Why is it that when an original female character is introduced into a Dilandau fic, she always ends up being a princess held prisoner by Zaibach, fighting against the horrible things she is forced to do and those warm fuzzy feelings she's developing for a certain enigmatically asinine pyromaniac? Why is Dilandau always the one who is convincing the girl to give in and love him (as far as Dilandau-sama is concerned, anyway)?

I hope this fic will break that trend. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of those fics, simply because they portray a side of Dilandau that isn't really seen in the series. But I'm wondering what would happen if some bewitching woman came onto *him*...

They're not mine. Please don't sue me, I live on instant ramen for a reason.



=== "Say Please" by Morgan Steelgrave - Chapter One ===



The sun was not far from rising over the remote oasis city of Ta-Jesur, but a faint red glow had already begun along its horizon. Thunderous sounds of destruction were carried by the hot winds as they fanned out across the desert sands.

"Dilandau-sama," Gatti hailed his leader over the comlink, "the outer perimeter is secure."

"Excellent," came the deceptively velvet reply, "now burn the rest."

"Hai!"

Ta-Jesur was surprisingly large for such an isolated place, the only city-state to retain its independence from Freid for the past two hundred years. It came as no surprise that Ta-Jesur remained firm in its condemnation of Zaibach and its actions, even when Freid signed the peace treaty with the empire. Zaibach could not afford to allow the city's opinion to influence its neighboring kingdoms.

In his liquid metal throne, Dilandau grinned savagely at the city he was about to demolish. There was no telling how many people would die before the first light of day, but the prospects were simply exhilarating. He sighed happily, tightening his grip on the guymelef's controls. It was going to be a beautiful day.

"Dilandau-sama!" Gatti's voice interrupted the Captain of the Dragonslayers' reverie.

"Did you not hear the order to proceed, Gatti?" Dilandau hissed, irritated that his men had not yet begin the destruction of the inner city.

"But sir, there's a woman standing there inside the gates!" There was a note of uncertainty to the soldier's voice, which merely fueled Dilandau's anger.

"And I should be concerned because...?"

"We've demolished the entire outer wall, and she's not moving, Dilandau-sama."

"Then she must be either stupid or ready to die," Dilandau barked his reply so sharply he could almost sense Gatti cringe. "Either way, do what I tell you and get moving! Burn this dump to the ground!"

"H-hai, Dilandau-sama," Gatti complied, then turned to lead the charge. The guymelefs proceeded slowly, crima claws extending to the sides to wreak havoc in the taller stone buildings as they moved forward. In his viewscreen, Dilandau could now see the mysterious woman, still unmoving in the remnants of the inner sanctum gate. Even when he brought his Alseides directly in front of her, she did not turn and run screaming as Dilandau expected; instead she brought her gaze up and watched the guymelef with something akin to curiosity.

Dilandau scowled. Such insolence in the face of the infamous Zaibach Dragonslayers was intolerable. With a feral smirk, he aimed his flamethrower at the figure at his feet.

"Burn," he chuckled, igniting the flame and watching it boil downward toward the girl. When the smoke cleared, there was no trace of her. Dilandau grinned. She was more flammable than he had thought. He began to move forward toward the other Dragonslayers, when something peered over the top of his viewscreen directly inside the cockpit.

Despite his extensive training and inflated ego, the boy could not help but let out a screech of surprise and jerk the Alseides to a halt. The thing fell forward, and Dilandau stretched to see if it hit the ground. To his astonishment, he discovered that the thing was none other than the woman he thought he had fried moments before, and that she was floating in front of the guymelef, still trying to see inside.

"What the hell?!" he muttered to himself, watching the girl hover there in a seated position. She was wearing long, nearly transparent white robes that puddled around her in the air. The glint of gold ringed her neck in a wide collar, and gold hoops hung from her ears.

Dilandau blinked, shaking his head. There was no way that woman could be floating there on her own. She had to be using a levistone, or something similar, he tried to rationalize. Plastering his scowl on his face once again to hide his utter shock, he opened the hatch of his guymelef and stormed out onto its shoulder armor.

"Hey! What's the idea, you--" he stopped. The woman was gone. He glanced around, but she was nowhere in sight. Now more than confused, the Dragonslayer shrugged and turned to go back inside the Alseides.

He barely managed to stop his sliding descent into the cockpit when he found the woman seated inside, inspecting the controls earnestly and wiggling her fingers idly in the liquid metal.

"Dammit! Get out of there!" Dilandau shouted, reaching inside to pull the intruding creature out of his cockpit. He never made contact, however, because the woman dodged his gloved hand and floated upward until she was level with him. Dilandau took a wary step back, but forgot he was on top of his guymelef. He nearly lost his footing and turned to correct his balance, nearly falling again when the woman appeared on the other side of him and startled him. He finally managed to regain his balance, regarding her carefully. She watched him with an amused look on her face, which only made Dilandau's irritation flare.

Reaching down into the cockpit while still keeping an eye on the girl, he ordered into the comlink, "All units, halt!" Whirling on the woman, he demanded, "Who the hell are you?"

She did not reply. "I asked you a question," Dilandau growled, but she still said nothing. "Who are you?"

"Ask me nicely," said the woman. Her voice was light, almost childlike. There was an undercurrent of laughter to it, as if she found the entire situation extremely entertaining.

She had to be crazy, otherwise she would never dare say something like that. Dilandau let his guard down completely at the sound of it, laughing outright.

"Ask you *nicely*?" he repeated. Still chuckling, he drew his sword and took a step toward her, his stance easy but threatening. "Fine. Tell me who you are...*now*." The woman sighed impatiently, reached inside the folds of her robe, and drew a long sickle-sword.

Before Dilandau quite knew it, she had appeared behind him and was holding the sword against his throat. "That wasn't very nice," she warned, the laughter in her voice taking on a lower, more dangerous note. The Dragonslayer swallowed, but remained silent. The curved section of the blade pressed harder. "Say please."

This is so degrading, Dilandau muttered mentally. Aloud, he muttered, "Who are you...please."

The sword was immediately removed from his throat, and the girl reappeared in front of him, the enigmatic half-smile on her face once again. "You may call me Meret," she said.

"What are you doing here, if you please?" he continued sourly.

"You didn't tell me your name," she replied, ignoring his second question.

"You mean you don't know who I am?" he raised a silver eyebrow. Meret simply blinked. Dilandau rolled his eyes, grinding his teeth to reign in his irritation with the strange girl. "I am Lord Dilandau, Captain of the Zaibach Dragonslayers. And *you* may call me Dilandau-sama."

Instead of cowering in fear as she should have done by Dilandau's reckoning, however, Meret threw her head back and started laughing hysterically.

"I fail to see why you find it so amusing that you've attacked a Zaibach elite," Dilandau muttered around gritted teeth. Meret ignored him, holding her sides and trying to calm her laughter. Wiping tears from her eyes, she grinned at him from behind the curtain of her wavy auburn hair.

"I'm sorry," she managed. Dilandau's indignation was soothed a bit by her apology.

"You should be, not that it will do anything to save you," he admonished as he straightened his collar. "Now, what are you--"

"You have no idea, do you?" the girl interrupted, her face still flushed from laughing. Dilandau glared at her.

"First of all, *never* interrupt me again," he retorted, "and second, I have no idea about what?"

Meret suddenly appeared directly in front of Dilandau's face, smiling devilishly. "You're kinda cute when you're angry."

"Cute?!" the Dragonslayer spat the word, his temper finally flaring to life. "I've had just about enough of your idiotic remarks. You have no idea who you're dealing with! You dare to hover there and laugh at a warrior who has killed people for much, much less, and then all you can say is...is...cute?!"

"So attack me then. It'll be fun," Meret grinned, drawing her sword again and floating back and forth in front of the enraged Dilandau. He drew his sword and bared his teeth.

"Oh, it would be my pleasure to skin that stupid grin off your face," he agreed, charging her. She easily parried his heavy, angered blows, dodging lightly as he tried to fight her and keep his balance atop his guymelef at the same time.

Around the site of the battle, the other Dragonslayers watched with varying degrees of confusion as their leader savagely attacked a mysterious girl in white. The fact that Dilandau was trying to kill someone was no surprise; what was strange, however, was the fact that the girl was still alive and showing no sign of slowing down.

"Stand still and fight, damn you!" Dilandau snarled, taking another swing at Meret, which she once again easily avoided. Her grin grew wider as she hovered just out of his reach in front of the Alseides.

"Didn't you want to know what I was doing?" she asked innocently.

"Yes, I do," he acknowledged, still holding his ready stance even though his opponent was out of reach. "And maybe if you tell me now, I won't rip your spine out through your nostrils."

"Okay," she said, suddenly appearing right beside the Dragonslayer. "Have you ever heard of the djinn?"

"No, I have not." Dilandau scowled at her, attempting to send her his best death glare.

Meret responded by poking him in his chest. "Silly. I'm one, and you've heard of *me*. I'm the guardian spirit of Ta-Jesur."

"I'll have them carve it on your tombstone."

"While you were attacking the outer wall, I was summoned to protect the rest of the city."

"And what a wonderful job you've done," Dilandau replied acidly, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Take a look around. Your city's about to be burned to the ground. My men only need the word from me before they start smashing everything and everyone. Did you honestly think you could stand a chance against the Zaibach Empire?"

"Actually, that wasn't the point. The city can be rebuilt," Meret corrected lightly. "But while you were trying frantically to destroy me, the rest of the citizens have escaped through an exit in the west wall. You can't hurt them now."

Dilandau's garnet eyes widened a fraction before narrowing dangerously. "There's no way they could have done that." He reached down into the cockpit again and grabbed the comlink. "Gatti, Chesta, Dallet. Have you kept a tally of enemy casualties?"

"Uh...hai, Dilandau-sama," Chesta replied.

"And?"

"As of the time when you called the halt, we recorded a total of...um...zero enemy casualties, sir."

"What?!"

"There have been no enemy casualties, sir," Gatti reaffirmed Chesta's report. "There's been no resistance at all. We haven't seen a sign of anyone, actually. Dilandau-sama? Hello?"

The captain of the Dragonslayers dropped the comlink into the cockpit without bothering to respond. He stood from his crouch slowly, his eyes never leaving the young woman hovering in the air in front of him.

"You..." he accused quietly, his voice having lost all the manic frustration from their not-quite fight a moment before, "they're gone. All of them. Not a single casualty or prisoner."

"Looks like I did my job rather well, don't you think?" Meret looked absolutely pleased with herself.

"You BITCH!" Dilandau lunged at her, redoubling his efforts to separate her head from her body. "Not only am I going to rip your spine out through your nose, I'm going to feed it back to you vertebra by vertebra!"

"You're a very angry person," said Meret as she fluidly evaded his attacks. "It's too easy to push your buttons."

"I don't *want* my buttons pushed! What I want is for you to stand still and fight!" he retorted.

"You're also unbelievably dense," she sighed. "We've been over this once already."

"Been over *what*?"

"If you want something, you have to ask nicely." She smiled beatifically as she disappeared, then rematerialized on the guymelef's shoulder in directly in front of Dilandau. He stood there for a moment, agape, before raising an incredulous eyebrow.

He did not really think it would work, but he asked, "Would you *please* stop hovering around like that and fight me?"

Meret drew her sword and saluted him smartly. "Absolutely," she grinned, taking a ready stance.

Still blinking in disbelief at how easy it had been to get her to come down, Dilandau mirrored her movements and prepared to attack. Before he launched himself at her, however, she came at him with an series of movements that forced Dilandau to the defensive before he quite realized what had happened.

As he parried her blows, he had to grudgingly admit that she was actually very good. Her attacks were succinct and powerful, designed to conserve the fighter's energy. Though Dilandau had trained and studied various forms of swordplay during his time at Zaibach, he did not recognize Meret's style. This gave her a slight advantage, but the Dragonslayer was not ready to give up yet. If he could keep the fight going as long as possible, draw it out and force her to use a wider variety of movements, he could familiarize himself with her technique enough to better anticipate her actions. *Then* he could defeat her.

His plan was easier said than done, however. Her reserve of energy and skill never seemed to end. It irked Dilandau that while he had to fight the urge to wipe the sweat from his eyes, Meret hardly appeared to tire at all. She smiled infuriatingly as she paced her attacks, fully aware of what her opponent was attempting to do. Dilandau's patience was wearing thin; only the thought of defeating the impertinent girl was holding his temper in check.

"It seems we're putting on quite a show," Meret observed as she let the tip of her blade tease Dilandau's to one side. "Your men appear to be enjoying it."

"Shut up and fight," he growled, not wanting to waste valuable breath on flippant words.

"They've stopped completely," she went on, "just to watch you fight. They must genuinely adore you."

"They know to follow orders," Dilandau agreed flatly, concentrating on their weapons. He knew she was trying to distract him, but he would be damned before he let *that* happen.

"Orders?"

"Yes, orders. I tell them to jump, they jump. I tell them to halt what they're doing, and they stop immediately. If I told them to go out in the middle of the woods and kill themselves, they'd do it."

"Not as well as I could," Meret pointed out. She seemed slightly perplexed. "I don't know what kind of spirits they are, but they don't seem very powerful if all they can do is what you tell them to do."

Dilandau was about to argue with her, but an idea struck him. The girl prided herself on how well she did her job, did she? He had fallen for her scheme, he had called the rest of the men to halt in their destruction of the city. Even now she was trying to goad him, manipulate him into forgetting his own duty. Well, he would see about that.

Smirking wickedly, he stepped deftly out of the way of one of Meret's attacks, holding her at bay as he leaned down to grab the comlink.

"You underestimate my men," Dilandau said. "And you underestimate me." Meret seemed puzzled and paused in her battle to watch him curiously.

Into the comlink Dilandau ordered smugly, "Dragonslayers, recommence attack. Do not stop until the entire city has been leveled."

Meret's turquoise eyes grew wide. "You're not--" she trailed off, at a loss for words.

"Oh, wouldn't I?" Dilandau met her astonishment with a cruel chuckle. "You thought I would forget to finish the attack, didn't you? You thought you could distract me and all your people would just come back to their city after we'd left?"

Around them, the other guymelefs readied their flamethrowers. "Recommencing attack, sir," Gatti acknowledged before they moved forward, sweeping the ground ahead of them with a curtain of fire.

"You see, you should *never* try to cross me," said Dilandau, his voice thick and arrogant. Meret was paying him no attention, her gaze fixed on the growing torrent of fiery rubble that surrounded them.

"You're burning the city," she murmured. Dilandau assumed she was speechless with fear and shock.

"You thought you kept me from having my fun by helping the people to escape. But I'll still enjoy myself immensely, even if it means just taking a single prisoner."

She turned to face him then, silhouetted in the red glow. It took Dilandau a moment to identify the look on her face, but when he did he fell silent in his gloating.

She was...happy?

She pounced on him them, gathering him into a bear hug that knocked the wind completely out of him. Her unexpected reaction caught him off guard and he stumbled backward slightly, trying to pry her off. She was surprisingly strong for such a waif of a young woman, and her grip around his neck was like a vise.

"What the hell--?!"

"You burned it down! No one's *ever* been able to do that!"

"But you said...you were supposed to *protect* it..." Dilandau stammered, finding it difficult to speak while his ribs were being crushed. "Why are you...?"

"This is wonderful! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" She released him and twirled around in the air, laughing ecstatically. Holding his bruised ribs, Dilandau watched her with an expression of wary shock.

She had totally lost it. The idea that the girl had gone completely out of her mind kept bouncing around in his mind. Somewhere behind her laughter and the alarms going off in his head, Folken's voice was calling to the Dragonslayer from the comlink in the cockpit.

"Dilandau...Dilandau...answer me! Dilandau!" Edging back over to the comlink, Dilandau pressed the button.

"What, Folken?" he asked quietly, never taking his eyes off the strange girl.

"We've managed to apprehend what appears to be the high priest on the other side of the bluff," the Strategos said. "That's all we need. You may return to the Vione now."

"I might have a slight problem, Folken."

"What?"

"I have a half-crazed djinni woman dancing around on my guymelef," Dilandau explained as calmly as possible. The girl made him nervous, and he wasn't used to being nervous. Being nervous made him...well, nervous. "What the hell am I supposed to do about that?"

"A djinni?" Folken sounded distinctly uncomfortable. "Ask her...*politely*, Dilandau, to move. Now get back here." Folken signed off the comlink before Dilandau could even respond. Irritated but trying to control his temper, the Dragonslayer replaced his comlink in the cockpit and turned to face the girl who was still skipping around in the air above his head.

"Hey. Woman." She did not respond, so he cleared his throat and tried again. "Would you mind taking your little happy dance somewhere else?"

She paused, vanishing in midair only to reappear directly in front of him once again. It made him start.

"Why?" she asked with a huge smile.

"I need to return to my ship now, and I don't want you splattered all over my guymelef." She sighed and rolled her eyes.

"Nicely. You have to ask *nicely*," she admonished in a bored voice.

Dilandau's eyes widened in disbelief. "That *was* nice!"

"Was not."

"At least I asked you to move at all! Under normal circumstances I would have gladly smeared you all over my 'melef!" His excuse fell flat in the face of her glare, and he ended the sentence in a frustrated exhalation. "Fine. Would you *please* move so I can leave?"

"Much better. And yes, I'll move." She grinned, patted him on the top of the head like a little boy, and vanished. Dilandau was left with his jaw hanging open, too stunned at her flippant behavior to explode in rage. After a moment he shook himself back to attention and slid into the cockpit, going through the motions of takeoff. It was only after he was in the air on the way back to the docking bay that a coherent thought registered in his head.

"What the hell was that?!"

* * *

The question still plagued him as he stood at attention in the room where they had taken the captured priest. Folken questioned the man about the political situation of Ta-Jesur before its fall, and whether or not it had allied cities within Freid that were also against both the monarchy and the Zaibach Empire. The priest, whose name was Amosis, seemed reluctant to give out information. Even such a tempting thing as torturing a prisoner did nothing to jar Dilandau from his puzzled reverie, however.

"Let me make this as simple as possible, Amosis," Folken sighed after several hours. "You were the most influential figure of Ta-Jesur, before it met such an unfortunate end. You preached independence from both the monarchy of Freid and the Zaibach Empire, and I'm sure people listened to you. I want people to listen to you, Amosis, but I want you to change your message. I want you to back Zaibach and help us eliminate any more of these meaningless wastes of life before they happen."

Dilandau was tuning most of Folken's speech out. He tuned Folken out quite a bit, actually, but the events of the day forced themselves to the foreground of his thoughts more than usual. The random thoughts had gelled into a more practical internal narrative by that point. He wondered if there were more creatures like her, more djinn, as she called herself. He wondered if he could estimate the extent of her powers. He wondered if he could learn the vanishing trick...he could really scare the Dragonslayers into order if he could do that.

"What have you done to my city?" The priest, who had remained silent throughout most of the interrogation, finally spoke. His voice was low, hoarse, and thickly accented. Dilandau was surprised the sound carried through his bushy white beard at all.

If Folken was surprised by the man's words, it never registered on his face. He simply replied, "It's been burned. Everything has been destroyed."

"And my people?"

"They're alive. They managed to escape unharmed. We counted no fatalities among them." The Strategos doled out honest information carefully, hoping such facts might persuade the priest to consent to their task.

"So Ta-Jesur lives on in her people. All is not lost," the old man noted with a twitch of his mustache that might have been construed as a smile.

"I suppose," Folken conceded. "But they have no homes, Amosis. They have no place to return to, no food, no--"

"Who did it?" Amosis interrupted Folken's sermon.

"What?"

"Who burned the city?" The question was posed innocently enough. Folken glanced at Dilandau, who had snapped out of his daydream at the mention of fire.

"Lord Dilandau ordered the destruction of the city." The priest's black eyes roved to the young captain of the Dragonslayers. The boy chuckled venomously.

"It took me a while," he explained languidly. "I had a little distraction, some crazy woman challenging me to a fight on my guymelef. She was trying to keep me from making the order, but she didn't succeed. It burned, and she got to watch it." So he was adjusting the facts just a little, they would never know any better. The girl *had* watched the city burn...she just wasn't as devastated by it as Dilandau was implying at the moment. He smirked.

"So you met Meret," Amosis murmured. "Then this should be even more fitting."

"Excuse me, Amosis, what are you--" Folken tried to intercede, but the old man stood up, white robes trailing to the floor, and pointed a finger at Dilandau. His face was contorted into a reddened scowl as he spat at the Dragonslayer in his native tongue, then reached into a small pouch at his waist. He lunged toward Dilandau, smearing a line of reddish dust down the soldier's forehead before he was subdued by the guards.

"With the soil of my homeland, I curse you! Ta-Jesur may be destroyed, but we will live on, and our spirit will haunt you for eternity, slayer!" His words faded away as he was dragged down the corridor, still yelling at the top of his lungs. His absence left an odd silence in the small room, where Dilandau and Folken stood staring at each other in confusion. For the second time that day, Dilandau found himself asking a familiar question.

"What the hell was that?!"

Folken blinked. "I believe you were just cursed, Dilandau." The Dragonslayer snorted.

"I thought he was inviting me to a birthday party. Damn," he muttered acidly, attempting to wipe the smudge of dirt off his forehead. "Did you understand any of that?"

"Bits and pieces. It was mostly just calling you and your ancestors foul names, but the part about haunting you for all eternity was interesting." Folken raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, please. That's such a load of crap, Folken. Don't tell me you believe in that stuff." Dilandau straightened his uniform and giggled evilly. "Ooooh, I'm going to haunt you forever because you burned down my city! Hmph...riiight."

"Maybe you shouldn't be taking this so lightly, Dilandau. Wasn't it you who said he had a half-crazed djinni dancing on his guymelef earlier? Or did you have a little too much to drink before the mission again?"

"Yeah, but that's different. She wasn't some nutcase yelling curses at me about how the spirit of Ta-Jesur was going to..."

/////"Have you ever heard of the djinn?"
"No, I have not."
"Silly. I'm one, and you've heard of *me*. I'm the guardian spirit of Ta-Jesur."/////

"...haunt you for eternity?" Folken finished dryly. He allowed himself a small chuckle, until Dilandau's voice caused him to turn around.

"Oh, no."

"Dilandau?" Confused, Folken waved a hand in front of the Dragonslayer's face. A look of sheer horror had passed over him.

"Not her. Anything but her."

"What are you talking about?" the Strategos demanded, but Dilandau wasn't listening. He began pacing nervously, running both hands though his silvery hair and trying to squeeze the sudden headache in his skull into submission.

"Fire would be fine. Or being eaten alive wild dogs. Hell, chewing my *own* leg off. But please, please, *please*..."

As if on cue, an unidentified form materialized in midair and swooped down to tackle him, a blur of white and gold. They landed on the floor with a resounding thud, and Folken ran around the table to see if Dilandau needed help battling the thing. "Dilandau? Dilandau!"

Dilandau needed help, definitely, but he was not in the position Folken had expected to find. He had thought there would be gore, or blood at least. Instead, he found a red-haired young woman dressed in the religious robes of the Ta-Jesur region, wrapping the fuming Dilandau in a bear hug.

Stifling his laughter, the Strategos tried not to smile as he said, "Well, Dilandau, it looks as if you have matters well under control. Report back if there are any further developments." With that, he beat a hasty retreat into the hall, where he leaned against the wall and laughed until his stomach hurt.

He took a deep breath, straightened his robes, and decided he needed a drink. Badly. He started off in search of one, still chuckling as Dilandau's frantic cries still followed him down the hall from inside the room.

"Folken! Dammit, Folken, get back here! I need your help! FOLKEN!!!"


- TO BE CONTINUED -