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Cut Rate Slayers
Dark Crystaline Eschaton
2: Direction! How hard can planned mayhem be?
The food was all gone and Gourry (played by Gaurry) delivered himself of a substantial and satisfied belch. All seemed pretty close to right with the world, loosely speaking.
"Now that the pangs of hunger have been sated for the nonce..." Amelia declared. (Amelia was being played, with a real flair for improvising tiresome speeches just the way the real Amelia could, by Malehelicon, the patron Muse of Bad Fanfics.) She glanced at Gaurry and, more uncertainly at the foot-tall form of Lina Inverse (being played -- badly -- by Quorinelya Tierce, microsorceress), who was wrapped in a napkin and propped up on the table against a salt cellar and sugar bowl. Lina's eyes were closed and her diminutive belly did look as though she might've ingested an entire brussels sprout. "...It is the hour for recounting glorious chronicles of noble deeds of yore --"
"Such as will have some bearing on the latest threat to the wellbeing of the whole world?" Zelgadis murmured. (Zelgadis was played by Fafred the Wunderkind -- who also happened to be the producer of the present tale.) He was sitting on a chair with his feet up on another, contemplating the glorious authenticity of his boots.
"Unless the script's had a rewrite I don't know about," Malehelicon said.
"We'll just have to hope it's nothing significant," Fafred muttered.
"What?"
"Nothing. So what glorious chronicle did you think to grace us with this evening?"
"One of my favorites," Amelia said, producing a dogeared stack of computer printout from under the table. "A clever little pastiche entitled 'The Eye of Argon' --"
There was a sudden breeze. Amelia looked around the empty room -- empty except for Amelia herself and Lina Inverse, whose eyes were still closed and who hadn't moved.
"That's what I call deep sleeping," Amelia said to herself. "Just kidding," she called out.
"That's good," Zelgadis said, coming back into the room. "Because before I'd let you actually start reading that piece, I'd've cued the farmhand. That story doesn't have anything to do with this world or our problems, anyway."
"But the archetypal themes!" Amelia exclaimed. "The powerful hero who battles alone against uttermost evil --"
Everyone regarded Quorinelya, who was sprawled on the table against the sugar bowl. Her eyes were still closed and her mouth was slightly slack. There was a droplet of spittle at the corner of her mouth.
"'Powerful hero,'" Zelgadis said, nodding. "That really resonates with what we've got here."
"What about Gourry?" Amelia asked.
"Too smart --" Zelgadis said.
"Whoah!" Gaurry exclaimed. "I'm too smart to be in the Eye of Argon?"
"I know," Zelgadis said. "It's a demoralizing thing to learn you're overqualified for a part."
"Especially when it's as famous a work of literature as 'The Eye of Argon'," Amelia sympathized.
"Infamous," Zelgadis corrected.
"You have no soul."
"Perhaps not," Zelgadis shrugged. "But I have a thesaurus that distinguishes among all the synonyms it lists. Now, the Eye of Argon is in no way any kind of inspiration for the dire future that this world risks plummeting into --"
"What about the scarlet emerald whose baleful gleam will sparkle from Seyruun to --?"
"That was an in-joke, before the script got proof-read. Well before. There's nothing like that in our peril now."
"Only a copper quartz?"
"Where?!"
Amelia shrugged. "All right. I have this other story --"
"So what about this copper quartz?" Gaurry asked.
"Shut up, Gaurry!" both Amelia and Zelgadis told him. "If we ignore it, it might go away," Zelgadis added.
"So we want it to go away?" Gaurry asked. He was regarded in silence. "Well, that wasn't obvious to me," he complained.
"Another story," Amelia said flatly. Zelgadis nodded. "All right. It borrows a little --"
"So it's plagiarism from start to finish?" Zelgadis asked.
"The title is 'The Last Platinum Dragon'."
"And I think we can guess how it goes."
"Yes, but shouldn't we wake her up for the telling?"
"Why?"
"Are you kidding? She's little miss know-it-all. If she isn't the one who's totally briefed on the monster of the week that we're fighting or the artifact of the hour that we're excavating or delivering or whatever, then she absolutely pitches a hissy fit. I'd rather not experience that, if you don't mind. The 13,277 that I've had to read about Lina throwing were bad enough."
"Yeah, but this would be a really small one," Gaurry suggested.
"Nevertheless..." Amelia said.
"Yeah, all right," Zelgadis agreed. "She ought to be awake for this anyway." He reached out with his stonier-looking hand and prodded Quorinelya.
Rolling over inside her napkin wrapping, Quorinelya said, "The Last Platinum Dragon lived by herself deep in the heart of the woods."
"Oh, so you've heard this one," Amelia said. She sounded disappointed.
"You could say that," Quorinelya murmured against the table.
"And you're awake already," Gaurry suggested.
"More or less." The tiny Lina Inverse sat up. "What'd the Red Bull become?"
Frowning, Amelia said, "The Black Mazoku."
"So the Last Platinum Dragon freed all of her kind from the prison which the Black Mazoku had constructed for them and they all lived happily ever --"
"Not exactly," Amelia interrupted. "The original tale of the Last Platinum Dragon doesn't end conclusively. Rather, the end of the original text has Finila bidding her friends adieu and flying away alone to do battle with the Black Mazoku."
"That doesn't sound very promising for platinum dragons," Quorinelya said.
"Well, she was the Last Platinum Dragon," Gaurry pointed out.
"Uh huh." Lina sighed. "So, how about if we declare The Last Platinum Dragon read into the record and adjourn for the evening?"
"But I haven't even begun --"
"You were not going to read the whole thing, anyway." Lina glared at the princess.
"Well, no... Not all of it ..."
"And we've got the gist of it," Lina said cheerfully. "End of story hour. Where's my room?"
The man who reeked of beer and the farmyard returned to the group's table. "Now?" he asked.
"Not. Yet," Fafred told him. "That brawl isn't scheduled until the story's about to leave the tavern for good. We're not quite to that point -- but, boy! Am I tempted."
The farmhand wandered away. "My room?" Lina prompted.
Still watching the farmhand's retreat, Zelgadis suddenly put his hands to his face. "Damn!" he exclaimed. "I forgot! This mudpack simply isn't working out and I'd made an appointment with an expert in chimeras to discuss options -- that sort of thing. Gaurry, can you finish putting this scene to bed? There's a good chap. Thanks -- and all of you, what you're doing is simply marvelous! Couldn't've asked for better if I'd asked for it. Love you all!" He ran out of the room. The others remained in silence a moment. Then Lina turned to Gourry.
"There's something really, really bad about my room," she told him. "What is it?"
Gourry looked the way he always did: confused. "Nothing," he said.
"You're sure?"
"Sure, I'm sure," Gourry said. "I mean, if there were anything really, really bad about your room, I'm sure that Amelia would've told us about it."
"I would've told you!" Amelia exclaimed. "Why would I have told you?"
"Because it's your room, too."
"I have to share my room with her?" Amelia wailed.
"Excuse me," Lina said. "I am the star of this piece, am I not? So, I have to share my room with her? Is this another pennypinching gimmick?"
"No, no, of course not," Gourry said quickly.
"Then what is it?" Lina asked saccharinely.
"Well, uh, you know, we're just traveling through towns and staying at strange inns and taverns and uh, beautiful ladies like you two ..."
"So that rat Fathead thinks I'm going to babysit the shrimp here?" Amelia asked.
"Who's babysitting whom, you syntactically challenged twerp?" Lina bridled. "And you," she turned back to Gourry. "You don't think we're perfectly able to take care of ourselves?"
"Of course I think you are," Gourry said quickly. "But the management here, they have these Ideas." He sighed. "See, you're a princess," he said to Amelia. "They, unfortunately, know that. Fafred blabbed about it trying to see if he could get rooms for royalty rates. So now, the innkeeper is all in a swivit about the possibility of having a princess abducted while she's under his roof. He wouldn't rent the room at all unless you were accompanied."
"Did anyone mention to him that having Lina in the room with me would increase rather than decrease the likelihood of something disastrous happening?" Amelia asked.
"He'd rather take that chance."
"Why don't I get that choice?!"
"And why don't you go bunk down in her room, then?" Lina suggested.
"Oh, I like that idea," Amelia exclaimed.
"Uh, I don't know that that's such a good ..." Gourry quickly declared, his face reddening.
Lina looked back and forth between the two. "Interesting," she murmured. "Well," she said to Gourry, "I hear the floor's tolerable if you've got a shtick about honor. I want my own room."
"You can't have it," Gourry said flatly. "They've had a problem in the past with gangs of teenage dwarves trashing rooms after their feasts. So, now they've got a rule requiring you to be more than this tall in order to rent a room." He put out his palm at least two feet above the floor.
Lina looked at the hand. "That's discriminatory," she complained.
"Yeah, well, it's legal discrimination in this town. The dwarven parents are also tired of paying the bills. Besides, the fixtures are all the wrong size. You'll need help --"
"I'd still need the help if I'm quartered with Amelia."
"I'm not helping her!"
Lina glared at Amelia. "Whatever happened to love and justice?" the tiny sorceress asked.
"Love and justice is one thing. Babysitting is another."
"Too bad," Gourry said. "The rules are the rules. Both of you need each other. Deal with it." With that, he ran for it.
Lina glared at the door the swordsman had fled through. Then, she looked up at Amelia. She sighed. "Look," she said. "How about if we go look at the room? See how crowded it makes us feel. Honestly, I'm too tired for arguing with you about it. Complaining at Gourry was different, but this -- Let's just go see." Amelia nodded glumly.
Later, lying in bed and gazing up at darkness before going to sleep, Lina
decided that the arrangement was bad, but not that bad. True, the room
was small. True, there was only one small bed in the room. And true, Amelia
didn't seem to be one to travel very light. Her gear was all over the room.
But Quorinelya's stuff complemented Amelia's, since the tiny sorceress had
absolutely nothing while the princess had a surfeit. So the small room was
not quite overcrowded with stuff. And Quorinelya had to be
small in order to sleep, so she was taking up very little space in the bed.
The only problem, the tiny sorceress decided, was one that she'd encountered
before. And she'd managed to live with it then, so why not now? It was
demeaning, perhaps, but -- Quorinelya felt the fingers curled loosely around
herself and sighed -- Amelia probably hadn't meant anything personal by it
when she'd sighed drowsily and murmured, "G'night, Teddy Snookums."