ears are a smidge sheep-like instead of draconic... Do dragons even have ears? Reece pondered this for a second, I guess there’s nothing stopping a fictional creature from having whatever body parts it wants. He also supposed her hooves might also be arguably sheep-like, but really so many things have hooves he didn't see why she'd pinpoint that one single body part specifically.
Reece noticed his own confusion was somehow doubled in Roc's expression. Roc found himself hung up on how casually and weirdly these two were discussing dragons. They had to be talking about something other than those things, right? He definitely wouldn’t consider one of those a person or an animal. Noticing Reece’s gaze, Roc silently gestured as if pleading to Reece for any further explanation of what they were talking about; a request which Reece opted to ignore for his own sanity. Accepting that he’d be fully lost on that interaction, Roc chose to continue on as if nothing had happened. "Okay, final question! There's just one thing we need to learn about you two before we finish up here: what reason did you two decide to seek this place out? Tress starts!"
"Ooo, good question!" Tress considered the question for a moment, "I guess the grand scheme/big picture/overall story/brass tacks
[3]
Reece: "Stop that."of it is that there are a lot of places I want to go in the world, so it’s not very hard for any location to make it on the list of places I visit. And, well, it'd be a lie to say I came here knowing what I was getting into. But even if it's been pretty unorthodox, I feel like this has been a pretty positive experience for me, and at very least I couldn't have done any of this without Reece." Tress paused, and considered what she said "I guess that just sums up to random chance though, so maybe it’s not the best answer to your question…”
Roc blissfully assuaged Tress' doubt "Oh, nonsense, that was a wonderful response!" Roc turned to Reece and encouraged him to give his answer.
Oh, shoot. Reece didn’t do well with answering open ended questions like this concisely. His mind was abuzz with options for what to say. There was the historical value of locations like this, there was everything that motivates him as an archeologist, there was his hurry to be the first to explore ruins before they could be further damaged... All of it was important to him, and all of it true as well, but he hesitated, unsure if he should actually say any of them. Is this kind of minutiae really a good fit for this weird friendship quiz? Still, he had to say something, so in a panic and with nothing else, he fumbled out "it's my job," and left it at that.
Roc looked skeptically at Reece, clearly not convinced that was the full story. “Is that all? You’re free to take more time to think over the question through if you like.”
“Nope, I’m good.” Reece stated flatly. These words came to him much easier than the ones before. He’d cut himself off before getting on a tangent once, cutting himself off again was easier.
Roc seemed clearly disappointed by Reece’s obstinance, but he didn’t press any more. “Okay then, well…” Reaching into his pouch, Roc pulled out a small device of some sort, and shortly after the room went dark once more.