Jynx: Whee, the opening hasn't been long in a while.
-Part something-
"Sail away… Ripples never come back… Gone to the other side… Sail away, away…" Xemnas sang softly, one hand resting on Sephiroth's back. "The face that launched a thousand ships… is sinking fast, that happens, you know… Seems not very long ago… Lovelier she was than any that I know…" He looked at Sephiroth, stroking his hair idly."Why are you singing Genesis?" came Jynx's voice. She slowly walked out of the wall, shuffling her deck overhand. Xemnas looked at her. He shrugged.
"I like that song," he said. Jynx flopped down in the armchair.
"Not a bad song. A little long, though," she said. "Eight minutes and six seconds. Where is everybody?"
Xemnas shrugged. "They left to go visit some friend of Alderyn's," he replied. Jynx nodded and stared out the window.
"Big ice storm last night," she remarked. "Covered everything."
The landing had been less than...well done... Fenrir had landed in the frighid Irish water, Alderyn had landed on the top part of a tree, Ed and Sei had landed head first on the ground. Chiri glided easily to the ground and sweatdropped. "Sorry, No Da..." He said laughing.
Alderyn glared at him. "Learn to land, Chiri..." She grumbled and fell to the ground.
Xemnas nodded. Jynx looked at Sephiroth.
"How is he?" she asked.
"Doing better," Xemnas replied, gazing fondly at him. Then he looked at Jynx. "Um…" Jynx laughed hollowly.
"Wondering why I'm not on a rampage?" she asked. Xemnas nodded. "Fenrir likes to exaggerate."
Alderyn looked around. "Well we're definatly in Wexford, but not Kilmore Quay. Shoulda been clearer, eh?" She asked Chiri. He nodded. "Well then lets go, Alera's house should be oh three miles that way." She pointed down a long lane.
Jynx sighed and walked over to the window. For a while no one spoke. Then Sephiroth stirred and awoke.
"Hello, love," he said, kissing Xemnas. "Where is everyone?"
"Ireland," Jynx answered idly. She stood with her hands in her pockets and her tail swishing slowly back and forth, giving her an oddly sane appearance. She sighed and stared at the ceiling. "I wonder if there's anything weird about this castle…" With that she floated up and through the ceiling.
Xemnas and Sephiroth stared at each other. Xemnas shook his head.
"She's something else," he said. He started to say something more, but Sephiroth gently took hold of his face and kissed him deeply.
Alderyn led them to a small thatched room white washed house. It had a strangled garden of wild flowers and menacing looking weeds. Above the door a gargoyle grinned a gap toothed grin. Its head moved up as the group approached. It cackled.
Alderyn sighed. "Marion cut the scary act." The gargoyle pouted.
"Come now Ali, can't I have a little fun?" It asked in a high pitched chickmunk voice. Alderyn looked at her.
"No. You're fun involves dumping eggs on us as we enter and then dropping flower as we stand there covered in egg goo." The gargoyle laughed.
"You know me too well." The door swung opened. "Alera's expecting you."
Jynx reappeared in a previously unknown room. The room was full of cloth-covered furniture and smelt faintly of mothballs. She cocked her head, suddenly feeling like she wasn't alone. A chill crept between her wings, and she turned.
A sudden shout rapidly brought Sephiroth and Xemnas apart. The two's heads jerked up at the ceiling. Jynx seemed to fall from the ceiling and landed on the table, breaking it in half. She groaned and stood, rubbing her wings.
The group walked into the room and the first hting they were greeted with was a gilded cathedral ceiling. All around was granite walls but instead of Holy pictures there were cartoon comics ingraved into the walls.
"What the hell, Jynx?" Sephiroth asked, sitting up.
"There's something up there!" Jynx replied, wide-eyed, pointing to the ceiling.
"Uh, ceiling?" Jynx shook her head so vigorously her ears flapped around.
"No, some weird room!" she said. "It's full of old furniture and shit, and... a... a... THING!"
The group passed from the cartoon cathedral into what seemed to be a hobbit house...complete with the hobbit sized ceiling. All of them had to duck and walk practically on their knees to get through. Well all except Ed, who fit perfectly.
"Hey Ed, its the perfect house for you." Alderyn said happily. Ed glared at her.
"I'm not a midget that you need a microscope just to see!" HE screamed and jumped at her. Sei held him back. Alderyn just chuckled.
"A thing?" Xemnas asked skeptically.
"Yes, a thing!" Jynx snapped. "What are ya, a parrot? It was huge and amorphous and tentacled and... wait, that's a shoggoth. It was amorphous, tho'." She seemed to be back to her hyperactive self. "I think it was looking at me." She shuddered.
Xemnas and Sephiroth looked at her.
"Wanna go investigate?" Xemnas asked, shifting his gaze to Sephiroth. "Are you up to it?"
"I'm not made of glass," Sephiroth said, making Xemnas blush.
A flurry of activity drew the groups eye. In the other room a flash sped by the doorway. It muttered to itself. Alderyn walked forward.
"Alera..." She called. The blur stopped. It became the form of a frizz haired red head with large circular glasses. She was short and she wore a kimono print druid robe and flame converses. She blinked up at Ali. And then tackled her.
"ALI ALI ALI! YOU"RE BACK!" She screamed at the top of her lungs.
Fenrir's eyebrows rose as she stared at her. "Okay..." she said.
Back at the castle, Jynx, Xemnas, and Sephiroth (still leaning on Xemnas) were trying to figure out how to get to the room Jynx had seen. The three had wandered all over the place, and as a result were a bit lost.
Jynx swore and twisted her hand oddly in the air. Greenish light enveloped the trio, and she jumped up. "Let's check out that door," she said, pointing.
Alera stopped her babbling and looked up at the others. She blinked twice then high tailed in around the corner. "DAMN IT ALI YOU SHOULDN"T HAVE BROUGHT PEOPLE!" She screamed. Alderyn sweatdropped.
"They're friends Alera. Deal with it." Alera grumbled at her and twitched.
"People are evil." She muttered and walked away into the next room.
"It's locked," Sephiroth said, pointing to the large padlock on the door. Jynx shrugged and touched it. Frost blossomed over the lock, freezing it solid in a matter of seconds. She hit it with her fist and it shattered.
"Not anymore," she said, grinning smugly.
Behind the door there was a tall set of stairs. Dust coated the stone steps, cobwebs festooning every wall. The three hesitated.
Alderyn motioned everyone else forward. "Come on, pay no attention to her. She needs to get over her I-Hate-People thing anyway." Alderyn led them into the next room. It was actually somewhat normal if you discounted the half finished robot in the corner, the half toppling bookshelve against the wall, and the huge pin-up of Heath Ledger from A Knight's Tale.
"You first," Jynx said, backing up slightly. Xemnas and Sephiroth eyed her darkly. She grimaced and generated a small globule of fire. She froze it, allowing it to glow. This she held high as she led the way up the stairs.
Their feet made no sound in the centimetre-thick dust as they climbed higher. Sephiroth, still sick, started to lose his breath quicker than the other two. Xemnas gave him a concerned look and picked him up. Sephiroth blushed.
Alera was muttering to herself and working on a piece of the robot. "Make yourselves at home. There's haggis in the fridge and fresh mead in the keg." She told them without turning around.
The stairway got narrower and narrower, and Xemnas had to put Sephiroth down. The three continued up the stairs, which were fast growing lighter. They stopped under a trapdoor. Jynx looked at them and shrugged. She knocked on it, then pushed it open. A warm golden light flooded the stairway. Xemnas and Sephiroth heard Jynx gasp.
"Oh my giddy aunt," she breathed. "Come up here and look at this!"
Xemnas and Sephiroth stood next to her. Their jaws dropped.
The group sweatdropped. Ed made a face. "Yuck... haggis." He remember the last time Alderyn tried to force feed it to him and shuddered. A gear smacked him in the head.
"No messing with the haggis." Alera told him angrily.
Filling the room from floor to ceiling were mounds upon mounds of treasure. Rare jewels, gem-encrusted swords, countless items of jewelry, heaps of coins, a gold skull with rubies for eyes and pearls for teeth, and, in one corner (Jynx gave a squeal of delight) stacks of rare books. The three scrambled through the trapdoor and stood in the center of the room, completely in awe of the store.
"I've seen some dragon's hoards in my time, but this puts 'em all to shame," Jynx said in amazement.
She eagerly ran over to the books, carefully lifting them up and examining them. Sephiroth looked around.
"I had no idea this place was here," he said, still awestruck.
"Neither did Fenrir and the others, from the looks of it," Xemnas said, examining the skull. He blew a layer of dust off it.
"Oh my… check this out," Jynx called. There was an uncharacteristically serious edge to her voice. She walked over to them, holding up a leather-bound, musty-smelling book. "Do you guys know what this is?"
Xemnas and Sephiroth glanced at each other and shook their heads.
"This is the Necronomicon, as penned by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. This is Wormius' Latin edition, the most complete copy to date," she replied grimly. "This'd fetch a hefty price… in more ways than one. There're many cults, dedicated to the Elder Gods Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, The Goat with A Thousand Young, Cthulhu… They're all the Elder Gods who lived on this earth millennia before humans came.
"They ruled for some time, until something happened. Their civilization was destroyed by something, no one knows what, and they retreated under the seas, waiting for the chance to subjugate this planet and make it their own once again. Some of the cults on this earth are looking for ways to hasten this time. They would pay out the nose to have this. Abdul Alhazred was a demonologist. This book contains instructions on how to summon them and their dark servants, various rituals to them…
"This book has been translated into English and Latin, and the Latin is the most complete. Each translator found content in the pages he deemed appropriate to leave out, possibly because they were too horrible for human minds to comprehend."
She looked up at them. "This room isn't as much of a blessing as we thought," she concluded, face paler than normal. "We have to seal this room away."
"What about the other room? Where you saw the thing?" Xemnas asked.
"It wasn't this one. That room was right above the TV room. This one isn't," Jynx replied. "At least, I don't think it is…" She melted through the floor, then reappeared. "Yeah, this one is right over Fenrir's room. Besides, the room I found was way smaller, way darker, and had a ton of furniture in it."
The three headed back down the stairs, closing the door behind them.
"Wait," Jynx said. She focused on the handle and frost flickered across it for a moment. The frost faded. "There. Now it'll remain closed until someone figures out how to break my spell." She clapped her hands together. "Right, let's find that place, ne?"
They explored the castle again, looking for anything that might pose as an entrance to a door. After a while, they grew frustrated and flopped down on the floor.
"This is taking too long," Sephiroth groaned, leaning on Xemnas. Xemnas wrapped an arm around him and hugged him tight.
"Yeah, I know," Jynx replied, leaning on the wall. "But I don't know what that thing was, so we ought to—whoa!" Abruptly the wall gave way, and Jynx toppled through a hole in the wall. "Ouch."
Xemnas and Sephiroth hastily stood and stared at her. She was lying on her side in a dusty hallway, blowing spiderwebs off her nose.
"Nice one," Sephiroth said. "Who knew klutziness would be useful?" Jynx stood and stuck her tongue out at him, and led the way down the hallway. Once again they found themselves wading through thick dust, Sephiroth sneezing up a storm.
They found themselves in an empty room, this one full of cloth-covered furniture. There was a large hole in the roof.
"This is it!" Jynx cried. "Okay, the thing was around here somewhere…" Only a moment later something dropped onto Sephiroth's head with a maniacal laugh.
"Kyaaa! Get it off!" Sephiroth screamed, as Jynx fell over laughing.
"Nice scream, Seph," she laughed. They stared at the thing clinging resolutely to Sephiroth's head. It had six limbs, four of which were arms, spines, huge ears, and blue fur. "It's so cute!" With that, Jynx reached out and tugged the thing from Sephiroth's head. She hugged it tight. It giggled insanely and played with her ears.
"What the hell is it?" Sephiroth said, colour tingeing his cheeks.
"My name Stitch," the furry thing said. Sephiroth started.
"Aw! So cute!" Jynx cried.
"Is that your huge, tentacled, amorphous thing?" Xemnas asked.
"First of all, that's a shoggoth, not what I saw. I said it was amorphous," Jynx replied. "I think I just saw this guy's shadow. I wanna keep him!"
Xemnas and Sephiroth looked at each other, then at Jynx and Stitch.
-O-
Alderyn and the others returned that evening, Fenrir sulking in the back.
"Smooth move, Fen," Sei said with a snicker.
"Shut up," Fenrir growled. "Stupid robot." The two abruptly bumped into the others' backs. "What the hell?"
"What is that?" Ed cried.
"Stitch!" Jynx answered, playing Canasta with the furry creature.
Alderyn's eyes widened. "So... CUTE!" She cried and gathered the furry little alien into a big hug.
Stitch yelped and dropped his cards. "Leggo!" he cried, squirming wildly.
Jynx hastily rescued her card partner. "Myah, no touchie!" she snapped. Stitch stuck his tongue out at Alderyn.
-End teh chapter-thing-
Jynx: Stitch, whee! X3
Alderyn: I wanna hug him!
Jynx: No! (Hiss)
Fenrir: Alderyn's a lazy bum... Jynx finished off the chapter without her.