Alright, off the cuff and fresh from ending the pilot chapter, although this probably won't see the light of another person's computer until next July.
No real need for disclaimers except on sites where I need to post the chapters individually, but, fuck, I'll do it if someone whines on here (FF).
Also, I'd like to add briefly that, *
Okay, to explain the stub right there with the asterisk (that should also be right there), I'd have to say the bit I'd wanted to "add briefly" took on a life of its own. I'm talking an extensive rant about two full pages long that stands on par with one of Obama's bloviations for utter verbosity, although it makes a crapload more sense and doesn't flinch away from the details. Instead of boring you here with the discussion, I'll bore you at the end of the chapter. Just for that rant, this chapter's gonna be longer than the last.
So yeah. I'm done boring you with the details… for now.
On with the show!... fic… thing… thingy… yeah…
~A~
"Hello? I think I've gotten lost on the way to the market."
Time seemed to momentarily stop in the silence following the summon's rather blithe statement.
The foremost member of the congregation, a diminutive girl spoke. "Who… are you?"
The hooded old man's smile didn't fall- in fact, if anything, it broadened as if he'd just heard a good joke.
"Me? Everyone knows who I am," he said, as if stating some universal truth, "I'm old man Ludo- Ludoviccus… Reamosgh... eh, the… third. Yes, the third."
The teenage girl seemed to become incensed at this. "I'm not asking your name!" she snapped, "Why did a commoner…"
The girl paused in mild confusion, and then comprehension appeared on her face. In quick succession, she took on a rather ugly demeanor.
"…Don't tell me—" she began, hesistant, "This can't be right, you can't be—"
And it was at that point the assorted crowd of people, made up of mainly youths such as her, erupted into jeers at the nervous girl's expense. It should be noted that it became evident that this girl's moniker was "Louise the Zero", a name that held some kind of relevance with the summons done at that moment.
The old man's hand stopped hovering at the opening in his cloak, then choosing to occupy it with clasping the other one in a typically elderly way.
Attempting to save face, she points at the old man, facing the crowd, saying "This thing can't possibly be my familiar! This is a mistake! I just messed up a little!"
A tan colleague at the front of the crowd made another mocking jab at the girl, followed by the girl's exclamation that she would "fix" whatever "this" was supposed to be.
Finally having enough, a cloaked man with a significantly bald pate stepped forward. "Everyone please be quiet," he loudly commanded. "Miss Valliere."
"Mister Colbert," the short girl exclaimed.
"This is a holy ritual of summoning," the scholarly man began.
"But…"
Unperturbed, the newly named Colbert continued. "And there will be no such things as 'fixing it' allowed."
"That's…"
The man continued to willfully ignore the fledgeling mage's dissent. "You have called him to service, therefore he shall be you familiar."
The girl blushed in embarrassment and sagged slightly.
"Please, continue with the ritual."
"… Yes, sir," she said, defeated.
Louise the Zero turned to the old man, quivering with indignation, but poised. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a commoner like you."
"Eh?" was all the elderly man had to say.
The girl coughed, choking down a sob. "You better be thankful."
Louise approached the old man quickly, brandishing the wand in her right hand. She prodded the concealed forehead of the man under the hood, magic light flaring at the touch. "Pentagon of the Five Elemental Powers,"
If she wasn't looking off center in embarrassment, she would have caught the intent expression upon the man's briefly revealed face.
"Grant you blessings upon this creature," she reached forward, grasping the compliant old man's head, "And bind it as my Familiar."
"Why'd you have to be so old?" she muttered half to herself, half to the old man.
She pressed her lips to his in a kiss. A shiver ran through her when the man's lips very briefly contorted in a frightfully pleasant way before loosening completely.
"Ugh," she softly groused, "my first kiss, gone."
The old man's smile seemed to contort into a clever leer, but Louise couldn't tell with the upper part of his face concealed. A passing comfort was that she could see that her elderly familiar, old as he was, still had all of his teeth- although the way he bared his too-perfect incisors creeped her out.
Then came back the comments of the crowd. "Amazing… 'Louise the Zero' actually made a contract!"
She whirled back to face the crowd, raising a defiant fist. "I can at least do this much!"
The old man watching all this happen felt his left hand begin to grow hot. He began to shrug it off before remembering his put-on role and began to dance around flailing and yelling. This delay went unnoticed by all but one of the assembly.
"Ah! Ah! Someone get some water! I'm burning! Ah!" The old man made a spectacle of himself, feebly wringing his hand desperately and jumping around in a convincing geriatric fashion.
His summoner stood by testily, showing no concern at all.
"Those are runes," she said, "They are inscribed to mark you as my familiar."
The old man slowed down a tad, although he seemed a bit peeved. "Well, if that's all…"
The bald man made himself known, coming up to grasp the summoned man's hand. Seeming to misinterpret Colbert's intent, the hunched over old man reached forward and enthusiastically shook the scholar's hand.
The bald man gasped in evident pain at the vigor with which the old man's rough grasp smothered his, nearly crushing it, as well as nearly popping his arm out of its socket. "Ow- gracious me, you're a very spry man. I'm here to see your runes, not simply- ERK- greet you."
"Is that so?" the affable old man said, relinquishing his grip on the significantly younger man's hand. Colbert seemed to stagger in sudden relief, but quickly resumed his professional manner.
"Allow me to see your hand, sir."
Still all smiles, the hunched man pulled off the thick glove on his left hand, holding it out to be clearly seen.
The mage scholar gingerly took the man's deceptively powerful hand, observing the runic arrangement on it. "Hm. Seems that it's slow in development. This is actually a good thing, Louise."
Louise, watching the examination intently, seemed to brighten a bit at that. "How so?"
"Well," Colbert said, "Familiar runes normally take a decent period of time to take root. It's not exactly a simple thing, bonding one soul to another. Even with something as mundane as a frog or a horse it tends to take at least a couple of minutes. With something as powerful as an illusionary beast such as a dragon or a griffon, the process can take as long as half a day. From my estimation, the runes should develop roughly overnight. I'll examine this again on the morrow."
Straightening up, Colbert turns to the congregation, announcing the end of the rituals and dismissed the students.
As most of the others left, the tan girl from before approached Louise and her new familiar. "Hi~~"
Her demeanor was relaxed and mockingly patronizing, whilst her tone had a playful, teasing edge to it. "Congratulations Louise. You summoned a mar~~velous familiar."
She simpered softly, nobody in front of her missing the seemingly calculated undulation of her precociously large breasts.
Louise stepped in front of her familiar in a protective stance, shooting the ditz a pointed look. "Kirche, you…"
The taller girl stepped back in a placating, yet still somehow patronizing, manner, interjecting with "Ah~ I don't intend to do anything."
She turned more, adding "For now…"
The tan girl jumped into the air with her silent companion, floating in the hair. "I'll ome and formally greet you some other time. See ya~~" With a playful wave she flew away to wherever she was going.
The old made a noise of interest, remarking "Where I come from, we walked wherever we went. Flying; such a novel idea…"
His new master turned with a swish of her short cloak and her even shorter skirt and began trudging away. "Right, we're going back, too."
The old man sighed pleasantly, following along. "Ah, such a beautiful day. I'd like to see more of this strange place. Flying and familiars and runes. Simply marvelous."
The girl huffed, halfway thankful that her decrepit familiar, who was apparently as strong as an ox, was also wise enough to not comment on her opting for a more plebian way of transportation. Whether this was due to his being pleasantly tactful or being completely senile, she had yet to find out. He seemed to be taking everything alright, so she didn't worry that much about it.
Halfway along the way to her quarters, the old man started to wear on her nerves with his constant comments about the wonderfulness of their surroundings. Grinding her teeth, she growled in frustration and started walking faster, not wanting to think about her future of living with an ancient motormouth.
~W~
"I'm getting the feeling you're not from here," Louise said testily.
They were in her room, which she had conveniently to herself, and the Zero was sitting across from her still standing familiar, legs crossed.
"Eh, well, you see…" the old man clumsily began.
"Who is the king of your lands?" Louise demanded.
"Er, well, we didn't have a king, as far as I know…"
"Any kind of ruler or nobles?"
"Ehm, well, we did have a king, but he's dead."
"What kind of use is that? What king?" The feckless mage was beginning to lose the patience she'd somewhat began to regain.
The old man shifted from one foot to the other, seeming pained. His consternated look dissipated, his face(from what Louise could see of it) brightening. "Ah! Yes, it was Leoric! Good King Leoric, ruler of Khanduras! Wonderful, wonderful man. Shame about his son…"
Louise's eyebrow twitched. "Well, that's some kind of headway. Where is this Khanduras-land?"
The old man's lips pursed. "It's been a while…"
"I don't care. Tell me."
"Er~ Uh~"
Louise's face began to darken.
"Ah!"
"Yes? Yes?"
"No, that can't be it…"
The mistress slumped back into her chair in frustration, ready to attempt fireballing some answers out of the codger. Her wand hand twitched in anticipation.
The old man straightened up slightly, once again seeming to have remember something. "Right then: Khanduras, east of Westmarch, north of Duncraig and Kingsport. And south of the Ensteig wilderness."
Louise's voice sounded through the hands clasped over her face. "Thrilling."
"Why, yes; very."
"Ugh~"
Sitting up in her chair, Louise pinched the bridge of her nose, inhaled, and then looked at her familiar. "Seeing as you've finally answered my questions, I will answer the one you'd asked earlier about my summoning you and its general importance."
The familiar-man shifted again, this time smoothly, with barely any effort.
The female magic user straightened herself as if she was a proper teacher in a proper classroom. "The summoning determines which type of magic a person will use.
"Fire, Water, Earth, Wind—"
Somewhere, on a different version of Earth, five rather skeevy looking people in matching uniforms (that were ala the Brownshirts, if they ever went to Australia) sneezed in unison. The one black of the male of the group looked offended at this. "Remember team, I'm the leader of this; I do things first."
After which a whole slew of arguments broke out, including over the rather embarrassing incident with the AIDS situation and why the hell they were still doing this when they were knocking on 40.
Back to a more relevant universe not governed by an overbearing Earth goddess with too much time on her hands, Louise continued with her discussion without ever realizing what she had set in motion.
"-and the lost Element of Void.
All magic is intimately related to life."
The old man sensed a wave of fridge logic coming on, as was demonstrated as Louise jumped up energetically from her chair, fists on her hips, proclaiming proudly "And so! Magic users are naturally all…"
The familiar could guess what was coming…
"Nobles!"
In one. The man felt like patting himself on the back, but remembered he was supposed to be hunched over and unable to reach crap less than three inches above his head in front of him. He hummed in acceptance of these 'facts'. "Interesting."
He shuffled to the side a bit. "Is there a way of reversing this, eh, summons? You ought to have something better than me, I believe…"
The girl fixed the man a look (as much as she could whilst staring at the shadowed part of his hood). "Going back to your world isn't possible. 'Servant Summoning' is a one-way spell…"
"I'd thought you were summoning familiars…"
"Same difference!"
"Where I come from, familiars are catalysts of a witch's magic, not simply a servant."
A vein throbs on Louise's head as she begins undoing her brooch and removing her shirt, facing away from him. "How about just thinking about what's to come?
Watching what you say and doing as I tell you isn't really that bad…"
The old man gazed at his mistress coolly. "To bed already? A bit early, is it not?"
"I'm going to sleep and that's the end of it."
The old man fiddled with his hands a bit. "Mind if I use your closet?"
"For what?" Louise said, setting her panties aside as she climbed into bed.
"I'm going to change my clothes myself, I think."
"As long as you don't change into my clothes, I'm fine with it."
Her familiar crept to the small closet, opened it, and closed the door behind him. Cloth rustling soon followed.
After a moment, a thought occurred to the young mage girl. "What would he have to change into?..."
Something scraped and clinked inside the closet, followed by soft mumblings. The mumblings continued as the door opened, then bunch back'd form of Louise's familiar in a loose linen tunic and rough cotton braies shuffled out holding a bundle wrapped up in his cloak of earthy motley. He set this nearby on the floor, then went to sit on the hay laid out for him to rest on.
Louise looked at her new familiar over her covers, noting his wearing an oversized nightcap that fell well over his eyes.
"Why do you wear something like that?"
The aged man chuckled. "Well, the tunic's-"
"Just the hat."
"My cap? Oh, I need my sleep, see, and my eyes are terribly sensitive; I need to cover `em or I'll just keep waking up. And this nice cap does the trick nicely."
"Oh," Louise said softly. Another thought occurred to her.
The small mage-in-training shuffled to sit up. "Um, familiar?"
"Call me Ludo, miss Louise."
"Er…"
"Yes?'
"Can you show me your face?"
Smiling broadly, Ludo sat up and pulled up his cap a bit.
It was a rather hard-looking face, with no real fat or lines made from smiling often to soften it. It was very effectively masculine, but with features that showed cunning, nothing particularly broad or wide. Still, this seemed to be counterbalanced by the man's expression, his dark grey eyes alive with careless mirth. "Good night, mistress."
"Take care of my clothes, you."
"Ludo. I'll get up later tonight; my hearing's a bother for sleeping, too. I need to rest after all this excitement, though. Good night. Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs-"
"Please, for the love of Brimir, stop talking."
~O~
Well, that's the second chapter. Exciting, yes?
Surprisingly, I finished this the day after the first chapter. I feel special.
As you could probably tell, I'm following the plot and script of the manga. If there's any special, sparkly little bits you want to add from the anime or the light novel series, request to assist me and send me the info. I'm not really holding my breath for anyone to get off his arse to help me, but I'd appreciate it a bit more.
Below is the good long rant I'd mentioned at the beginning. It's not as long as some of my rants that have dedicated journal pages or anything like that, but it's a doozy. It's also extensive amounts of nerd rage. Fits in with the rest of FF dot net, so I'm just Romaning like the Romans in Rome… hopefully in Rome, myself.
*…although last chapter I crabbed about Richard Knaak's major malfunction with these backstories of his (for instance, the Five Aspects thing in Warcraft TOTALLY ruined the dragons and their mythology. Why can't there be just ONE dragon queen? Why can't there be dragons of every fucking color, with no predeterminate genetic coloration crap, rather than these stringent designations? You tool!).
However, I'm obviously not taking out the less retarded parts of Knaak's canon of Diablo, as is indicated by my reference to his Sin Wars trilogy, which was probably the least stupid of his works, for the most part; Uldyssian has to be the biggest dumbass in the universe (although, seeing as he's an avowed atheist (most likely Knaak's loveable sockpuppet(I'm infinitely more partial to his Warcraft one; Krasus, the red flight's magical manslut who craves peace more than most hippies, yet conflicts his pining for no violence with some of the most disturbingly gruesome spells and tactics I've ever read in a mainstream novel(I'm still in denial about my hipsterness))), I can live with that (just barely)), Lilith should have been infinitely scarier, there should have been a more thorough backstory for Andariel and the rest of the succubus brood, and the super awesome possessing warlock patsy should have gotten a shitload more airtime.
Oh, and the "Sin Wars" trilogy should have been more about the actual war between the High Heavens and the Burning Hells, rather that snippets of that between Uldyssian being a self absorbed attention whore with his "aren't I wonderful" acts of charity to impress his girlfriend *coughitsatrapcough*, Inarius being a vainglorious colostomy bag (although I gotta say his brooding's kinda hot- I'm entirely heterosexual, I swear), and random bits of drama that have no actual relevance (srsly, the morlu knights with their ambushes were near completely invalid in developing the actual frigging PLOT- I mean, the astoundingly creepy Hidden coming after Uldyssian's party was craploads more awesome!). The bits that tided me over all that silliness was the bits with Mendeln, Uldyssian's infinitely smarter brother, and his progress as a follower of Rathma and a tool of Trag'Oul, the rare times when Uldyssian did something for himself (like that fight scene with the assassin sent by Inarius (although it got a little stupid in the extensive narrative at the tail end of the damn thing)), and the adventures of Uldyssian's undead friend.
Okay, you may have lost your way in that block of text in the middle of the paragraph, so I'll refresh your memory: the Sin Wars trilogy should have been mainly about- guess what- the fucking Sin Wars. Especially the beginning of this bizarre, endless fracas, so we can have some actual concrete concept of HOW THE FUCK IT ALL STARTED, for instance, as well as the workings of each side from an intimate perspective, as opposed to dancing around the issue by putting on a dog-and-pony show to distract us at seemingly random information is crapped out on the typewriter to be read in teasing little hints and snippets so nobody can see the fricking fridge logic squarely. Hell, I didn't see the lack of solid thought involved until I was asked to explain the story of Diablo to my sister, BooksandBubblegum. Sweet Christ, the gaping plotholes. Something tells me Blizzards gonna be filling those in in the third game, eventually, even the ones that aren't there- ESPECIALLY THE WHOLE SHITFEST WITH CAIN HAVING A NIECE WHOSE MOTHER IS ADRIA THE WITCH LADY THAT HE DIDN'T SEEM TO KNOW AT ALL IN THE FIRST GAME ("The witch Adria is a mystery [to the people of this town]…"- yeah, totally indicates him covering up something) NOT TO MENTION THE FACT THAT HE'S SO FUCKING OLD IN THE SECOND GAME THAT PEOPLE THINK HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN DEAD AGES AGO (and not particularly via getting maimed to shreds by a gang of angry demons)—AND WE'RE TALKING THIRTY LONG-ASS YEARS AFTER THE END OF THE SECOND GAME'S EXPANSION! Yeah, Cain totally had a kid brother born to a woman quite a pack of years older than him. Uh-huh, that kid brother grew up in the home with a fossil for a mother, grew up, and eventually boinked a wench enough to have her shit out a kid at some point after the first decade after Baal's getting his ass thoroughly canned by the league-of-medieval-heroes-with-way-too-many-abilities, thereby giving the unbelievably long-lasting Deckard Cain a niece that's, like, a ninth his age - yep, totally believable.
Okay, for one, how the shit didn't anybody hear about his brother? Cain's supposed to be the onliest little Horadrim sage left in the entire damn world, and this after having well outlasted his comrades, who I doubt all died at an early age. Now, I give you, he still had color in his hair in the first game (red), but he's well into balding in the second game, hunched over, talking like he's an octogenarian, and people are quibbling about how they're crapping their pants over his longevity. He's old, alone in the world, and his main joy in life is telling stories that have more than a grain of truth in them (if what Adria says is anything to go by, amongst her other extremely sage sayings). Even as a surrogate, how is that possible? He's an island, dammit! Hot damn.
Coming to Adria in this situation, lemme say this- you're saying the scary-ass witch that nobody knows about that landed in Tristram when the first helping of shit began to fly at some point before then got knocked up, shat out a baby girl, kept the baby girl hidden away completely effectively to the point where nobody ever knew, not even the ever-insightful Deckard Cain, and somehow this baby child outlives this über-powerful witch mother of hers, who's as wise or wiser than Cain, not to mention infinitely more resourceful, the kid lives through the crazy-ass events of Diablo II with all the demonic invasions and crap, lives through the chaotice aftermath of three decades until the meteor descends, and at which point the daughter of Adria looks like a girl at the very end of her adolescence with all the helplessness of a girl at such an age with maybe a handful of semi-useful powers that could kill a zombie early in the game with the help of the more powerful hero. Okay, are you getting an idea of how insane that sounds, even if a number of these conditions turn out to be different, bogus, or whatever? Let's come back to the part where Cain and Adria didn't know jack shit about the other beyond some shrewd insights in the first game, and there was supposed to be only a few weeks between the end of the first game and the beginning of the second, so I dunno how a strong relationship could form between those two utter strangers enough for Adria to even entrust Cain with looking after her witch-spawn, much less any kind of a surrogate uncle role or simple guardianship. Last I checked, single women with children they worry about enough to hide don't exactly part with their kids too lightly, or let someone as dodgy as Cain near them. That just doesn't make sense.
Now if you think that's nuts, wait `til you get a load of some o' the other stuff- granted, however, plenty of it will make more sense than that particularly dubious backstory. However, shit like that's a real game-changer, so why would anyone want to upset that? Makes no sense at all. Srsly.
Come to think of it, this seems eerily like Blizzard's trying to jump the shark for absolutely no good reason. This spells trouble and a big bowl of bad for the Diablo franchise. Just you wait.
If it turns out that the use of Adria's and Cain's names were used as filler for names Blizzard didn't want revealed yet, I can accept that. Other than that, I feel that shit's gonna get rather ugly in the years ahead, and no amount of money from big corporations is gonna keep that afloat for longer than it can possibly take.
*End*
And that was the rant. Fun, right? I bet you scrolled all the way down without reading a single word of this. Hell, you've probably gone past this to go spam my inbox with "update plz betch", so go die in a hole.
No, there's not gonna be an omake this chapter. I was debating it even as I was writing the last of this, but I'm gonna pass. It just doesn't go.
Oh! And I'll be slipping in more references to random shit, usually without credit, in future chapters, so watch out!
Now, I'd never intended to make this story this blatantly humorous, but the opportunities present themselves abundantly in the plotline of Zero no Tsukaima that I just can't say "No" to them! But it's not gonna be like this for the whole ride- I will, at some point, write more seriously as this story continues and the gags and funnies are lost to the melodramatic BAWWing of Saito pining over Louise and Louise feeling shitty about herself because Saito shows her up by gaining some new fucking power ever ten fucking seconds- that cheap little WHOOOOORE! You cockbucket!- at which point I've gotta let Ludo come in and fix shit that he ain't broke.
Oh, but I'll probably keep on with the Nostalgia Critic references in these end notes if I can help it. Seriously, that guy's the one responsible for keeping me sane during some rough patches in my life.
By the way, if you wanna look up the reference in the end notes last chapter, just search for "Jumping the shark Nostalgia Critic" on YouTube. It's definitely funnier than simply reading my typed rendition of it.
For the references in these end notes, go to Nostalgia Critic's website and watch The Next Top 11 Nostalgia Critic Fuck-Ups (I dunno if that's exactly what the title is, but you get the idea).
So yeah. Tune in next time (Or now, if this is currently not the latest chapter) to follow the antics of Louise the Zero and Ludo (Bagman!)!
By the way, if you think the character is Ludo Bagman, you're an ass. Nope, I don't even like the way you think.
"And so, it came to pass" that I got this shit over with:
REVIEW! REVIEW!
YOU'VE READ THE FUCKING STORY NOW FUCKING REVIEW!
REVIEW EVERY FUCKING CHAPTER OF THIS COCKBUCKET IF YOU CAN MANAGE IT!
NOOOOOOWWWWW!11/1!1/1!1!1101!one!1ELEVEN!
AND BE QUICK ABOUT IT!
WAIT, NOT QUICK, THOROUGH! AH YES THOROUGH!
GO THROUGH THIS SHIT WITH A FINE TOOTH COMB! DON'T OMIT ANYTHING! I DON'T CARE IF YOU CURSE! I STILL ACCEPT ANONYMOUS REVIEWS although I still prefer reviews by members so I can get back to you BUT STILL
NOW PRESS THAT HOT LITTLE BUTTON AND FUCK DAT ASS/KEYBOARD UNTIL YO MOMMA SCREAMS FOR MERCY!