This one's for you, Chitoryu12, wherever you are now. Considering you reviewed in July, and I've been very negligent in my account's upkeep, you probably gave up on me. Well fear not! Justice will prevail! THEY WILL SING!
Chapter 12: The Caroling Incident
"Miss Filia, is it time to go caroling yet?" Amelia eagerly asked Filia for the fiftieth time whilst the slightly perturbed Golden Dragon crammed every single dirty dish into her dishwasher, including the turkey pan.
"I never said we were going caroling!" Filia snapped as she kicked the door of the machine shut.
"But it's on your to-do list!" Amelia pleaded.
"What? Well, I guess I can't fight the to-do list," Filia muttered sarcastically, whipping out the list. "Hmmm…it really IS here…that's funny. I don't remember putting that on the list…NAMAGOMI!"
Xellos floated into the room, grinning mischievously. "Yes Filia my dear?" He answered.
"Did you put 'go caroling' on my to-do list?"
"Now why would I do a thing like THAT?"
"BECAUSE YOU LIKE ANNOYING ME!"
"Well, besides that…" Xellos muttered.
"BECAUSE YOU'RE…"
"It was Phibrizzo." Xellos cut in as he disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Filia marched over to Phibrizzo. "Did YOU put 'go caroling' on my to-do list?" She asked impatiently.
Phibrizzo glared and replied, "I'd rather kiss a toilet seat."
"Even one that Gaav's had diarrhea while sitting on?" Gourry asked, butting in on the conversation.
Phibrizzo was about to reply, but just then Gaav walked in with Valgaav latched onto his arm for dear life. "Were you just talking about me right now?" He interrogated, drawing his sword and threatening to slice and dice anyone who dared to reply.
"Well who WOULDN'T be talking about you?" Valgaav exclaimed. "You ARE the best character in Slayers Next!"
Filia then spoke up. "Hey Valgaav, did you by any chance happen to write, 'go caroling' on my to-do list?"
Valgaav averted his dreamy, lovey-dovey stare at Gaav just long enough to glare at Filia with a look of pure evil. "Why the #$# would I want to go caroling with you losers, all prancing around in the snow like a bunch of…"
Just then, Gaav popped in with shiny shojo-anime-style eyes. "You never said we were going CAROLING!" He exclaimed, "I LOVE CAROLING!"
Valgaav's eyes instantly turned all shiny too. "YES I ABSOLUTELY ADORE RUNNING AROUND IN THE STREETS SINGING SONGS OF GOOD WILL AND HOPE JUST LIKE YOU! IT TOOK ME UNTIL NOW TO REALIZE IT, BUT CAROLING IS MY LIFE!"
"REALLY?" Gaav cried in disbelief, "WELL LET'S GET OUR COATS THEN!" He and Valgaav then merrily skipped arm-in-arm to the coat rack.
Filia, Gaav (who was now wearing another trench coat over his trench coat and looked like an orange marshmallow), Valgaav, Phil, and Amelia split up and tried to convince everyone to come along. Getting Gourry and Sylphiel to join them was easy. "Caroling? That sounds lovely, doesn't it Gourry dear?" Sylphiel suggested.
"WHAT? WE'RE GOING TO PETSMART?" Gourry exclaimed, "COOL!"
"Uh…I never…" Sylphiel stammered.
"COME ON!" He cried, dragging the shrine maiden to the coat rack. "I WANNA PET ONE OF THOSE CUTE LITTLE MICE…"
Lina, however, wasn't that easy to convince. "Caroling?" The sorceress asked skeptically. "Are you nuts?"
"Hey Lina," Phil said with a smirk, "You know that song that goes, 'now give us some figgy pudding?'"
"Yeah," Lina replied. "What about it?"
"Well, whenever you sing it, the people you're singing to HAVE to give you figgy pudding!" Amelia finished.
"What's figgy pudding?" Lina asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Well, you can just add in some other food, it doesn't matter." Filia snapped. "Now go get your coat before the snow gets too deep!" She raised her mace into attack position.
Lina sweatdropped. "I'm not following here. What's that about the figgy pudding?" She asked.
"Miss Lina, if you just replace 'figgy pudding' with another food, you'll get whatever food you named!" Amelia said, "And it's free!"
Lina's eyes got all shiny. "Free food? Well, you can count me in!" She exclaimed, her mouth watering. "Even if I have to sing, if there's food involved, it's all good and well in the end!"
Out on the front porch, Gaav had just finished tying up Phibrizzo and Valgaav was busily duct taping him to a sled.
"CAROLING?" Zangulus exclaimed.
"Yeah." Lina replied. "Filia, Amelia, Phil, Gaav, Valgaav, Sylphiel, and Gourry are all going."
"Gourry's coming?" Zangulus said as fire started to appear in his eyes. "Finally, something I can beat Gourry at!" He exclaimed.
"Oh Zangy-Poo, that's wonderful!" Martina squealed, grabbing a camera to take pictures of his defeat.
"I trust you'll be there to cheer me on?" Zangulus said to Martina.
"You bet!" Martina exclaimed.
Filia found Eris and Kopii in the living room. Eris was watching old Christmas specials on the 64" flat-screen plasma TV and Kopii was standing suspiciously close to the video case.
"Hey Rezo, what are you doing?" Filia asked.
"Uh…" Kopii said, immediately shutting his eyes and ceasing his search for Richard Simmons tapes. "Dusting?"
"Whatever." Filia replied. "Come on. You're going caroling."
Kopii shrugged. "Sure, why not?"
Just then, Eris instinctively ran up to him. "If Rezo-kun's going caroling, then so am I!"
Kopii sweatdropped. After the possum stew incident back at the dinnertable, he was starting to find Eris less and less tolerable and also starting to imagine how it must feel for Rezo to have to deal with this every day. "Uh…I really don't…"
But Eris wouldn't take no for an answer and grabbed her and Kopii's coat, dragged the imposter outside (not bothering to notice that the REAL Rezo was lying unconscious just to the right of the porch) and joined the others.
Phil walked up to Zelgadis. "Hey there, Zelgadis!" He said cheerfully. "Up for some caroling?"
Zel looked up from sipping his coffee and being depressed and replied, "No."
"Please?" Phil begged, "Won't you do it for the sake of JUSTICE?"
"No." Zel replied again.
"You'll be letting down everyone else!"
"Good." Zel muttered.
"That's too bad…my sweet little Amelia was looking forward to seeing you there…" Phil said sadly.
Zelgadis spit out all of his coffee. "Oh…really?" He asked, pretending not to care.
"Yes, and she even said she would hold your hand so you wouldn't get lost in the snow and…"
Zel blushed as he got up and walked away.
"Where are you going?" Phil asked.
"To get my coat."
Everyone at the party gathered in front of the porch. Xellos had popped up again for the sake of bothering Filia. Nobody saw Rezo at all, despite the fact that his bright red robes were highly visible, even under a half-inch of snow. "Hey you guys," Eris said, "I think I left my purse inside! I'm going to go look for it…don't leave without me, all right?"
As soon as Eris disappeared into the house, Kopii said, "All right, let's go."
"But Miss Eris is still inside!" Amelia whined.
"Exactly." Kopii replied, snickering evilly. They walked off into the night, with Xellos floating behind them.
The group walked past the smoldering remains of Eris's Pinto and down towards the neighbor whose cinder blocks had been chucked at Zelgadis back when it was still light out. "That place looks pretty," Sylphiel remarked, admiring the decorations. "Let's sing here!"
"Sure, why not?" Filia shrugged.
"Don't you KNOW any of the people in your neighborhood?" Lina asked Filia.
"Nope." She replied as she rang the doorbell.
A cantankerous-looking old man walked out. He took a swig of whiskey from the bottle he was holding and yelled, "WHADDYA WANT?"
The Slayers characters immediately broke into song. Unfortunately, no two people were singing the same thing. Lina was shouting, "NOW GIVE ME A FIVE-COURSE ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT BUFFET!" over and over again, Amelia was belting out "Life is Wonderful" (much to the three Mazoku's dismay) at the top of her lungs, Gourry was saying something about a sale on Alpo, Zangulus was singing opera like he was trying to prove he was the best singer there (he wasn't), and the rest of the characters were singing random carols, save for Phibrizzo, whose mouth was taped shut.
The old man groaned. "YOU #$#ING LITTLE #$#S I'M GONNA CALL THE #$#ING COPS IF YOU DON'T GET THE #$# OFF MY PROPERTY! I BET YOU'RE THE LITTLE #$#S WHO #$#ING SMASHED MY CINDER BLOCKS TOO YOU LITTLE…"
The characters were halfway down the block before he could finish his sentence. "Gee Miss Filia, that old man wasn't very friendly…" Amelia said, sniffling.
"Cheer up, Amelia!" Phil exclaimed with a grin. "He just didn't have any holiday spirit!"
"Let's just hope he really DOESN'T call the cops on us…" Zelgadis muttered.
The party headed further down the road until the house they had stopped at was well out of sight. They stopped in front of a second house; this one had so many lights and decorations strewn all over the place that it made it look like it was still daytime.
"That looks just like Rezo's lab did last year!" Kopii exclaimed, having temporarily dropped his guise to check out the decorations.
Zelgadis eyed Kopii suspiciously, but the lights were too bright for him to notice that the man he thought was his grandfather/great-grandfather was acting like an idiot and had his eyes open. Filia walked up to the door and rang the bell. "NO SOLICITORS!" The lady inside yelled as she locked and dead-bolted the door.
"How can someone with so many lights and decorations have so little Christmas spirit?" Amelia wondered aloud as they went to the next house.
Zelgadis had let go of Amelia's hand for a bit after that. He had grabbed Filia's bright orange ski parka off of the coat rack since he couldn't find his own cloak. The parka had a funny-looking mailbox decal on the back that took up most of the coat, but it was a pretty nice jacket otherwise. He strayed a bit from the group, reflecting on all that had happened that day. "I hope we exchange gifts soon…" he thought to himself, staring at Kopii.
Just then, out of nowhere as snowplow barreled down the road, knocking down every mailbox it passed, and plowed right over Zelgadis. The snowplow skidded to a stop, and the driver looked out the window at Zelgadis. "Hey, you're not a mailbox!" He exclaimed as Zelgadis wiped the snow off his face and stood up. "Why do you have a mailbox on your coat anyway?"
Zel muttered an unintelligible reply and the snowplow started up again, plowing the snow off the road and knocking over every mailbox on the block. Zelgadis latched onto Amelia for dear life as the group plodded down the road.
Back at Filia's house, Eris had finally noticed she had been carrying her purse with her the entire time and walked out the front door. "Hey guys, you wouldn't believe…" Eris surveyed the front yard. No one was there. "Guys?" She said to no one in particular. "Great! They went and ditched me!" She cried. "Hmph!" She went to go back inside, but when she was halfway back to the porch she tripped over something and fell flat on her face. "Hey! What was that?" She asked herself, dusting snow of whatever it was that she had tripped over.
"REZO!" She cried upon uncovering the priest's bright red robes. She un-buried her item of idolatry, who had a huge mace-print on his forehead and was STILL unconscious. "They ditched you too?" She said to him like he was going to reply (then again, you never know. This IS Rezo here.) "Hmmm…are you asleep?" She asked. The unconscious priest said nothing. "Ohhhhh…" She (finally) realized, noticing the mace-print. "Filia knocked you out! I know that all the knocked-out people got taken to one of the rooms upstairs, so I guess I'd better take you up there and make you all better!" She grinned at having figured out the circumstances under which Rezo had been knocked unconscious (it wasn't brain surgery), and tried to pick him up. Unfortunately, he was WAAAAAAY too heavy. "Geez Rezo you need one of Kopii's Richard Simmons tapes!" She muttered as she dragged him onto the porch, into the house, down the hall, and up the stairs. She glanced at the five closed doors upon reaching the second floor, picked one at random, and dragged Rezo inside.
Naturally, it was a bathroom. Eris shrugged and said, "I guess this is the place, though it does seem a bit strange for Filia to treat injured party guests in a bathroom…" She managed, somehow, to haul Rezo into the conveniently oversized Jacuzzi in the corner of the room and shoved a few towels into the tub as well to make him more comfortable. Then she went downstairs to watch some more cheesy Christmas specials.
Meanwhile, outside in the small snowstorm, Filia and company trudged through two feet of the white stuff as they continued on their door-to-door trek. "Miss Filia," Amelia complained, "Why are all the people in your town so cranky all the time?"
"Maybe we should head back." Sylphiel suggested.
"No!" Zangulus argued, "I must prove to the world that I am a better singer than Gourry Gabriev!"
"And I wanna see the puppies!" Gourry insisted. "You told me we'd be going to Raymore and Flannigan's!"
Everyone stared blankly at Gourry and sweatdropped. "I thought you thought we were going to Petsmart." Martina said flatly.
"I did?" Gourry wondered.
"Please, can't we go to one more house?" Gaav pleaded.
"But everyone's kicked us out so far and the snow's getting in my boots!" Lina whined. "I say we all should go back and have some nice hot chocolate!"
"Sounds like a plan." Filia agreed.
"Back where ERIS is there waiting for me?" Kopii cried and shuddered.
"Filia," Xellos argued, hovering upside-down just inches from Filia's face, "It isn't fair to those of us who WANT to sing if you go home now…"
Filia went to whack him in the face, but he vanished into thin air before she could even grab her mace. "Okay." She reluctantly agreed. "We'll go to ONE more house…but just one!"
Zangulus, Gourry, Martina, Valgaav, Gaav, Kopii, and Xellos cheered. Everyone else sighed. They made their way to the last house on the block and Filia exasperatedly rang the doorbell. "Oh! Carolers!" The little old lady who answered the door exclaimed when the group started singing (and Gourry started asking where the kitty litter was). "You all sound lovely…so many different melodies!" The old lady exclaimed. "Would you like to come in for some banana bread and apple cider?"
Lina's eyes got all shiny. "FOOOOOOOD!" She cried as she stampeded into the house. The others followed her inside and they all had apple cider and banana bread by the fireplace.
When they arrived back at Filia's, Phil said, "Now wasn't that worthwhile?"
"Yeah Daddy!" Amelia exclaimed, "That lady sure did have a lot of Christmas spirit!"
"I guess it was worth it after all…" Filia admitted. Then she stopped dead in her tracks. "Hey…where'd my changepurse go?"
"That's funny…my wallet's gone too!" Gaav muttered.
"That old hag went and took all our money!" Lina cried.
The Slayers characters ran back out the door and into the snow.
Hope y'all liked that bit there. Maybe I'll post more stuff. Merry Christmas!