Xelloss had finished with the streamers and was now putting party hats on all of the wolves.
"Yes I know they look silly but surely you can stand it just for a little bit," Xelloss told the wolf. "After all, it's the master's first rampage in nearly a thousand years."
And speaking of the devil, Zelas Metallium stormed into her keep on Wolf Pack Island.
Xelloss blew on a kazoo. "So how was-"
Zelas snarled and all of the party decorations spontaneously combusted.
" - your day..." Xelloss croaked, burnt quite thoroughly.
Zelas stomped to her personal quarters and slammed the door.
"Not very well I take it," Xelloss said to no one in particular.
The next day, Xelloss went to meet his master as he usually did whenever he didn't have a particular assignment to complete. But she was nowhere to be found. He checked all the usual places, her quarters, the torture chamber, the globe room where she could spy on all of the other Lords. Then he checked all of the unusual places. Then he went outside to ask the wolves.
"Say, have any of you seen the master?"
The head wolf tipped his head. She went out early.
Xelloss's eyes opened. "Really? Where to?"
Don't know. But she looked fit to kill. We didn't go near her.
"Hmmmm," Xelloss wondered if this had anything to do with her bad mood when she returned yesterday. "And it looks like she's back again."
Zelas was snarling to herself, her short white dress showing signs of singes.
"Mas - " Xelloss burst on fire. " - ter..."
He tipped over and Zelas blew open the doors to her keep.
The head wolf nudged Xelloss. Perhaps...we should leave her alone for awhile.
Zelas marched out of the keep, her arms filled with various instruments of death and torture, some of which were from Xelloss's private collection.
Later...
Xelloss was finished fixing the doors that Zelas had blown off of their hinges. He stood back to admire his handiwork.
"Not bad. Haven't used a hammer in over half a millenia but not bad," Xelloss nodded to himself.
The wolves kept their opinions about Xelloss's carpentry skills to themselves. They immediately ran for cover when Hurricane Zelas touched down on the island.
"Why hello - " Xelloss got buried under a pile of broken and bent instruments of death and torture that Zelas dumped on him as she whirled by. The doors were torn open again.
Xelloss resurfaced with a pair of tweezers. "Why this was my favorite torture instrument. What happened to you my poor sweet thing?" Xelloss sobbed.
The wolves looked at him oddly.
The Mazoku shook the tweezers at the wolves. "This used to be a tongue loosener!"
The wolves looked at the little tweezers, looked at Xelloss, and padded off shaking their heads. It was always better to humor the senile.
"I am NOT senile!"
Zelas sat on her bed in a huff and pulled a book off of her shelf. How to get revenge volume 2.
"So you've tried to kill him and failed. The bomb-rigged chess set, the piranhas in his bath, the meteor drop, the plague, the stampede of wild animals, the hurling of numerous pointy instruments of death, and many other things just didn't seem to cut it. The bastard has the luck of the Mazoku."
Zelas nodded and kept reading.
"Well then if you can't break his flesh, go for the next thing. Break his heart. A man's heart is the most important thing, other than his ego and stomach. Order of importance varies between individuals."
Zelas slammed the book shut. "Graywords, you're as good as dead."
She began to laugh, the sound chilling enough to freeze hell over.
Xelloss in his quarters shook his head. "No good will come of this...to someone else."
Somewhere else in the Men's Club, a club only for men, nothing but men, where you only find men, the fortress of solitude for men, a historical building standing since the Kouma War, a group of friends were playing cards.
"Hit me," Terim called, looking at his hand.
Goldias who was dealer dealt another card to his violet-haired friend.
"Stand," Ashford muttered.
Goldias looked at Sealius and his stone face.
"...hit me..."
"Jeez, Sealius, we aren't playing poker. Stop with the poker face already," Goldias tossed a card to the pink-skinned proxy of Volfied. "Looking at you is freaking me out almost as much as facing Josephine."
"At least you don't have the sin of slaughtering an entire race of dragons weighing down on your shoulders," SaiChuRo, head of the gold dragons worshiping the Fire Dragon God, complained.
Everyone, even Sealius, groaned. The old dragon was moaning about that nearly thousand year old incident.
"You always come here and whine about that. What is your choice?" Goldias growled.
"Choices choices. Should history repeat itself what choice would I make?"
"Hit or stand?" Goldias tapped the table impatiently.
"Hit, strike me down for my sins."
Goldias flipped a card to him. "Oh shut up already."
"You should learn to get along better with your wife, Goldias," Ashford rearranged his hand. "Look at me, four lovely grown children."
"Whom you left to fend for yourself when you went off on your dragonslayer training," Goldias snorted.
"You must always be on your guard against Dark Star," Sealius said quietly.
"Were we right to slaughter the Ancient Dragons," SaiChuRo muttered, not even paying attention to his hand which was busted with sixteen cards.
"Twenty-one!" Terim called, displaying his hand.
Goldias and Ashford groaned. "Again?"
Sealius only folded his hand.
"Your turn to deal," Goldias handed the deck to Sealius. "You know Terim you should get married."
"Don't tell me you're having trouble finding a girl," Ashford added.
Terim shrugged. "Actually, I did meet one with the most beautiful blue eyes but..."
"But...?" asked the two older men. Sealius simply kept shuffling. SaiChuRo kept mumbling about the past.
The door to the club slammed open. All of the men looked. Standing there, outlined by the streaming sunlight, was a tall beautiful woman in a short white dress that revealed tanned legs that seemed to go on forever. As she stepped forward and her long blond hair glistened in the light.
"A woman has entered the men's only club," Ashford noted.
Everyone just nodded and returned to their card game.
"What's next, poker?" Goldias asked.
"Forget it, Sealius always wins that," Ashford shook his head.
"Well then how about Go Fish? Old Maid?"
Zelas's eyes swept over the assortment of men collected in this building. Her divination spell had told her that her nemesis was here. Ah, there he was, sitting and playing cards, completely oblivious to his approaching doom.
"Oh she's coming this way," Ashford winked at Terim, nudging the younger man in the ribs.
Zelas stopped right before Graywords. Now how to ask him out?
Terim looked up into the goddess's blue eyes and smiled. "Hello."
Zelas's mind froze.
Sealius dealt out the cards for a game of Mexican War where one main part of the game is slapping hands. Needless to say, there are a lot of hurt hands, especially since SaiChuRo always uses his staff to do the slapping.
Zelas quickly flipped through "How to get revenge Volume II". Now how to capture that human's heart in order to break it. Damn it, she's been out of the game for way too long.
Then the men started the altered version of War. Whenever a pair of cards appeared, the two holders would draw their weapons out and fight to first blood with no aiming at vital organs.
Terim held out his hands as referee. "Alright, SaiChuRo, Ashford. First blood and no fatal blows. Ashford, no using any of your dragon killing techniques. SaiChuRo, no laser breath. Otherwise I think that anything else goes." He held up his arm. "Fight!"
"Ummm..." Zelas tried to say to Terim but his and everyone else's attention was on the heated battle between the old dragon and old dragonhunter.
"Watch it," Terim called out as Ashford ducked a swing from SaiChuRo's staff.
"Excuse me..."
"Ouch, that's going to sting.
"Ahem."
"No aiming for vital organs now!"
"I just want to ask..."
"And NO transforming SaiChuRo!"
"HEY!" Zelas screamed, grabbing Terim by the chin and forcing him to look at her. "I'm trying to - "
Shoot, she couldn't just go out and say she wanted to ask him out.
Terim looked at her curiously. "Yes?"
"Well that is..." Zelas fumbled. In the past, they always came to her, not the other way around.
"Did you need something?"
"I...I..." Zelas poked her fingers together trying to find the words. She didn't want to be too obvious but it was getting too hard to even just ask him!
"You need directions!" Terim exclaimed, hitting his fist into his hand.
"No!"
"No? What did you want to ask me? Out on a date?" Terim smiled.
Zelas felt her face grow hot. Now just why was she blushing? "No! I mean yes, I mean," Zelas stammered. And now she was acting like some lovestruck girl!
"Why I'd be delighted to go with you, as would any man," Terim bowed and brought one of her hands to his lips. "If it doesn't inconvenient you, how would you like it if we went out for dinner tonight? Say around 6?"
"Ye-yes that would be fine," Zelas stammered again. "Oh Ruby Eye that's only two hours from now!" Zelas vanished, muttering about dresses and shoes.
Everyone blinked.
Terim just smiled. "What a charming girl."
"That be no girl, that be a Mazoku!" SaiChuRo warned.
Terim shrugged. "So? She still has the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen."
SaiChuRo went into a depression, mumbling about Ancient Dragons.
"You know," Ashford pondered. "Didn't the great one..." Everyone turned and bowed to the picture that took up an entire wall of the clubhouse of Lei Magnus. "...didn't he say that this clubhouse will fall should ever a woman step into its confines?"
All around them the building crumbled to pieces.
Goldias sighed. "And so the prophecy comes true."
"Let's move to the other one he built down the street," Terim suggested. "I want to get your suggestions about what to do with my date tonight."
"Do not call Dark Star," Sealius warned.
"Don't slaughter an entire race of dragons," SaiChuRo added.
Terim looked at them and scratched his head. "And does that have anything to do with a date?"
The two thought for a bit and shook their heads. "No."
"Thought so."
Meanwhile back on Wolf Pack Island, Zelas was totally breaking her character. She was in her quarters, all of her battle armor strewn over the room.
"I can't believe I don't have any other clothes than this white dress," Zelas fumed. "But why would I have anything else? I'm a fighter not a lover!"
"Master?" Xelloss peeked his head into her room. "I just heard you needed a dress - " He stared at the state of his master's room.
"Kick yourself to the moon Xelloss."
And being the loyal servant that he is, he complied with a demonstration of remarkable flexibility. He split kicked himself. Ouch.
Zelas went back through rummaging through her stuff. "Maybe I'll just go borrow something from Dolphin. She'd never miss a dress anyway."
And somewhere in the endless expanses of the ocean, someone was fishing.