Disclaimer: Slayers does not belong to this person referring to herself as Luna although she is not really Luna but rather just enjoys calling herself that. In other words, I'm not worth the bother of a lawsuit.
Fair Warning: Xellos is twisted because he is a mazoku, and I am equally twisted for coming up with this. (Does that make me a mazoku too?) Abandon all hope here, for this is one bizarre parody of fairy tales.
Review if you please, flame me about my sanity if you want to amuse me for a few minutes.
Happy Happy Story Time
Xellos, forced to be a "productive member of human society" as punishment, happens to land a job as a children's storyteller. Happy endings need not apply.
By Luna, Waitress of Doom
Once upon a time, there lived a powerful and cunning mazoku. One day, however, this mazoku decided to keep a secret from his boss, and for all of his cunning and power, he could not save himself from her wrath. She punished this mazoku severely, forcing him to get a job among the humans that he and his kind tormented as a large part of their livelihood.
This mazoku was Xellos, and his boss's exact words were, "Go make yourself into a productive member of human society until I'm happy with how much you've suffered." The mayor of a small town on the outer continent needed to find someone who would amuse small children in order to curb certain delinquent tendencies that had begun to surface in them, searching far and wide for anyone with a happy smile and an unusual demeanor. And so, this was how Xellos found gainful employment as a children's storyteller—at least for a few hours anyway.
On this particularly sickeningly clear, sunny day, the peculiar purple-haired priest known as Xellos gathered the youth of the town on the village green, in the spot where only weeds grew and where ants were more plentiful than pollen in a flower field. He sat before a giant termite mound to tell his tale of romantic woe.
"Ah, silly young mortals, I am here today to tell you a story of a beautiful maiden and a dirty old man. You see, this old man was dirtier than this maiden was beautiful; it had been thirty years since he had last taken a bath and twenty since he had last seen a stream, and the poor soul had never heard of a hot spring. But alas, do not look so relieved, because this man was dirty in that other way as well! There was only one thing in the world that exceeded this man's dirtiness, and that was the maiden's greed. The maiden loved jewels and ancient treasures, not so much because they would complement her long red hair or her porcelain complexion, but because she could sell them for a profit or trade them for food.
"This dirty old man, being not only filthy and rich but stupid as well, mistook the maiden's interest in his money for interest in himself and decided that they should wed, conveniently forgetting about those messy proposal procedures. The maiden, since she happened to have feelings for the man's handsome son, had other plans for his money and her future. This son had his own feelings toward the maiden and an equally strong interest in his father's money, and so the two immediately began to plot his demise while the dirty old man plotted the wedding—which he had forgotten to inform the maiden of in his haste.
"Unlike his father, the son had some intelligence and a peculiar talent for alchemy. He immediately set to work implementing the murderous scheme, first creating a special poultice for the dirty old lecher's arthritis. At first this may seem like a kind gesture, although it was anything but, for this poultice had a very interesting property: after one day, it would cause anything on to which it was applied to spontaneously combust."
Xellos took a deep breath and a moment to make an aside, "Well, the combustion wasn't really spontaneous because it is known exactly what was causing the combusting, but 'spontaneous combustion' sounds so much more dramatic! Don't all you tasty little mortals agree?" The children sat transfixed by the strange, strange man. Their parents sat transfixed because he had magically frozen them in place.
"Continuing, the doddering old fool accepted this present quite happily, knowing nothing about the intent with which it was made. Unfortunately, in his boundless stupidity, he wandered out into a nearby forest later that afternoon and accidentally dropped his gift. The fires raged out of control for a week, taking out three neighboring towns in the process.
"The maiden was appreciative of the handsome son's murderous efforts on her behalf; however, she was beginning to become frustrated with the information that she did not seem to receive. She was far from helpless—after all, she could have burned the mansion down and made off with all the gold in it in under fifteen minutes if she so wanted to. Alas, this was only temporary, because she had come upon the old man's cellars, and the food contained within held her attention, her appetite, and her temper at bay for several hours. The son used this time away from the maiden's wrath as productively as he could, creating his father's second present: a potion that, when consumed, would cause one to go stark raving mad. This, he believed, would be less obvious and less potentially destructive than anything that burst into flames and, since the common practice in that kingdom was to send the insane to the wilderness to live, more economical because of a distinct lack of funeral costs, not to mention without the risk of those pesky trials that happen altogether too often when someone is kicked from this mortal coil just a little too soon.
"The man once again got lost after receiving his gift. The legacy of insane royalty in that kingdom persists even to this very day!
"Before anyone asks, that kingdom of noble crazies is... none of your business. But no, it is not Seyruun," Xellos eyed his audience. The children were still hypnotized; the furious parents still could not move.
"Sadly, or perhaps happily, depending on your perspective, the dirty old man died in his sleep a week later, just as his son was running out of murderous schemes and less than a week before the hastily-planned wedding. This made both him and the maiden quite happy, and they opened a bottle of the recently deceased's best wine to celebrate. The son poured himself a generous goblet full of the rare vintage while the maiden abstained, citing a bizarre phobia of grapes as her reason. He took a generous gulp because, being the son of a pervert with no social skills, he had no manners at all, smiled at the maiden, commented on the quality of the wine, and fell down dead."
The audience, unable to throw things at him, hit him, maim him, or otherwise harm him, gasped at their storyteller in complete shock. "Now, don't look so surprised! Did I neglect to mention that the feelings this maiden held for the once-handsome, now rather lifeless man were those of unbridled hatred? She had poisoned the wine to be rid of him once and for all, a rather brilliant trick in this humble priest's opinion. Never fear, for this story does have a happy ending.
"The maiden, now free of both lecherous fiends and oblivious suitors, claimed both the man's and his son's valuables as her own, as well as voiding the cellar of anything edible, living a life of complete luxury until the Mazoku race recruited her a short while later for the expertise she displayed in both treachery and subterfuge in the execution of the deaths of the dirty old creep and his overgrown brat. As I neglected to mention once again, the old man did not die in his sleep of natural causes, but rather from being thrown into a river and drowning while asleep. He was a very heavy sleeper, you know. She then joined the mazoku and is now living out her greatly-extended life wreaking havoc on the world, and she and the rest of the mazoku lived evilly ever after."
For one brief moment, the crowd was silent. Xellos then removed the gag spell he had cast over them, and every child began to scream in terror, while their parents remained helplessly rooted in place. He basked in the glow of mass misery, enjoying the agony of young, recently traumatized humans so completely that he failed to hear one tiny voice in the crowd chanting, and he failed to see a spell approach him at high speed. The fireball startled him from his reverie, leaving Xellos singed and looking for the culprit.
"Look! The weirdo's crispy now!"
"Good boy! I see you've been taking Miss Lina's magic lessons seriously! Stupid mazoku should know better than to spread rumors about her; her Ragna Blade won't take too kindly to him next time she sees him!"
The strange mysterious priest looked to the back of the quickly thinning crowd directly into the smiling countenances of one Filia Ul Copt and her adopted son, about to enact revenge upon them both for humiliating him so when he became aware of the city guards approaching him, teleporting to a safe location with a nice view of the ensuing mayhem only to have his boss drag him home by his metaphorical ear moments later.
She had this to say to him, "Nice job at turning a punishment into playtime; I thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle. Withhold information again and you'll be doing a stint as Ceipheed's choir boy." Amused by his display of evil, self-serving behavior, she released Xellos from his punishment to do as he pleased.
He immediately returned to visit Filia and her son and tormented them for the better part of the next twelve hours, making a quick exit when Lina Inverse arrived with the promised Ragna Blade at the ready.
And he lived evilly ever after, despite the fact that he had two angry women and one little boy plotting his demise.