Zelgardis wandered the hallways of the star ship in a mad search of the most precious thing in the entire whole void of space. Caffinated Coffee. For some MORONIC reason, all they had on bored was DECAFF!!!!!! What kind of primative brain dead HACK ever came up with the idea that they could allow one board alcaholic drinks that melted brain cells almost as efficiently as any spilt drops melted the table top, BUT!!!!!! But... NOT Caffinated Coffee?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!? WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THIS PLACE??!!!!!! Were these people INSAINE?!?!?!?!? One thing was for sure, if he did not get a caffine fix soon he was really going to hurt some one. Maybe multiple some ones. Especially with that group of acadamy recruits that had taken it upon them selves to follow him around where ever he went. It was almost worse than having Amelia clinging to his arm. SHUDDER! What a horrible thought. Actually it WAS worse. They were all guys.
"So your skin really IS made of rock?"
"Can I touch it?"
"How come you can still move around so easily?"
"I never met any one before who looked like you!"
"No doubt." Zel muttered.
"Is it true that where you came from, you and your friends had to pass through a town where only women were allowed, so you had to wear a dress?"
He span with a growl, grabbing the kid who said it by the shirt and lifting him close to his face. "WHO told you THAT?!"
The kid laughed a little nervously, sweat sprouting all over his face. "Uh..."
"I did." Came a cheerful voice from among the group. Zel dropped the kid and straitened, seeing the arm waving around enthusiastically. "It was me!"
"Xellos." Zel hissed with such hatred that the temperature of the deck was lowered several degrees.
Xellos turned back to telling his story. "And he looked so pretty in that dress. It's really hard to believe it to look at him now..." Xellos gave Zel a quick up and down with his eyes, licking his lips suggestively. "But then again... maybe not."
"Xellos," Zel said dangerously.
"And he even managed to fall for the princess of the land too. Rescued her from the clutches of evil..."
"Xellos!"
"...shed his dress or her..."
"XELLOS!"
"It was a real pity she turned out to be a HE, wasn't it Zel?"
"That's. IT!!!" Zel plowed through the recruits and grabbed Xellos by the neck, hell bent on ripping his head off. "I'M SICK OF YOU PUBLICLY HUMILLIATING ME EVERY CHANCE YOU GET!"
"I don't do that," Xellos smiled. "You do that your self!"
"I'M GOING TO RIP THAT SMILE FROM YOUR FACE WITH MY BARE HANDS!!!!"
"But Zel," Xellos grinned, still perfectly calm. "you do not have 'bear hands'. They're made of stone."
"AAARGH!" Zel cried in frustration, squeezing tighter. "SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP FOR ONCE AND LET ME KILL YOU!"
"OoOoh..." Xellos moaned and writhed in a manner that suggested he was enjoying the situation much more than he had proper right to. "Harder Zel... Do it... HARDER!"
That was enough to bring Zel back to his sences. He dropped Xellos like a sack, and turned away from the Mazoku, taking deep breaths and counting to a hundred to control his anger. The recruits around them were looking somewhat stunned. Some were pointing little things at them. Zel figured they must be some kind of weapon. He'd seen them before. One recruit leant down to Xellos.
"Are you okay, Mr. Xellos?"
"Yeah I'm fine. We were just flirting."
"FLIRTING?!" Zel span again, snatched one of the little things out of someone's hands and pointed it at Xellos. "DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIE!!!!!"
A beam shot out of the little thing and slashed across Xellos' shoulder down to his middle, then it was gone. There was a silence. Zel breathed heavily, eyes latched onto Xellos' who's were wide, surprised.
Then Xellos' arm fell off, hit the deck this an audible THUNK, and vanished. "Oh my." He blinked. "You seem to have cut me. HMMM... Interesting weapon that."
Zel gave the little thing in his hand a brief glance, then looked back at Xellos. Himself completely stunned.
"Well," Xellos shrugged. "This will take me a while to recover from, so I think I will get going now." He vanished, then reappeared right in front of Zel. "But don't think next time I will be so easy to hit." He winked, then vanished again, laughter echoing in the air.
And the recruits paniced. Some pointed their lasers at Zel, others fled screaming, some just started screaming.
Zel smiled slowly. At last... At last he had a weapon that he could use against Xellos! Ha ha ha ha ha haa..... Now if only those idiots would shut up. They were giving him a head ache. He decided that the risk to his headache was good enough, and gathered the energy in his hands. "Flare.... ARROW!"
KA-BOOM!
Ha. That sure shut them up. But it just sent to alarms off again. Vaguely he wondered if he would get in trouble for blowing something up again. Right now though, he didn't care. If they didn't have decent coffee, it was their own fault!
This is an add break. Go to the toilet. Get a drink. Go do something, that's what this is here for. Go on. Shoo, Shoo. Just make sure you come back afterwards. :)
The Starship Enterprise had picked up a distress signal from the ship of generic neutral people, but the crew were surprised to find nothing there when they arrived at the coordinates.
"There's nothing here, Captain." The Ensine informed Piccard as he leaned into the control panel.
"There must be. Scan for debris and weapons discharge."
"Already done, Sir. There are traces of laser discharge from a generic evil pirate space ship, but it is as though they just disappeared."
Suddenly a large cube shaped ship uncloaked before them, sending the crew of the Enterprise into complete panic.
"THE BORG!! AAAAAARGH!!!!!!"
"ATTACK!! ATTACK!! ATTACK!!" Piccard ordered viciously. Then several pillars of light shimmered in various places around the bridge that materialized into Borg. (Some appeared on top of the control panels, flipped off, and landed flat on their faces before quickly recovering.)
A large once-male one stepped towards the captain, and announced in a charged up, high squeaky voice: "I am Doenan of Borg. In the name of the Pure Light of Justice, we demand you hand over the sorceress Lina Inverse and her companions for assimilation immediately."
The star ship Captain looked at this particular Borg utterly dumbfounded, the rest of the crew were trying not to laugh. "Huh?"
Donean of Borg repeated it's self. "I am Doenan of Borg. In the name of the Pure Light of Justice, we demand you hand over the sorceress Lina Inverse and her companions for assimilation immediately."
"You mean you are not interested in us?"
Doenan looked down at the captain as though he was some disgusting thing. "Why would we Borg be interested in a mere space captain when the likes of the Dragon Spooker are aboard?"
"You do realize that as the captain of this ship, I cannot let you simply kidnap my passengers. They fall under my protection. We have fought the Borg before and won."
"That may have been true in the past. But We fight for Justice and Truth. If you do not comply with our demands, then we will purify your ship with the radiant light of our superior laser weaponry."
Piccard grimaced. Not exactly from the threat either.
"You have exactly one hour starting now to hand over the sorceress and her companions, or we will destroy you. We will wait here until you comply."
The Borgs all froze in their stances.
Meanwhile...
Lina, Gourry and Naga were back in the ship's lounge inhaling food faster than the machine could create it. Actually Lina and Gourry were. NAGA was once again collapsed under a table in one of her drunken stoopers (after she found some clothes). She was snoring loudly at the feet of some stranger with a large smile on her face. Although, her smile was not as large -- or as satisfied -- as his.
Lina was not exactly sure where Xellos disappeared himself to, but she wasn't particularly worried. She was mainly worried about Amelia. And about Zelgardis who right now was in Psychological theropy with councilor Troy after coffee withdrawal sent him psycho tripping and he blew the crap out of a bunch of accadamy recruits (although strangely enough, this did not KILL them). After Lina explained to the captain about Zel's need for a caffine fix, Doctor Crusher made up a substitute. Fortunately after just four jugs of the stuff, he was subdued enough to think rationally again.
LINA'S MENTAL NOTE:
Do not let Zel go more than three hours without coffee break unless facing another dark lord.
Although amusing to watch, Zel - coffee = sadistic bastard.
Zelgardis' counciling session....
Zelgardis was lying on the couch in Councilor Troy's office nursing a monster head ache, while Dianna sat opposite him looking mildly amused.
"Tell me Mister Greywords, do you know why you are here?"
Zel grumbled something about dirty (explicative deleted)[1] Mazoku's, and (explicative deleted, EXPLICATIVE DELETED!!!) red priests.
"I'm sencing that you hold great pain within you."
"(Explicative deleted) yeah." He almost laughed, then fell quiet.
Troy sat patiently, waiting for him to continue. Almost ten minutes went by in total silence. She sighed. "You know, talking about it could help ease your pain."
Zel snorted. "That's (explicative deleted) bullcrap."
"No, it's not. And I would apprieciate it if you would not use that sort of language in my presence.
This ship holds a high standard in all areas, including the type of language that is spoken."
Zel rolled his eyes then went quiet.
"So are you going to tell me?" She asked after a few more minutes of silence.
"Tell you what?" He snapped.
"Why you caused that group of recruits to... explode. Or what ever it was you did."
He mumbled something.
"Hmmm?" She lent forward expectantly.
"I said, I didn't cause them to explode. I hit the (explicative deleted) heads with a flare arrow... Sorry."
"So you can generate fire out of thin air. Tell me, when did you first discover that you were pyrokinetic?"
"I'm NOT pyrokinetic." He said sounding rather peeved. "That's more like Lina."
"Oh? So how do you explain your ability to generate balls of fire out of thin air?"
Zell sighed with resegnation. "All right, all right. I'll tell you. Do you want the abridged version, or the long version; complete with full orchestration, four part harmony and glossy photographs?"[2]
Troy blinked. "Huh?"
Zel sighed again. "sigh!" Then proceeded to tell his tragic tale of manipulation, betrayal, murder, lost love, and psychotic relatives.
Halfway through discussing the princess in the city of women who was the love of his life -- but also turned out to be a GUY, Troy's comlink beeped.
"Troy here." She said.
"Councilor Troy," Came Piccard's voice. "Is Mister Greywords with you still?"
"Yes." She replied.
"Could you kindly escort him to the bridge. We have a small emergency and... he and his friends need to know the situation."
"What's happening?" Zel asked, leaning forward.
"What about reaching his friends?" Troy asked instead.
"Already on their way." Piccard replied.
"Understood." She said. "Troy out."
Zel sat looking at Troy's face coldly as she rose to her feet. "What is this about?"
"I'm not sure. It's a real pity because I feel we have made real progress today. How do you feel?"
Zel smiled slightly. "Better. I think."
"Good. Now come on."
After a few minutes of walking in silence side by side, Zel and Troy reached the command deck. They paused out side the door, hearing the sounds of Lina ranting at the top of her voice.
"Uh-oh." Zel sighed. "This does not sound good." The door slid open, and Zel saw Gourry standing holding Naga up, beside the captain, while Lina was in the center of the deck engaged in wrestling and screaming at a large, vaguly humanoid creature with wires, and metalic objects sticking out of and even replacing body parts. Looking around the room at these creatures, he counted nine of them engaged in various forms of intimidation... And the seventh one was rather curvacious, but he wasn't looking at that. No. He wasn't. Zel also noticed that Lina looked quite pissed off, Gourry was worried and ready to jump into the action, and Naga was just pissed. As ususal. The starship crew were watching with stunned looks on their faces.
"HOW DARE YOU CALL ME EVIL YOU ....." She continued to rant and rave and wrestle.
However as soon as Zelgardis stepped off of the elevator and onto the deck, all of the nine wired up creatures sharply turned their heads to his direction... and SMILED at him with the most dopey smiles he had ever seen on anyone else... they were all blushing too. This worried him.
"HEY!" Lina growled at the one she HAD been wrestling with. "YOU GET BACK HERE! I HAVEN'T FINNISHED WITH YOU YET!!!!"
"What on earth?" Zel said to himself, as all nine dropped what they were doing, covered their blushing faces with their hands and cried in unison "Oh Mister Zelgardis!!!! We missed you so MUCH!!!" Then as one they glomped[3] him.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
[1] -- Just in case you were wondering, these were not actually edited out by anyone but myself.
[2] -- This is a reference to Allo Guthrie's " Alice's Resturant." Actually several references.<- Spelling of the names may not be correct. Sorry.
[3] -- "glomped", as I understand it from the fanfic world is a generic term meaning jumping onto someone and grabbing hold of them. Usually in a somewhat rough, but affectionate, way. That is my understanding, but don't quote me on that. That is the meaning I put to it here.
Part 5 | Fanfiction