Another Way of Doing Things

by Harlequin de Rustre

There have been many tales of Louise getting a different familiar, but nothing quite like this. Warning! Black humor and end note rants!

1. Something Wicked This Way Is

Alright peeps, this yet another new fandom I'm writing for. Whilst I've recently got into the groove with Witchblade and Queen's Blade, I'd thought I'd do a more mainstream manga/anime (And, yes, I know about the book series; feel free to fill me in slash beat me over the head with the wrote scripts and data.).

I'm also coming back to one of my fave fandoms, Diablo, in lieu of the upcoming game and the fact that, quite frankly, I'm more than a little peeved that certain things are happening with it (I mean, seriously: Cain being a distant relative of Adria(even as a surrogate)? And what's with this raping of canon? Gawd, keep it simple, dammit. Knaak has A LOT to answer for with his ruining of both the worlds of Warcraft and Diablo. Fucking turd sandwich(and I'd used to like his material! Bought his precious manga trilogy, bought his precious books, and read his other stuff avidly!). Now I'm liking the other Diablo writers a lot more (Mel Odom and that Christie chick, particularly). Blizzard's now filled up to the brim with sellout cunts, thanks in no small part to Activision buying them out and shitting on their way of doing things (Please don't debunk that statement, I live in the vain hope that they aren't total sellouts yet).

Okay, shit, you didn't come here to read my whiny diatribe about the woes of humanity via my biased wailing, obviously.

So let's get this shiz rolling after a brief disclaimer:

I do not own, profit from, or otherwise have rights to the Diablo franchise or Zero no Tsukaima, manga or anime. I also don't profit from this- unless I'm being funded by fans to work. Which I'm not. So on with the show.

~A~

The diminuitive figure of a young magic user stood in front of the congregation, nervously drawing her breath from between her tight lips. She adjusted her stance and prepared to work what she hoped to be effective magic.

Through the same quivering lips, she recited the familiar summons:

Pentagon of the Five Elemental Powers,

Heed my Summoning

And bring forth my Familiar!

~W~

Walking home from school, Hiraga Saito cheerfully bitched about his normal life. Conveniently for him, a blaringly obvious magical array glowed into existence in front of him, which he gleefully ran up to in exultation of what had to be Fate's most fantastic blunder to date.

"Awesome…!" the vacuous boy exclaimed, "I wonder what it could be…?"

With no caution whatsoever-

-as is common of people encountering strange objects they don't understand, if only in B-rated horror movies produced by the generic film people, amateur and professional, the last thought on said people's minds being a sensible plot wherein your token passerby would not poke the random disgusting glob of space goo with a stick, would not attempt to hold a conversation with an obviously murderous/undead acquaintance from less than three paces away without some kind of barrier between them, would not willingly have sex with the strangely overconfident, predatory wo-/man, would not choose to go into the decrepit old house that consistently makes sounds that resemble something awfully like terrified screams/inhuman noises, would not bother the obvious angry/hungry/territorial whatchmacallit-

the Japanese teenage trotted up to the portal and put his hands up against it.

… did we mention that your token passerby would also not go touch some randomly luminescent object/animal/humanoid/loved one/friend/anomaly- at least not before calling some sort authority figure (more often than not being one's hairy uncle or girlfriend (this never works the other way around, unless it's a time before women started wearing pants and questioning men's authority and their ability to be meatshields for them and the children)?

"This… looks like some sort of weird gateway…" the boy said, obviously not knowing what he's talking about (I mean, really, unless you know what relation uruz and kaunan or ehwaz and mannaz have, or whether Futhork and Marcoman scripts will conflict with each other or enhance the intended effect, you're nowhere close to even guessing what the hell the pentacle arrangement is supposed to do. For all you know, it could spawn a demon, or explode, or summon your Mum back from Detroit, or give you a terminal case of really bad gas, thereby ruining your laughably tentative social life.).

"It doesn't seem particularly dangerous," he observed, Fate be cursed for not allowing for the otherworldly portal to at least give an unpleasant shock to one's nether regions (a notably potent deterrent for all errant lads up to no good). Groping the mysterious force further, he said completely to himself "Maybe I'll take a peek inside."

Then came the roar "Random Mad Bicycle!"

Fate, having realized it's fantastic blunder in this day and age, quickly rectified by inspiring a local gajin headcase to go on a madcap cycling spree- those immediately in his vicinity beware.

Impressively vaulting over a nearby residential wall via handy wheelie tricks, the frothing looper came down hard on the conveniently positioned boychild, twisted the bike off away from the portal (Fate releases a second held breath at the close call, sparing a slightly less unspeakable series of events from happening), and sped off to inevitably crash into a wall, ridding the world of yet another psychopathic reject.

Meanwhile, in the disturbingly bleak Underworld, a scruffy, overweight dandy sneezed. Unperturbed, he resumed torturing the already depressed denizens of the afterlife with his legendarily off-pitch wailing.

Back in the mortal world of Earth, Saito, the inconceivably unfortunate boy (Fate be thanked), lay in a puddle of snot and urine quivering. It should be noted that the bike played havoc on the lower part of his spine, so much so he would never walk again, and, with his peevish personality, he would die alone without the convenient skirt to cling to by an unbreakable bond.

As his sight faded into blackness, Saito turned his gaze to the seriously awesome thing that he'd had the fortune to find but never enter as it winked out of sight, shifting over into another reality in the hopes of quickly seizing a more worthy prize – the portal was as sentient as Fate was, and it had a family life with a wife-portal and kid-portals. It's pay rode on delivering top notch packages to its customers, the summoners. If this jerkoff, who had heinously sexually molested it, had passed through, the Powers That Be would have fired the portal and it would be many more months before the portal could reshape and become the magic circle for the numerous mouth-rapings of more than thirty virginal schoolgirls by a ten year old pervert. The horror.

~O~

In another reality, energy raged from an increasingly unstable mountainous gem deep inside a cavernous mountain. Also inside this mountain, nearby, were an assortment of buff humans, a buffer energy being, and the oozing vomit-caked remains of what looked to be the world's most hideous man-jellyfish.

The sexy energy being- also known as an angel- made an arcane magical motion with his "hand" and opened a blood red vortex leading to God only knows where.

"Quickly, through the portal!"

After facing down the weird forces of demonic forces and the horrific tribulations of being in a love polygon with people who could rip your head off in a dozen ways without breaking a nail, the heroes paused in trepidation.

"Uh…"

"Lolwut?"

"I am disturbed by this turn of events."

"It should be green."

"I'm fine with the color, I dunno what you're talking about. Goes nicely with the black."

"It should have been created by a woman. No exceptions."

The manly angel sagged a little. At the back of the pack, the silent minority made a sound of disgust.

Pushing aside the assorted Band of Buttheads, a wizened, cloaked man made his way to the front. "Forgive them, Tyrael, they're not intimate with the workings of superior magic."

He slowly and confidently made his way to the portal. "I'm sure nothing malicious lies beyond this portal, especially having been provided by one of the vaunted angels, especially one who is a sympathizer for the… children..." The angel visibly flinched at the less than subtle hint.

The white haired man paused a few paces away from the sanguine doorway, his tone of voice changing sharply. "If this shunts me off into strange lands that I have no way of naturally escaping and returning to my homeland- I'm Planewalking back and ripping your head off, the Balance be damned."

The champion of humanity sighed. "There is no incentive or logic to such an act; be assured, I hold no ill will."

Smiling cleverly, the cloaked man chuckled, his tenor leveling again. "An angel's word is enough for me. Goodbye, good friend."

He continued to the gate without further delay.

And, just then, as he was right on top of the red vortex, a garishly sparkling pentacle flared into this existence. Too late to stop, he put his boot through it. There was a slight hitch in his step, but it seemed the portal was one of the forcible variety and the wisest of the assorted heroes was pulled through completely.

Suffice to say, the steely company froze in equal parts fear and puzzlement. Mostly puzzlement, in the case of the angel.

~D~

On the inside of the now gleefully out-of-danger-of-unemployment portal, the aged warrior sighed in irritation. "Well, this is one for the books. An angel assuring nothing bad is going to happen and then something bad happens."

He strode through the dark hallway, noting the lack of a way back.

"I'm going to eat someone for this," the grim man muttered, "Pull the bones from their carcass… rape their soul… yes…"

Still walking through the seemingly endless darkness, his murderous irritation ceased for a moment, giving way to ponderance.

"Could this be one of the fantastic pocket universes? A great mage's personal artificial reality?"

He stopped briefly. A flicker of trepidation briefly crossed his face. Then he resumed his probably pointless journey.

"Nah; no self-respecting sorcerer would create an array that fragile- or that pink!"

A few minutes passed through the blackness, and then came a loud, piercing voice. Due to the effects of magic linguistics transcending universal barriers of spacetime, the depth and sex of the voice were totally obliterated in their passage.

The inflection, however, remained, and this was enough to give the grumpy old man an idea of who was behind this.

As the quavering vocalizations carried through the abyss, the acerbic champion of his people made another noise voicing his distaste. "Perfect, I'm the summons of an abject novice. Well," he smirked, pulling his hood over his head, "time to put on the usual face."

Cackles of mad glee sounded in the dark until yet another pentacle swallowed the disturbing man up.

~A~

A fume of noxious smoke arose from the open ground, a glow from within indicating a successful summons.

As the smoke cleared the congregation began to shift and remark amongst its members.

There stood hunched a naively grinning senile old man. "Hello... I think I've gotten lost on my way to the market…"

~W~

Okay, yeah, I not only did a crossover, but did a rather valid, though gruesome [-ly funny] explanation of why "Saito-kun"/"Partner/"Saitooooo~!"/"Commoner" did not end up in Hilkegenia.

No, I'm not sorry for that. Quite frankly, most people writing this sorta thing just say "Hey, it just happened for no reason at random and ended up with my favorite character *insert vacuous chortling*". I'm not like that; I prefer a perfectly sane way of explaining shit (in the loosest definition of "sane", if I can manage).

Now, I wasn't really intending to make this first bit humorous at all, but the imagery of the Random Mad Bicycle was a morsel I couldn't bear to deprive my audience (primarily me, myself, and I) of. And I poked a bit of fun at my favorite universe, so don't come bitching about favoritism.

I've found that the more humor I have injected into something, the more like it is that I hate the butt of said humor. And I'm kinda pissed at both sides of this matter, even though I'm a huge fan of one of those sides.

I'm sure you guys already have an idea what I'm pissed about with Diablo, but here's some brief insight into why I'm more than a little, uh, miffed at "Familiar of Zero":

I don't like how things have turned out, I don't like some of the characters, primarily that asshole primadonna, Saito, and I don't like the out-of-the-blue name for the opposition, which seems like a rip off on the whole "Hueco Mundo, land of the somehow Spanish-acquainted evil Japanese people" motif(although swap out "Hueco Mundo" with "Albion" and "Japanese" with "Vaguely Northwestern European"), although thankfully it has a tad less members who dress like flamboyantly gay drag queens (come on, it's not exactly subtle; Bleach's a shonen manga, for crissakes).

Sweet Jesus, I wanna throttle the main writers for that; it drives me nuts that a perfectly well set up world of interesting politics and intrigue has to be kisboshed and condescendingly simplified with the injection of the whiniest roster of characters this side of My Immortal. And I've read a huge amount of promising, but ultimately craptastic, manga.

However, I won't beat a dead horse and keep on lambasting the unfortunate Saito-kun; that's what I have the other wastes of space for (don't worry, I don't hate even half of the characters; Kirche, for example, is nicely consistent, a good foil, and amazingly sane for this usually fantastically retarded world (thanks to Saito and his mangina periods). Rest assured that I will not jump the shark with the mockery, much less jump the shark, come back, shoot it in the balls, rape it, eat its flesh, consume its soul, mount its head on the wall… aaand then do the same thing to twelve more fucking sharks just to be safe (I credit Nostalgia Critic for his brilliance (and yes, he definitely owns it, even with intellectual property aside)).

Oh, and I'm gonna do an omake, because I'm a hip wapanese fan fiction writer like that.

Omake:

The heroic group minus one stood there in silence. Then the big[gest] one with the axe coughed.

"Well I certainly didn't see that coming," the native Harrogathi warrior commented.

The slightly-less-big-but-still-bigger-the-rest one smirked in self-justified satisfaction. "Well, that's less honor to be shared, am I right? Guy was a tool, anyways."

The shortest of the men with the longest hair sniffed, his rough carroty locks shifting unnaturally. "He was certainly one of the less amicable of this group, but he pulled his weight; I'm sure you couldn't come up with such good battle plans, Aemus-"

Miffed, the axeman coughed again, earning a glare from the sympathetic druid. "Well, yes, I'm sure your main tactic of being the first in the charge with the contingency plan of our lordly arseface of a paladin patching up your scratched bum was a fine way of dealing with the hordes of demons- as a last resort!"

At this point, the tan slut of the group interjected. "All he did was boss us around. 'Elana do this, Elana do that-"

"'Elana, quit fucking the manwhore and keep the minions of Duriel from taking the South gate.' Yeah, I was there for some of those."

The sorceress whirled upon the red haired snarker, ready to maim certain delicate organs.

"He disrespected my order's uniform-"

"He said you needed more armor than a shirt that barely even covered your tits and a glorified girdle with a bit of brass on it. He also didn't make any comments about your other less helpful traits when it didn't merit serious discussion. Unlike Aemus, he didn't heap unsolicited advice on anyone."

"He heaped it on me," the noticeably sniffy Zakarumite whined, "Such a disgrace. A bone picker pagan like him criticizing me."

"Of course it had nothing to do with you irritating him with accusations like that, I'm sure…"

The biggest of the women stepped forward. "He was a burden to us all; his plans fell apart constantly and he endangered us all while he reaped the rewards uncountable times. He's worse than the other overbearing man of our collaboration."

The axeman stepped forward to give argument, but a glare from the blonde heroine silenced any planned dissent.

Again, the druid riposted. "All those plans that 'fell apart' were due to you or Elana or the both of you deciding that they were not worth being a part of and acting on your own 'natural brilliance'. At least Aemus has the discipline and capability of finding reason, even if he makes a big noise about it, and at least Bannargast has fought enough to crap about it after the battle is over."

The paladin and the barbarian didn't know whether to decide to feel insulted or to puff up with some amount of pride.

Unable to hold her silence any longer, the last member of the group screamed in frustration. "Who fucking cares!"

The pale, violent woman stomped up to the nervous angel and grabbed him by the breastplate. She tugged Tyrael down until his hood was at eye level. "Get him back, oh glorious crusader," the leather clad killer began, menace creeping into her disturbingly soft voice, "or I will do what he promised long before he has the chance to show up. And I promise worse to go with it."

Aemus started toward the enraged Viz'Jaqtar woman. "Don't! He's the great-"

"I don't give a flying SHIT about his greatness!" she screeched, "I give a shit about the only good fuck of this fucking fucklot!"

"You-" the blonde began.

"You what?" the mage killer quickly fired back, "'Made love to the greatest of all true warriors'? Yeah, like, once. And I'm glad you're stepping up, because I finally can get this crap off my chest."

Releasing the [quite frankly scared] angel, the assassin faced the amazon. "You, your cunnilingus sucks. And your strapped-on cock hurts worse than your fucking creepy pillow talk. Ew, you sick pervert."

Aemus, easily the most innocent of the group, became shocked at this revelation of the warrior woman's desire for the feminine sex, something that was glaringly obvious to everyone but him. "Yarezna? You…?"

"OH DON'T GET ME STARTED ON YOU," the ebon-haired champion bellowed, "You're such a weak fuck, it's childish. Sure, the whole 'I'm a shut-in little altar boy, hear me mewl like a pup' turns me on more than the woman-lover here, but your fucking feels like you're apologizing for your cock! I hate you more than her, you fucking little tease!"

The dark skinned warrior of the Zakarum has the grace to blush and looked away.

Bannargast began to voice his opinion again "I-"

"You're too small."

The self-proclaimed champion of manliness sagged terribly.

Finally vented of the crest of her rage, she turned back to deal with Tyrael, who was just starting to conspicuously inch away, even though he floated silently on his "beyond real" wing-tendrils.

"Get him back," she growled, "or I will decide to rape you to death, then rip off your head, and then everything else."

Tyrael felt the urge to point out his being made out of energy hotter than any mortal flame, but seeing at this woman was able to touch him with so much as singing her pale flesh, much less being able to force him down with her bare hands, he felt that the point would be moot (and because of that feared for his divine celibacy).

The druid stepped forward to put in his two ments after much silence. "Well, I could-"

Turning whilst firmly holding on the champion of humanity, she looked at him with narrowed eyes. "I know what you do with your wolf form when you think no one's looking"

The red haired man paled. "Right, then, that's three votes for getting him back," the lycanthrope said, clapping his hands once.

"Er-"

The assassin held Tyrael close enough that she almost had her face in his cowl. "Are you saying you like the idea of me fucking you until your endless life gives out?"

"Uh…"

"Well then it's three votes. And we're not moving off this pile until I see results."

The archangel began to shiver with dread.

*Done*

So, yeah, it's a little more than half the size of the actual chapter. Wow, I'm such a badass for writing an omake that's almost as long as the relevant plot. Jebus.

Just to clarify on some lines you may be confused about (in the event you either have a computer your can easily jump up and down a page with or enough time on your mobile device to waste half a minute creeping up the page (even with an iPod), here's the owners of the respective comments at the end of the scene in Mount Arreat, in order:

Druid

Barbarian

Paladin

Sorceress

Assassin

Amazon

I'm sure the deduction following these clues gives us a glimpse at the identity of the main character from Diablo II, somehow.

If you think it's Deckard Cain, you're an ass- but I like how you think.

For fans of my original Diablo fic, do not worry about me updating that- I need to clear off a few cobwebs, redo some wordings, and I'll finish the second chappie up within a couple days (give or take. Shit happens, okay?)

Also, don't expect me to do omakes like this for every chapter (though I am tempted). Remember at the end of the beginning of the endnotes? Yeah, it's like that.

Oh, and I'll probably not post this until it's gotten well past Halloween, even though I'm finished with this chapter before even the second half of September. Yeah, I'm smooth.

And just so you don't forget:

YOU'VE READ THE DAMN STORY SO FUCKING REVIEW IT NOW, BITCHES!

ALL YOU RANDOM READERS THAT AREN'T MEMBERS: I ACCEPT ANONYMOUS REVIEWS. I prefer reviews I can reply privately to so I don't aggravatingly waste time posting the reply in my author's notes when I could be actively writing awesomely epic material, BUT STILL

SO CLICK! CLICK THE DAMN BUTTON AND RAPE YOUR KEYBOARD BEFORE I HUNT YOU DOWN AND FORCIBLY SPOONFEED YOU FROZEN MOLASSES!