The Tragedy
Disclaimer: I do not own Galactik football and I make no money from this fanfiction.
Set during the days of the old Akillian Team.
An ear piercing scream filled the air, startling Aarch into action; he ran to the bathroom door, knocking loudly.
"Artegor? Are you okay in there?" he asked, concern in his voice. He'd never heard Artegor make such a noise before, not even when he was injured, leading him to the conclusion that there must be something seriously wrong with him.
There was no response from inside, leading Aarch to suspect that he had passed out or something.
He started to open the door before having it pushed forcefully back in the opposite direction, banging him on the chin.
"Artegor?"
"Don't come in," said Artegor, sounding sulky and dejected.
"What on Akillian is going on?" Aarch asked.
"It's nothing!" Artegor exclaimed, far too quickly for it to be true.
"Just let me in," Aarch replied, exasperatedly- they would be late for breakfast at this rate and everyone knew that breakfast was the most important meal of the day.
After some hesitation, Artegor complied, opening the door in the slowest way possible.
Stepping into the bathroom, Aarch had no idea what to expect except that it would be bad, very bad for Artegor to be reacting like this.
Even if he had had time to come up with a list of speculations, he would never have predicted this. His only response was the gasp and stare, mouth open at the sight that lay before him.
"I know, it's terrible, isn't it?" Artegor said, dramatically.
"It's not that bad, it's just-" Aarch started, before being cut off by Artegor.
"It's FRIZZY!" he wailed, grasping at his hair and raking his hands through it like a madman. "Look what this stupid Ryker's humidity has done to my hair."
It was the sad truth, Artegor's normally immaculate hair had devolved into a mass of frizzy curls- even Aarch, who wasn't prone to following fashion, could see that it didn't look good.
"Look, it's not that bad, can't you put some you know…stuff in it?" Aarch shrugged, knowing next to nothing about the various potions and lotions that Artegor put in his hair, in fact, he normally tried to avoid the subject of Artegor and his hair (he was ever so slightly obsessed) but it seemed like he had to deal with it now.
"I have! But nothing is working!" he moaned, looking utterly defeated.
"Just try and forget about it, we've got a match to play remember?"
Clearly this was the wrong tack to take.
"I can't go to practice looking like this! How am I supposed to play?" By now he was getting hysterical.
Aarch rolled his eyes, sensibly, not verbalising the fact that he thought that Artegor was worse than the girls on the team when it came to his precious hair.
"I have an idea," he said, instead. "Wait here."
"As if I could go anywhere," Artegor said, melancholically, whilst watching Aarch run off.
Ten minutes later, Aarch returned, a pair of straighteners held triumphantly in his hands.
"I got them from Adium," he explained.
"You told her about this? How could you?" cried Artegor; it was bad enough that Aarch had to see him like this but that his rival for Aarch's affections also knew was just too humiliating.
"Relax, I didn't say what they were for and they should solve all your hair worries. Now how do you turn these things on…?"
They had managed to find the on switch and had left them to heat up for a couple of minutes. Nervously, Aarch picked the straighteners up as if they were something extremely smelly.
"Right…" he said, nervously, advancing towards Artegor's hair.
"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Artegor squealed, anxiously.
"Adium said it goes best if you don't do it yourself," Aarch defended himself.
"I'm trusting you," Artegor said, realising that he wouldn't let anyone else in the galaxy go near his hair.
Aarch started the process, going over sections of hair with the straighteners, unsure of how long this would take or how long he should actually leave them there- Adium hadn't given him any advice on that, she'd been weirded out enough that her low maintenance teammate had even asked to borrow them. First he tried swiping the hairs through quickly, but that clearly wasn't having he desired effect, so he switched to going through more slowly despite his impatience (he couldn't believe he had been roped into doing this).
It was going well until…
"Aarch, what's that smell?" Artegor asked, alarmed.
"Ah!" Aarch exclaimed, realising that he'd lingered on a particular clump of hair too long and managed to singe it.
"What have you done?" Artegor cried loudly.
"N…Nothing…it's almost done," Aarch stuttered. As close as they were, he didn't think Artegor would forgive him if he told him and Artegor was prone to holding grudges for a long time.
After a few more minutes it actually was finished and Aarch stood back and admired the finished product. He couldn't say the result was great, instead of a curly mess, it was now a chin-length do that looked somewhat similar to the style worn by a particular clan of the Shadows called 'the emos'. Still, it looked better than if had done before.
Artegor looked in the mirror, his expression showing that he still wasn't happy, he having moved from hysterics to a silent and bleak despair.
"Come on," Aarch said, dragging him away from the mirror and to the field before they were late- they had missed breakfast all together and he was feeling the worse for it; he managed to stuff an energy bar down his throat whilst running to the pitch but it was no substitute for a more solid meal.
Thankfully they made it onto the pitch on time, they would have had far bigger problems than Artegor's hair situation if they had missed it, for one thing, the Coach would have had their hides.
Unfortunately, the match hadn't gone so well: it was their first match against the Rykers and their aggressive style was somewhat of the football-equivalent of an acquired taste. The commentary on the match had been less than flattering to the Akillians (they had to tell it like it was) and they had also spent an inordinate amount of time dissecting Artegor's new hair style. It was lucky that Artegor was unaware of this fact or he would have been even more self-conscious during the match than he already was.
"It's my fault we lost," Artegor said, on the way back to Akillian. "If my hair had been okay, this never would have happened."
"You're not Samson, we would have lost anyways. We'll win next time," Aarch said, sounding certain.
When they landed in Akillian, a very strange thing happened; Artegor's hair slowly began to creep back to its normal style as if nothing had happened. By the time they had reached the hotel, it looked exactly the same as it always did, much to Aarch's relief (he didn't want to go through any hair drama ever again).
"See, now everything is back to normal," Aarch said, flopping down on Artegor's bed without looking.
Crunch.
Aarch stood up to see that he'd sat on Artegor's sunglasses and cracked them.
Artegor immediately stiffened. "Were those my sunglasses?"
Aarch had a terrible feeling about this…
That's it for this fic! I feel like I haven't written humour for a while so this was a lot of fun to write. Also, the GF fandom has been super-dead, where are you guys? Review please!