Disclaimer: I don't have any legal right to be writing this. I have no permission to do any of this, I don't have copyrights, and I don't have any more right to be writing this than I would to kill you. Also, the characters have been seriously altered so that they sound far too much like me, and I have altered the setting terribly. Read on!
Mrs. Rosenbloom's tenth grade politics class was in the middle of a heated debate. On one side, Alan was defending the death penalty against all of the moral attacks made by Darien. No one else in the class had nearly as strong an opinion on the subject, so they kept switching sides, joining whomever had just spoken. Alan and Darien were good debaters. But Alan really didn't care about the subject. He just wanted to show Darien up. That little pretty boy had drawn Ann's eye, and Alan didn't like it.
"How can you say that my tax dollars should go to paying for some murderer's stay in a luxury-hotel-like prison?" Alan countered Darien's last comment. "Prisoners incarcerated in a jail are treated better and given much better food that students in a public school!"
Darien passionately believed that killing was wrong, in any sense. He hated that anyone had to die ever, and he fought to keep people from dying in his alternate identity, Tuxedo Mask. Unfortunately, Alan was very good, and Darien was pretty sure that Alan was just fighting because he didn't like the attention his sister was giving Darien. Overprotective siblings.
"If a person is killed in an electric chair, it costs as much as ten years of keeping that person alive in a prison, and that's just the electric bill! Besides, 'A hangman's noose only solves one man's problems!' If he dies, then he is released from all of the crimes he has committed. The executioner remains, and has to live with the memory of all he has killed."
This debate had been going on for an hour, and probably would have continued if classes were longer than an hour, for at that moment the bell rang. Good, thought Alan. I need to get Ann and feed the Doom Tree.
The whole class piled out the door and into the crowded halls. The day was over, and everyone was either going home or to after school activities. Alan was going to an after school activity not sponsored by the school.
He had told Ann to meet him just to the left of the main staircase leading to the front door, and they would decide what to do from there. Alan got to the predetermined meeting spot, but Ann wasn't there, so he stood around waiting.
The metal wire trash can next to him was filled with terrible smelling earth food waste products which had rotted. Flies buzzed around Alan. The grass had been cut earlier today, so it was short, and added that particular freshly-cut-grass odor to the air. The third of the stairs up had a block missing on the edge nearest Alan.
Forty five minutes passed, and Ann still hadn't shown up, so Alan went home in disgust. When he arrived at their apartment, he saw that she was lying on the couch staring at a photograph. He walked quietly behind her so that he could see the photograph: Darien. She must have taken it during that debate in politics class, because Alan could see the poster on the wall behind Darien which he had been staring at for the whole period.
"We were supposed to meet right after school." Alan stared upside down into Ann's eyes. "I waited forty five minutes for you, and you never came."
"I know, Alan, I know. But look at what I found!" Ann proudly held up a Polaroid camera. "I push the button, and a picture comes out immediately! Now I have a picture of Darien, so I don't have to wait for school every day!" Her eyes sparkled as she talked, and Alan couldn't help but melt just looking at them.
"Okay, but we do need to feed the tree. You know how weak it is. Can we get to work, or would you like me to leave you and the picture alone?"
"Why don't we go out right now, Alan, and find some nice succulent morsels to feed the tree at the mall. I know there are always large numbers of people, and we can get this," she held up a disposable camera, "developed. I took all sorts of pictures of people in our school! Let's go!"
And so Alan found himself being dragged to the mall. They dropped the camera off first, then Ann decided that they should go shoe shopping. When Ann had two dozen shoes, all piled in Alan's arms, they paid for the shoes and walked outside the shop. Alan put the shoes down next to a bench and sat down. Ann seemed to want to go into Victoria's Secret, despite Alan's tired arms, so he told her to go on ahead. He went to pick up the pictures from the camera shop.
Alan opened the package and looked at the first picture. A crowded hallway, and right in the center of the photo, in the back, was Darien. He ripped it in half. In the next picture, Darien was having an argument with Serena off to the left of the middle. Alan pocketed that one. Every picture had Darien in it. And every picture other than the ones which contained Serena he ripped up. He was getting really jealous of this Darien.
So Alan left the pile of ripped pictures and a note with the shoes. "Ann, please just forget about the human. It's not healthy," he wrote. He patted the 4 pictures of Serena in his pocket. "I'm going home. You come home when you want." Well, I'll go home soon anyway. Just want to find that human and kill him first. Then I'll go home. Alan left the mall and jumped up onto the roof where no one could see. Then he removed his ridiculous human disguise.
Inside his jacket, there was a cardian called Spike. It was basically a bloodhound which hunted by spiritual aura. This cardian, Alan summoned there on the rooftop. After a flash of energy, a small green thing about the size of a pony stood before Alan. Its head was the shape of a carrot, with no teeth. Each leg was like broccoli. And the body was a bundle of asparagus. Alan decided that whatever created the cardians must have run out of raw materials and used vegetables to make this one.
Alan conjured up an image of Darien up, glowing with Darien's aura, then released Spike. Alan flew after Spike, knowing that it was not a combat cardian. They flew through the air for ten minutes, flying in smaller and smaller circles, trying to find Darien. Then they found him, working out in a local gym. Alan looked at Darien through a window on the side of the brick gym, then returned the cardian to its card and put it away.
Unfortunately, in the three seconds it took him to put the cardian away, Darien had seen him and walked out the back door of the gym. He turned into Tuxedo Mask and came around to face Alan. "Leave the humans alone, alien," Tuxedo Mask said.
Alan laughed. "Are you protecting this one too?" he teased. He had been told that Tuxedo Mask protected Sailor Moon, but now he was protecting an ordinary mortal? Strange. And very interesting. "Well, I hope you're ready to play, because I just want to vent some anger right now. Please, you appear to be dressed for it, let's dance."
Tuxedo Mask readied his cane, and Alan his flute. The flute was made from the wood of the Doom Tree, which is indestructible, so he wasn't worried about denting it. He was more worried about denting Darien. He just wished that he could hurt the human now, and not have to worry about Tuxedo Mask.
They rushed at each other, each brandishing his own weapon of choice as a sword. Tuxedo Mask was inhumanly fast and skillful with the sword, but Alan was inhumanly strong, and only slightly slower than Tuxedo Mask. They thrusted and parried back and forth for a moment before each leapt backwards.
Alan lifted his flute to his lips and began to play a haunting melody made all the more haunting by the illusions it conjured up to distract Tuxedo Mask. As Alan played, he began to float into the air, becoming lost in the song, as Ghosts and every monster which Tuxedo mask had ever helped to defeat now surrounded the hapless hero. He threw a red red rose at the crab-like monster in front of him and it vanished, but the music played on and there were hundreds more. He threw six more roses in six other directions, dispelling six more of the creatures, but he couldn't possibly defeat them all.
Then a miracle occurred. A white rose flew through the air behind Alan, and knocked his flute from his mouth. Suddenly, every ghost and monster which had been conjured by the music's haunting melody vanished, and Alan was surrounded. The Moonlight Knight was behind him, and Tuxedo Mask was in front of him. Each had a rose ready to throw at him.
Alan dodged downward as soon as the two roses were thrown at him, so that each of the Darien clones had to dodge the other's rose, and so he could grab his flute. He dropped two random Cardians and started playing immediately.
The first cardian was a 15-foot tall blue creature with four arms and an axe. Its mouth had three lips, each of which had its own jaw and a row of large, sharp-looking, triangular teeth. It was clad only in a loin cloth.
The second cardian was a beaver. There appeared to be nothing special about it. It had the normal two buck teeth, the flat tail, and the rich brown coat. The giant attacked the Moonlight Knight, and the beaver attacked Tuxedo Mask.
The moonlight knight's scimitar flashed against the huge cardian's axe, the impact sending the double-bladed axe higher, giving time for a slash to the stomach. The Knight tucked and rolled beneath the giant's legs while it was bringing the axe downward. The Arabian pushed himself up backwards from a handstand, sending him feet first into the back of the giant's head. The impact caused the giant to lodge his ax into the cement of the sidewalk.
The Moonlight Knight landed on his feet and, while the giant was trying to tug his ax out of the sidewalk, shoved his scimitar into its back.
At the same time, the beaver jumped at Tuxedo Mask's neck. Tuxedo Mask dodged and smacked the beaver's rump with his walking stick. He had raised his cane to bring it down and break the beaver's neck when the music started. Suddenly, Darien couldn't feel his arms or his legs... he dropped his walking stick and fell to the ground. The beaver bit into Darien's back, and started sucking out his energy to feed it to the doom tree.
The Moonlight Knight saw his alter-ego lying on the ground, being destroyed, and threw one more rose at the beaver. The beaver jumped at the Moonlight Knight's neck, but the Moonlight Knight cut him deftly in half with his scimitar.
Alan was surprised that the moonlight night could move. No human should be able to move while this song played! How could the Moonlight Knight still control his body? He should be completely overcome with catalepsy! He should be on the ground, with his head separate from his body by the giant's axe!
Alan may have been an alien created from a tree which could not teach him about love, but he was not stupid. He knew that he was no match for this warrior with a sword, not when he was so tired after that song which should be working!!! I will kill that human, that Darien, he thought. Ann will look at me that way someday.
The Moonlight Knight considered following, but then looked at Tuxedo mask lying prone on the cold street. He checked Tuxedo Mask's pulse, and, finding it still strong, left.
The next morning, though he had a terrible headache, Darien awakened in the alley beside the gym. There were quarters lying near his body from people who thought that he had passed out from drinking. How embarrassing.
Mrs. Rosenbloom's tenth grade politics class was in the middle of a heated debate. On one side, Alan was defending the death penalty against all of the moral attacks made by Darien. No one else in the class had nearly as strong an opinion on the subject, so they kept switching sides, joining whomever had just spoken. Alan and Darien were good debaters. But Alan really didn't care about the subject. He just wanted to show Darien up. That little pretty boy had drawn Ann's eye, and Alan didn't like it.
"How can you say that my tax dollars should go to paying for some murderer's stay in a luxury-hotel-like prison?" Alan countered Darien's last comment. "Prisoners incarcerated in a jail are treated better and given much better food that students in a public school!"
Darien passionately believed that killing was wrong, in any sense. He hated that anyone had to die ever, and he fought to keep people from dying in his alternate identity, Tuxedo Mask. Unfortunately, Alan was very good, and Darien was pretty sure that Alan was just fighting because he didn't like the attention his sister was giving Darien. Overprotective siblings.
"If a person is killed in an electric chair, it costs as much as ten years of keeping that person alive in a prison, and that's just the electric bill! Besides, 'A hangman's noose only solves one man's problems!' If he dies, then he is released from all of the crimes he has committed. The executioner remains, and has to live with the memory of all he has killed."
This debate had been going on for an hour, and probably would have continued if classes were longer than an hour, for at that moment the bell rang. Good, thought Alan. I need to get Ann and feed the Doom Tree.
The whole class piled out the door and into the crowded halls. The day was over, and everyone was either going home or to after school activities. Alan was going to an after school activity not sponsored by the school.
He had told Ann to meet him just to the left of the main staircase leading to the front door, and they would decide what to do from there. Alan got to the predetermined meeting spot, but Ann wasn't there, so he stood around waiting.
The metal wire trash can next to him was filled with terrible smelling earth food waste products which had rotted. Flies buzzed around Alan. The grass had been cut earlier today, so it was short, and added that particular freshly-cut-grass odor to the air. The third of the stairs up had a block missing on the edge nearest Alan.
Forty five minutes passed, and Ann still hadn't shown up, so Alan went home in disgust. When he arrived at their apartment, he saw that she was lying on the couch staring at a photograph. He walked quietly behind her so that he could see the photograph: Darien. She must have taken it during that debate in politics class, because Alan could see the poster on the wall behind Darien which he had been staring at for the whole period.
"We were supposed to meet right after school." Alan stared upside down into Ann's eyes. "I waited forty five minutes for you, and you never came."
"I know, Alan, I know. But look at what I found!" Ann proudly held up a Polaroid camera. "I push the button, and a picture comes out immediately! Now I have a picture of Darien, so I don't have to wait for school every day!" Her eyes sparkled as she talked, and Alan couldn't help but melt just looking at them.
"Okay, but we do need to feed the tree. You know how weak it is. Can we get to work, or would you like me to leave you and the picture alone?"
"Why don't we go out right now, Alan, and find some nice succulent morsels to feed the tree at the mall. I know there are always large numbers of people, and we can get this," she held up a disposable camera, "developed. I took all sorts of pictures of people in our school! Let's go!"
And so Alan found himself being dragged to the mall. They dropped the camera off first, then Ann decided that they should go shoe shopping. When Ann had two dozen shoes, all piled in Alan's arms, they paid for the shoes and walked outside the shop. Alan put the shoes down next to a bench and sat down. Ann seemed to want to go into Victoria's Secret, despite Alan's tired arms, so he told her to go on ahead. He went to pick up the pictures from the camera shop.
Alan opened the package and looked at the first picture. A crowded hallway, and right in the center of the photo, in the back, was Darien. He ripped it in half. In the next picture, Darien was having an argument with Serena off to the left of the middle. Alan pocketed that one. Every picture had Darien in it. And every picture other than the ones which contained Serena he ripped up. He was getting really jealous of this Darien.
So Alan left the pile of ripped pictures and a note with the shoes. "Ann, please just forget about the human. It's not healthy," he wrote. He patted the 4 pictures of Serena in his pocket. "I'm going home. You come home when you want." Well, I'll go home soon anyway. Just want to find that human and kill him first. Then I'll go home. Alan left the mall and jumped up onto the roof where no one could see. Then he removed his ridiculous human disguise.
Inside his jacket, there was a cardian called Spike. It was basically a bloodhound which hunted by spiritual aura. This cardian, Alan summoned there on the rooftop. After a flash of energy, a small green thing about the size of a pony stood before Alan. Its head was the shape of a carrot, with no teeth. Each leg was like broccoli. And the body was a bundle of asparagus. Alan decided that whatever created the cardians must have run out of raw materials and used vegetables to make this one.
Alan conjured up an image of Darien up, glowing with Darien's aura, then released Spike. Alan flew after Spike, knowing that it was not a combat cardian. They flew through the air for ten minutes, flying in smaller and smaller circles, trying to find Darien. Then they found him, working out in a local gym. Alan looked at Darien through a window on the side of the brick gym, then returned the cardian to its card and put it away.
Unfortunately, in the three seconds it took him to put the cardian away, Darien had seen him and walked out the back door of the gym. He turned into Tuxedo Mask and came around to face Alan. "Leave the humans alone, alien," Tuxedo Mask said.
Alan laughed. "Are you protecting this one too?" he teased. He had been told that Tuxedo Mask protected Sailor Moon, but now he was protecting an ordinary mortal? Strange. And very interesting. "Well, I hope you're ready to play, because I just want to vent some anger right now. Please, you appear to be dressed for it, let's dance."
Tuxedo Mask readied his cane, and Alan his flute. The flute was made from the wood of the Doom Tree, which is indestructible, so he wasn't worried about denting it. He was more worried about denting Darien. He just wished that he could hurt the human now, and not have to worry about Tuxedo Mask.
They rushed at each other, each brandishing his own weapon of choice as a sword. Tuxedo Mask was inhumanly fast and skillful with the sword, but Alan was inhumanly strong, and only slightly slower than Tuxedo Mask. They thrusted and parried back and forth for a moment before each leapt backwards.
Alan lifted his flute to his lips and began to play a haunting melody made all the more haunting by the illusions it conjured up to distract Tuxedo Mask. As Alan played, he began to float into the air, becoming lost in the song, as Ghosts and every monster which Tuxedo mask had ever helped to defeat now surrounded the hapless hero. He threw a red red rose at the crab-like monster in front of him and it vanished, but the music played on and there were hundreds more. He threw six more roses in six other directions, dispelling six more of the creatures, but he couldn't possibly defeat them all.
Then a miracle occurred. A white rose flew through the air behind Alan, and knocked his flute from his mouth. Suddenly, every ghost and monster which had been conjured by the music's haunting melody vanished, and Alan was surrounded. The Moonlight Knight was behind him, and Tuxedo Mask was in front of him. Each had a rose ready to throw at him.
Alan dodged downward as soon as the two roses were thrown at him, so that each of the Darien clones had to dodge the other's rose, and so he could grab his flute. He dropped two random Cardians and started playing immediately.
The first cardian was a 15-foot tall blue creature with four arms and an axe. Its mouth had three lips, each of which had its own jaw and a row of large, sharp-looking, triangular teeth. It was clad only in a loin cloth.
The second cardian was a beaver. There appeared to be nothing special about it. It had the normal two buck teeth, the flat tail, and the rich brown coat. The giant attacked the Moonlight Knight, and the beaver attacked Tuxedo Mask.
The moonlight knight's scimitar flashed against the huge cardian's axe, the impact sending the double-bladed axe higher, giving time for a slash to the stomach. The Knight tucked and rolled beneath the giant's legs while it was bringing the axe downward. The Arabian pushed himself up backwards from a handstand, sending him feet first into the back of the giant's head. The impact caused the giant to lodge his ax into the cement of the sidewalk.
The Moonlight Knight landed on his feet and, while the giant was trying to tug his ax out of the sidewalk, shoved his scimitar into its back.
At the same time, the beaver jumped at Tuxedo Mask's neck. Tuxedo Mask dodged and smacked the beaver's rump with his walking stick. He had raised his cane to bring it down and break the beaver's neck when the music started. Suddenly, Darien couldn't feel his arms or his legs... he dropped his walking stick and fell to the ground. The beaver bit into Darien's back, and started sucking out his energy to feed it to the doom tree.
The Moonlight Knight saw his alter-ego lying on the ground, being destroyed, and threw one more rose at the beaver. The beaver jumped at the Moonlight Knight's neck, but the Moonlight Knight cut him deftly in half with his scimitar.
Alan was surprised that the moonlight night could move. No human should be able to move while this song played! How could the Moonlight Knight still control his body? He should be completely overcome with catalepsy! He should be on the ground, with his head separate from his body by the giant's axe!
Alan may have been an alien created from a tree which could not teach him about love, but he was not stupid. He knew that he was no match for this warrior with a sword, not when he was so tired after that song which should be working!!! I will kill that human, that Darien, he thought. Ann will look at me that way someday.
The Moonlight Knight considered following, but then looked at Tuxedo mask lying prone on the cold street. He checked Tuxedo Mask's pulse, and, finding it still strong, left.
The next morning, though he had a terrible headache, Darien awakened in the alley beside the gym. There were quarters lying near his body from people who thought that he had passed out from drinking. How embarrassing.