Gently, Liz leaned forward a bit and pressed the "yes" button with her finger. A new message popped up.
"please put on the headphones located under your seat arm closest to the aisle. Once your headphones are comfortably on your head, press the 'ok' button below."
Liz reached under her right seat arm and found a pair of headphones she had not noticed before. She put them on, then hit the "ok" button.
The screen went black. Then a happy face popped up. Literally, a smiley face.
"hello! I'm sam!" it said in a surprisingly masculine voice. "Welcome aboard the SS luxury ship! I am here to introduce you to your destination, and to inform you about its history."
"we'll start our journey with a simple question. Have you ever heard of Z?"
"ha ha! Not Z as in the alphabet! Z as in the all-powerful sub-god!"
A lightning fast line of light shot out of the screen and scanned liz' face, then retreated back into the screen.
"judging by your blank expression, I take it as a No. that's all right! That's what I'm here for! If it weren't for newbies like you, I'd be out of the job!"
Sam laughed a hearty laugh, then disappeared. Upon the screen appeared green-hair's face.
"This is Z."
Liz gave a small gasp. So green-hair's real name was the letter Z!
"Now, believe it or not, 3 eternities ago (yes, an eternity is a unit of time. For more info, pick up the video, 'eternity: forever? Or simply a very very very long time?) Z was once a human. That's right, an earthling! Living in Wisconsin, USA, of all places."
Green-hair's – I mean, Z's – face morphed. Its green Mohawk morphed into a simple dark brown hairstyle. His yellow-black eye morphed into an identical eye to his other eye: a regular brown eye. His grumpy frown turned into a gentle smile.
"To protect his identity, we will not give Z's true name. he doesn't like people to know it. Only one other knows it at all!
"Anyways, Z was granted with incredible powers when he was 16. he turned immortal, and was given the ability to transform into anything he wanted, from toasters to t-rexes to tryglocerenians! He left his planet, and went to the edge of the universe, where he created from his very essence a incredible utopia. The Zship."
The scene changed to a gargantuan globe. It appeared to be made of glass. A huge red "Z" was emblazoned on it, and it was surrounded by many smaller moons.
"The Zship is the size of a small galaxy. Within it (not on its surface, but literally inside it, on countless levels) lies the largest utopia the universe has ever known. It is impossible to list everything within it, but you can trust me when I say it has EVERYTHING! It has a city the size of a thousand suns across! It has jungles, volcanoes, oceans, and billions of environments! I'm not kidding, ask for anything, and is there.
"And the most incredible thing of all is, it's not finished growing! Every single day, more and more is added to the Zship! It has more doubled in size since it was originally created, with no end whatsoever in sight!
Also, the Zship has precisely 87 moons. 37 of these are assorted environments, laboratories, and even a training center for everything from fighting to chess to intergalactic robot destruction derbies!
"The other 50 are signifigantly smaller, but these are even more revered. About 200 times the size of planet earth, these are reserved for the VIPs who choose to stay in the ship. These VIPs and their friends and family have full reign of these mini-planets, and they may do whatever they wish within them. 41 of these planets are currently occupied. Will you be occupant #42? Who knows. It is all up to the luck of the dice, whether Z likes you, or if you help him out greatly. It also doesn't hurt if you are smoking hot, or a straight-haired, long-haired blonde, or rolling in dough."
Liz felt her hair. She was definitely in the second category. Was it a coincidence that Z was so close to her? Or was it something more?
"Now then, we have covered most of the basics of the Zship. You will learn the rest when we get there. But there is one more thing we want you to know.
"you surely noticed Z's black-and-yellow eye. While his neon green Mohawk is by choice, his black-and-yellow eye was not a choice. He calls it…
"the broken eye."
The screen now changed to what appeared to be a rather crude video recording. It showed a cozy campfire in the middle of the woods, with a tent in the background. From the bottom of the screen, apparently held by the filmer, was a marshmallow on a stick, being roasted over the flames.
"It happened upon a camping trip in the Zship. Z was alone, enjoying the silence, when it happened. This video was automatically recorded on his eye. It actually was recorded on both eyes, but…"
"perhaps it is best if you just watched. Ill describe it after."
The audio switched to what was obviously the sounds of the video. It was the sounds of leaves rustling, and an owl gently hooting. A whistling was heard from Z. (the filmer, in case you zoned out.) impossibly fast whistling, it sounded like "Through the Fire and Flames" by Dragonforce.
The marshmallow was withdrawn from over the fire, now a golden brown. The whistling cut off to a quiet chewing sound, obviously the marshmallow being eaten by Z.
Suddenly, a particularly loud rustle. Z's head whipped around, the camera motion-blurring before focusing upon a rustling spot in the bush. A swallowing sound confirmed that the marshmallow was history.
Out of the bush stepped the most ridiculously sexy woman Liz had ever seen.
She wore a silvery, glittering dress and a smile. Her hair was long, straight and blonde. She had huge boobies and a smooth, curvy ass.
She slowly walked up to Z, still flashing those perfect teeth in that perfect smile. Z didn't move an inch, obviously paralyzed by sheer shock that a beautiful woman had come out of nowhere. The woman leaned close, her face not far at all from the camera. Her arms wrapped around Z, and slowly, she kissed him. Her head tilted to one side, so that Z's eye-cam was completely obscured.
It remained like this for a few seconds: the woman's face, her eyeshadow-covered eyes, filling the camera. Then all of a sudden, Z reared back, screaming. His hands flew to his face, and he appeared to be trying to get something out of his left eye. He was screeching, clawing at his eye, the woman in the background, smirking. Then the screen faded to black, the screams quieting to whimpers.
"if we relied solely on the footage" came sam's voice from the darkness, the whimpers still in the background, "we would have no idea what happened to Z's eye. But Z managed to recover after a few hundred years (a microscopic portion of his insane lifespan), and he told us what happened.
"Apparently, her head was tilted to the side, so that his left eye was completely exposed to the night. He didn't notice this at the time, because he was paralyzed. Whenever a woman comes into direct skin contact with Z, he is paralyzed for a signifigant time, with pleasure, because it happens so little often, because so few women visit the ship.
"at the last possible second, as Z's left eye was half open with bliss, it witnessed the woman's hand, lifting a drill slowly into the air, then ramming it directly into Z's eye."
Liz winced. Sounded painful.
"Now, normally, it would be painful, but Z would suck it up and begin to attack the woman. He has had his body ripped to shreds, and still fought without even griping. But, this was no ordinary drill.
"have you ever heard the expression, 'the eyes are the windows to the soul'? well, that is far more true then many realize. The eyes are directly linked to the soul. Though normally the soul remains intact even if the eyes are damaged, this scenario was different.
"the 'drill' the woman held was a soul-shredder."
The screen switched from blackness to a blueprint of what appeared to be a spiky drill. The word "soul-shredder" was written above it.
"Soul-shredders were banned many, many eternities ago, and were thought to all have been destroyed. A couple emerged on insanely rare occasions, mostly assassinations. They are traded around, for incredible prices, on extremely rare occasions, on the interga-black-tic market. Because there are so few of them – barely even 10, tops, in the entire universe – authorities have barely even managed to locate one of them, and that one was by pure luck, in a random smuggling bust.
"Soul-shredders only work if their drills come into point-blank contact with the eyes, and go deep into them. If they drill anywhere else, they do nothing more then a regular drill. If in the eyes, however, they are a ONE-HIT KILL. The soul is instantaneously shredded to irreparable pieces, and the victim dies instantly.
"With Z, of course, this was not the case. His soul was not shredded…
"but his survival did have a price."
On the screen, the blueprint disappeared, and a blobby green soul appeared, like the human ones described to Liz and Patty by Maka and Stein. This soul was neon green, and had a sharp-toothed, frowning mouth, and three spikes on its top, like Z's mohawk.
While its right eye was regular (Albeit rather mean-looking), it's left eye was not there. It was just a swirling gash. The surface directly around it was swirled, a little like a toilet bowl water swirling when it is flushed. The circular gash went deep into the soul, in a inverted cone shape. It looked like, well… somebody had stuck a drill in the soul's left eye, and ripped it to shreds.
"Due to Z's sub-god nature, he survived, but the left eye of his soul was forever damaged. Correspondingly, his left eye is also damaged, just a gaping red hole, and no amount of regeneration or surgery can ever fix it. It is cursed to be unhealable.
"Z locked himself up in his secret room for a month, determined to see from his left eye again. After the month, he opened the door. In his left eye now was the broken eye.
"Z has refused to tell anybody what went on in that lab on that mysterious month, or how he made the broken eye, and got it to successfully work with the curse keeping the wound unhealable.
"He has wore the broken eye ever since. When asked if he gets sick of it, he simply says jokingly that, 'it's better then having no depth perception.' However, beneath that, there is definitely an undertone of hurt, as though the wound still aches, as badly as it did on the day he first got it.
"Perhaps it still does.
"well enough with the gloomy talk!" said sam, his smiley-face self reappearing and filling the screen. "you should be about halfway t the Zship by now! Please enjoy the rest of your flight, and the Zship once you get there."
"thank you for watching this video. It really means a lot to us to Z to have his story spread around. If it's not too much trouble, please spread around this story by word of mouth (or other forms of communication). It will help others learn of the Zship, and perhaps keep anyone else from dying of a soul-shredder."
"one last time, I am Sam. Welcome to your flight, and welcome to the magical, invincible Zship. Ta ta, now! Don't forget to write! Don't be a stranger!"
Sam's face faded out as he yelled various farewells in various languages, in a fading voice. Once he was gone, the screen went dark. The video was over.
Liz leaned back in her seat, thinking about the plight of Z. The rocking of the ship soothed her stunned body, though, and she was soon asleep.
LONGEST CHAP YET!
I really love this one. I made it all up myself, and it is my life's work. I hope people enjoy this little history lesson.