Ding Dong!
Zel waited patiently outside on the patio steps until a woman with short, fushia hair, and long bangs answered the door.
"Oh, you must be Zelgadis."
"Yes. Is Lina ready?"
"She's just about done in the bathroom. Why don't you come in?"
Zel took the offer and gawked at the living room in front of him.
"Please excuse the mess. I've been working overtime at the restaurant and haven't had much time for cleaning. And Lina - "
"Yes." Zel sighed, but smiled amused. "I know." That girl would sooner make a mess than help clean one up.
Luna nodded her head understandably. "Why don't you go wait for her in her room? Down the hall, 2nd to the left."
Zel studied where Luna pointed, then proceeded as she went back to her kitchen sink and dirty dishes.
Oh. My. Dear. God. Zel looked around the room. It was spotless. Sure, the desk was cluttered with papers and binders, but everything else was clean. As if the desk was the only portion of the room Lina spent time in. He walked over to the desk. Spellbooks. All of which he had read. Not very intriguing. What was intriguing were the scraps of note paper all around. Was she writing new spells? Zel examined piece after piece of scratch paper. After some time of memorizing and re-evaluating her written thought processes, he set the papers down. It was all too much. He would have to ask her about it later.
Looking around some more, Zel surmised that despite Lina's behavior, her room was definitely a girl's. Not that it was covered in pink ballerinas and lace, but that it had many more stuffed animals than a boy was prone to recieve as presents or childhood pacifiers. There were make-shift shelves around the room, up to the ceiling, displaying the fuzziest bears and stuffed wolves and plushie-Zels...
"...!?!..." Zel jumped up to the one of the shelves near the ceiling. Steadying himself on the bed which the shelf hung over, He reached for a familiar plushie, hiding behind a red, stuffed dragon. "No way..." He just stared at the thing in his hands, shaking his head. "Where the heck did she get - " Or more importantly, WHY did she have it!?! Zel turned a beet red, his mind racing over the possibilities. "I think I have to sit down." His feet shook a little unsteadily atop Lina's sheets.
A doornob turned. In the hallway. Two doors down from Lina's room. Lina must be coming out of the bathroom! Zel scrambled to get off her bed. Then he remembered that the little Zel-plushie was still in his hand, and he had to jump back on the bedsprings to replace the little guy perfectly behind the red dragon, just as it was before. He tucked the dragon's tail back in front of the plushie-Zel, then backed off, holding his hands up, as if that and his steady gaze would hold them in place. Of course, walking backwards on a springy bed is not highly recommended. Your feet could, oh, say...trip up in the bedsheets, and bind up your feet, just long enough for you to fall back on your butt.
crash
Lina gave her hair one last stroke with her hairbrush, then opened her bedroom door.
"Zel, you broke the bed??"
"It's not my fault I weigh half a ton!"
"What were you DOINGG???"
"um..." Zel turned a sweet cherry red this time (which is much different from a deep beet red...) Besides, Zel couldn't turn a beet red, because Lina already had that covered.
"ZE-ELLLLLL!!!" She threw her basketball at him hard enough to knock him over her wrecked bed. "I'll get you back on the courts!"
Two men in black suits and sunglasses parolled the sidewalks. Not very inconspicous, despite their feeble efforts.
"Agent C, this is Agent A." One of the men whispered into his coat collar while holding his ear. "Is the target in your area?"
"No, sir." A voice crackled through the microphone in Agent A's ear.
"Well, keep your eyes open for any mysterious phenonemon!"
"Yes, sir!" The microphone crackled again. Agent A, walked off to their parked van. Said van had the usual satellite dishes all over the top, and some fake cable company's name on the side.
Agent B, meanwhile, continued patrolling the streets. "Agent C?" He whispered into his collar, while stopping beside a church. "Do you see that loud red-head yet?"
"No, sir." A voice came from outside Agent B's ear microphone.
"AAhhh!" Agent B jumped. "Jeeze!" He looked up at the talking statue of the Virgin Mary. "Is that you, Agent C?"
"Don't ask me, I'm stone, remember?" The statue murmmured quickly, trying to stay perfectly still beside the church's steps.
"Oh, oh! Right!" Agent B turned his back on the Virgin Mary statue, and pretended to be looking at something across the street from the church. He continued in a whisper, without looking at Agent C. "Sorry."
"Well, stop blowing my disguise!" Agent C hissed. "I have to stay in character!"
Jeeze! What a thesbian! "Well, when you see that witch girl, give a holler." He said a bit skeptically.
"Hey! This is the perfect position!"
Agent B looked over to the side of the church.
"See all those basketball courts?" The Agent C statue went on. "The target is a kid! And it's Saturday! Sooner or later, she'll come here!"
"Sure. Just remember: Agent A and I will catch her. You just gather anything of hers for the lab."
"Don't worry about a thing, sir!"
"YATTA!" Lina jumped into the air, leaving Zel to catch the basketball before it rolled away into the nearby skateboarders' obstacle course. "That's game set and match!" She waved her victory fingers in his face. "You're up next, Mister H-O-R-S!"
"What are you so happy about?" Zel spun the basketball idilly in his hands. "You're also up to S." He gave an evil, all-too-knowing grin. "I make this next shot, and you lose."
"What are you talking about, Zel?! If I make the shot after yours, we're still even."
"Yeah, but I pick how we make the shot this time!"
It dawned on Lina in a split second. Zel would probably choose a kind of shot he could make, but she couldn't. Which would ensure he wouldn't earn an E, but Lina would, completely spelling the word "HORSE", and losing the game. "You bastard..." Lina seethed, with an underlying excitement and glee.
Zel simply ignored her, walking across the outdoor basketball court, and amazingly spinning the ball on his finger, to rub it in.
Lina countered by sticking out her tounge and making as much noise as possible as he readied his shot.
Zel aimed from way off to the side of the court, almost leaning on the fence separating them from the other occupied outdoor courts. He stayed completely focused on the basket's rim, despite Lina's unintelligible hollerings. Very slowly, he raised his arms, then prepared to propel the ball.
"So, just what were you doing on my bed, hm, Zel?"
Zel convulsed mid-throw, and completely missed the basket.
Lina began laughing herself to death, as the ball sailed passed the backboard and towards the skaters' area.
"Lina! That was a cheap shot!" Zel quivered, looking like an angry cherry. He took a deep breath and composed himself. "But I guess it doesn't matter."
"Hey..." Lina watched him warily. "What's with the smirk?..."
The basketball bounced off a skateboarding ramp behind the hoop, off the church wall, off a pole in the fence, back to the backboard, then fell gracefully, through the hoop, not even touching the rim.
Lina gawked.
Zel did a little smug pose.
"YOU BASTARD!!!" Lina screamed, as Zel tried to contain his laughter...to no avail.
The ball rolled off into the skateboarders' area unnoticed. Zel and Lina were too busy laughing and fuming respectively, for some time. Finally, they looked the ball's way when other basketballs flew out of some of the adjoining courts, and its occupants immediately ran after them, screaming.
"What's going on?" Zel mused.
Someone on the other side of the skaters' area snatched up the basketballs and tried to make a run for it before the owners caught up with them.
"Isn't that the Virgin Mary statue outside the church steps?" Lina walked up slowly behind Zel.
"Yeah..." He replied slowly, as they watched. "And it's taking our basketballs..."
"Give me back my balls, you damn virgin!" Some of the other kids yelled, running after the "statue".
"OK. That's too wierd for me!" Lina turned away. "Let's go to the mall, Zel. Zel?... Yeah, I know that was wierd to see, but you can snap out of it now, Zel."
"The lab better appreciate this!" Agent C plopped down inside the "cable company's" van, and unzipped the statue costume. "I almost got killed, trying to get those things!"
"And what is the lab supposed to do with basketballs, Agent C?" Agent A asked, while resetting some frequencies on the van's numerous monitors.
"They're hers!!! If you two weren't so late after I called in my target sighting, we would have gotten more than just basketballs!"
"Calm down!" Agent B held up a hand. "She went west. Probably towards that mall she's been reported to frequent."
"This could be good." Agent A turned in his chair. "Other agents have reported seeing her use her magic within the mall."
"Ok. So, what's the plan?" Agent C huffed.
"We'll employ ourselves as various mobile workers throughout the mall." Agent A explained. "The less we're stuck inside a store, and more able to walk around to follow her, the better."
"Wow." Lina looked around the mall, a little worried. "Is it Children's Day, or something?" She shrank a little towards Zel as they walked through the mall.
There were many costumed promotional people standing outside the stores today, not to mention the kiddy pictures with photographers dressed as woodland animals. One such promotional host included the Warner Bros. Store.
"Pika Pika!" A giant pikachu jumped out at Lina as they passed.
"AAHH!" Lina punched blindly.
"Lina! It's just a store clerk!" Zel chided.
"Uh...Ah-heh-heh!" Lina scratched the back of her head. Then she grabbed Zel's wrist. "Well, let's get out of here before he gets up!" Lina bolted, dragging Zel behind.
The man in a pikachu costume rocked left and right on his back, before he could finally roll to his side and get up. He bent his head towards a microphone in his collar.
"The subject has been sighted and is heading your way, Agent A. And she's hostile!"
Lina busied herself, catching her breath, on a mall bench.
Zel gave a very audible, exasperated sigh, as he sat beside her. "I never pegged you as a coward, Lina."
"For your big FAT information, I seem to recall you freaking out, when we saw something wierd all of a sudden!!"
Zel sighed again and settled in his seat. "Well, there certainly are a lot of those costumed workers around today." He agreed, watching as yet more costumed people waited in line at the mall's employment booth, across from their bench.
A man in a dragon costume stepped up in line, as the shelled creature behind him followed.
"Agent C just said that the target was heading our way!" Said the tortoise to the snail. "Well, keep your eyes open, Agent B." The snail replied, stepping up in line.
Lina and Zel continued to rest and watch the line go by.
"You could not pay me enough to take their jobs." Zel commented. "And to stand there in all those ridiculous costumes, waiting to apply!"
"Hm." Lina shrugged. "They did it in Blazing Saddles!" Lina winked at Zel.
Zel turned. "What?"
"You know, that part when they're all applying for sherrif." In a few moments she started to giggle.
"I haven't seen that movie." Zel leaned back into the bench.
"Damn! I wish I had it on video! Then we could go watch it!" Lina looked around, as if the tree beside her was the cause of her problems. "Hey, wait!" Lina got up and grabbed Zel's wrist.
"What is it now?" He watched her warily, centering his weight, ready to anchor himself, and prevent Lina from dragging him off again.
"There's a video store over there!" Lina cocked her head in a direction further down the mall. "Let's go see if they have the movie."
"Alright." Zel shrugged and smiled peacefully. They walked off, Lina's hand slipping down his wrist, into his own palm.
"There she is!" The tortoise yelled, pointing.
"Where?!" The snail scanned the crowded mall.
"Sir? I need your resume."
"What?" Agent B turned. Apparently, he had reached the receptionist.
"Are you applying for the children's photography job?" The woman chewed her gum between words.
"Actually..." Agent A pushed passed Agent B. "We were both wondering if there was an opening in that store over there." He pointed.
"The video store?"
Agent A nodded.
"You're in luck, pal. There happen to be two openings for promotional clerks in costume."
"Perfect." The snail smiled.
Part 6 | Fanfiction