The castle is dark and gloomy and all Gothic-like, with hideous stone gargoyles alighting its decrepit terraces, stairways, toilets--everything! Enlightened Buddhists who make the mistake of entering end up screaming for their mommies at this travesty of interior decorating.
But the horror that is the castle is nothing--absolutely NOTHING--compared to the delightfully weird and disgusting laboratory beneath it. For this lab, not the castle, is the true abode of the slightly-mad sorceress, the dreaded Lina Inverse!
(Cue Baroque music and cheesy lightning effect)
This is where she conducts her profane experiments, where she commits her crimes against nature. Where--
Lina: Shut up and get on with it, or I'll fireball you back to Happy Narrator Land.
Aiding the sorceress is her equally deformed assistant (though Lina is deformed in mind, not body), a vaguely human-shaped chimera.
Zel: I resent that.
Stop interrupting me! Oh forget it, let's just scrap the all-important suspense-building intro since no one reads these things anyway.
Or, the Slayers Frankenstein
A brilliant retelling of
Mary Shelley's Gothic horror
is not here. Sorry.
Chapter 1: All Men are Created Ugly
Lina and Zelgadis are in the lab, surrounded by jars filled with eyeballs, intestines, parts of Elvis, hearts, stars and rainbows, and who knows what else! They seem to be putting together a human body.
Zel: (bored) Master, here's your missing brain. (Seems to be struggling not to crack a joke)
Lina: Thanks! Now I can put it in the...head...oh ew, this is just so disgusting! *Sigh* Tell me, Zel, why am I doing this anyway? What's my purpose here?
Zel: You're not going to get psychologically profound on me, are you?
Lina: Hell no! I was talking about the practical purposes. I mean, if I've got enough magical power to do this--to give LIFE, for L-sama's sake!--then I should be--
Zel: It's not for L-sama's sake, it's for your own sake.
Lina: You know what I mean! If I'm this friggin' powerful, why do I need to create a magic-user to help me?
Zel: (undertone) Well, you are lazy...
Lina: (not hearing) And if I'm so rich, why don't I just hire someone?
Zel: (undertone) Well, you do hate shelling out money...(louder) You're rich in this story?
Lina: I figure since I've got this big-ass castle with all these freaky-ass stone gargoyles, plus this kick-ass magical equipment here in the lab, I must be pretty well off.
Zel: Oh, actually, the castle was really cheap because it's built on radioactive land. Didn't I tell you?
Lina: Okay, I see--WHAT!?
Zel: You were too lazy to go real-estate hunting yourself, so you told me to buy you a, I quote, 'huge-ass Gothic castle in bad taste, with lots of weird-ass gargoyles', and handed me all of seventy gold pieces. I think I was pretty damn lucky to find this place for such a low price, even if it is radioactive. The former owner was a bit of a nutcase named...um, Zilla, I think. God Zilla. Awfully pretentious name--
Lina: I'm gonna DIE! I'm gonna sprout three arms or glow fluorescent green or something!
Zel: Don't be a drama queen. We'll just have a strong white magic-user cast Dicleary on you to remove the radiation poisoning. Amelia could do it.
Lina: Oh, okay. Wait...Amelia? No, not HER! WAAAHHH!!!
Zel: (annoyed) What is it with you whenever I mention someone from your old home? You go into convulsions even at the thought of going back. And if I say Luna's name...
Lina: (convulses)
Zel: ...
Lina: Look, there's a good reason for this. You've never actually met my (shudder) sister, have you?
Zel: No, I haven't, and I don't intend to.
Lina: But you've met Amelia. Isn't that enough of a horror story for you?
Zel: Ugh. Point. The Justice Freak.
Lina: The Pink Fairy Queen.
Zel: The Annoying Parasite.
Lina: The Cavity-Inducer.
Zel: The--hey, isn't she your best friend?
Lina: Yeah, so?
Zel: Never mind. Forgot who I was talking to.
Lina: Anywho, you see what kind of sucky home life I have to put up with? It's no wonder I made up some line about 'furthering my education' so I could get away! Ptht! Education! Who needs it? I'm completely self-educated, and look where it's gotten me today!
Zel: That would explain a lot.
Lina: Hmm? What was that?
Zel: Nothing. So, you have no qualms about abandoning your household...but don't you feel bad about leaving Gourry behind?
Lina: No, why should I?
Zel: Ah...nevermind. Let's get to work on building this creature, shall we?
And so, Lina Inverse and her trusty assistant create a human being. It is a long and arduous task, requiring patience...
Lina: Crap, this is too hard! Let's just make this guy huge so the little parts are easier to work with.
...scientific precision...
Lina: Hand me the welder, willya, Zel? Its vertebrae keep falling off.
...and lots of gross body parts.
Lina: Ew! Zel, you go rob the graves and gather the rotting corpses...oh ew Ew EWW!!!
(We'll skip the bits where Lina has to put together the more...embarrassing parts of her creation's anatomy)
Finally, after several long months of toiling (most of the toiling being done by Zelgadis, with Lina taking every scrap of credit) in the dark sanctum of the laboratory, the creature's body is completed. Lina and Zel are standing beside it, ready to give it life.
Its stiff body lying on the cold steel table is monstrously huge, at least seven feet tall. Its clothes, being chosen by Lina, are of questionable taste, and, strangely, are a priest's attire (this time the culprit is Lina's twisted sense of humour). Its pale hand clenches a sorcerer's staff in a death-like grip. Oddly, the staff is held up in the air so that it is perpendicular to the table the monster lies on. The creature's pale, delicately-featured face is framed by longish (for a man) strands of straight purple hair. In fact, it looks like nothing so much as--
Zel: Xellos. A taller version of Xellos.
Lina: Shut up, Xellos doesn't show up 'til second season, and besides, I designed my creature to be good looking.
Xellos: And what's that supposed to mean?
Lina: Ack! Don't do that to me. You're not supposed to be here! Shoo!
Xellos: (pouting) Fine. But I'll be back! (poofs away)
Lina: Phew.
Zel: (Choosing to ignore the whole Xellos thing) Lina, why's your creature so huge? Is it a subconscious response to your own lack of height?
Lina: Hey! You're not exactly the picture of manly height yourself!
Zel: So you want to be manly?
Lina: FIREBALL!
Zel: (twitching) It was just a question.
Lina: It was a bad question. Let's just hurry up and finish this; how do we get this thing to come alive?
Zel: We have to wait for a lightning storm, and hope that a lightning bolt will hit the weathervane, and it should cause a powerful surge of electricity that will be conducted to the electrodes attached to the staff which will create a potential difference of--
Lina: All right, already! Let's wait for that lightning storm.
(Waiting)
...
...
...
Lina: (ominously) I'm getting hungry.
(Waiting)
...
...
Lina: Screw it, I'm doing this my way! DIGU VOLT!
(Electricity arcs in Lina's usual overkillable, uncontrolled fashion. Fortunately, it doesn't singe anything important, only a few jars of eyeballs, ears, and Zelgadis. And...the metal staff held skyward by the creature attracts the brunt of the electrical attack. A riveting jolt courses through its body. Slowly, jerkily, it begins to sit up.)
Lina: (laughing maniacally) BWAH HA HA!! It's alive...It's ALIVE!....L-sama, what happened to its hair?
Zel: I think its hair is standing up like that because of the electrocution. Personally, I think it looks pretty good.
Lina: (looking at Zel's own gravity-defying hairstyle) You would.
(The creature is now sitting up fully, looking bewildered, its hands reaching out. But...)
Zel: Its eyes are still closed.
Lina: No shit, sherlock! Damn! I wonder how my creation could be imperfect?
Zel: Maybe because the creator is imperfect?
Lina: (casually) Flare Arrow. He should be able to open his eyes. I designed him to have a fully functioning adult body!
Xellos: 'Fully functioning adult body'? Is that to...satisfy you, Lina?
Lina: (Not so casually) XELLOS!! YOU DIE!! MEGA BRANDO!!!
Zel: That was disturbing.
Creature: Whazzuh?
Zel: Lina, look! It's trying to communicate.
(Again, the creature reaches out blindly, like a newborn baby, for someone to take its hand.)
Lina: GET OUT OF THE STORY, XELLOS! DEMONA CRYSTAL!!
(Zelgadis looks at the pitiful, unloved creature, who is trying to just touch someone, anyone!)
Zel: Sorry, I'm not that kind of guy.
Creature: What kind of guy?
Zel: You....can talk? How did you learn...?
Creature: Ot play evice day.
Lina: (done toasting Xellos) Gwah! It talked! It talked really good!
Creature: I speak *well*. And I do not enjoy being referred to as an 'it'.
Lina: ...Then again, who said talking is a good thing?
Zel: Interesting statement, coming from you.
Lina: Ha ha. Look, I'm really tired. We'll deal with this creature-thing tomorrow. Let's lock up the lab and go to sleep.
Zel: Fine.
(Lina and Zel step out of the door to the lab.)
Creature: Hey, what about--
(SLAM!)
Creature: Never mind.
(The next day, in the lab)
Creature: I'm bored. And hungry.
...
Creature: All there is to do down here is stumble around and knock down all these funny glass jars with mushy organic substances in them, then comically slip on the unidentifiable goop I've spilled on the floor, except no one is here to appreciate my hijinks. And I'm really getting hungry here, but I can't see if any of these jars hold edible food in this dark room! Although it doesn't really matter either way that it's dark to me--
(The lab door opens.)
Creature: Finally! My creator has returned to tell me my purpose! And hopefully give me some grub.
Lina: Maybe we should chuck this creature out, Zel. I don't want to have to deal with a blind person.
Creature: Or not.
Zel: Don't be so hasty. For all we know, it might have phenomenal magical ability.
Lina: (greedy look) True...hey, creature, c'mere!
Creature: Could you...stop calling me that, please?
Lina: What, you want a name or something? (The idea is obviously new to Lina)
Creature: That would be nice.
Lina: All right then, a name...hm...got one! Creature, I henceforth dub thee Rezo, the Red Priest!
Rezo: That's a pretty cool name. Sounds rather...villainous.
Lina: I got it from switching around the letters in 'zero'.
Zel: And you're wearing red because it's the only fabric we had left to make your clothes. Lina was too cheap to buy new things for you.
Rezo: ...Well, that makes my self-esteem positively skyrocket. Whoosh! There it goes!
Lina: When did you learn sarcasm....ah. You've been around Zelgadis for more than five minutes. Anywho, Rezo, I'm Lina Inverse, your creator! I hold the strings of your existence, so if you plan on living you better obey me!
Rezo: (eagerly) Of course, creator! But first, are you going to teach me more about this life thing? Everything is so new and wondrous to me that I can't wait to learn!
Lina: Good, 'cause you're learning magic (Slams a heavy spellbook down in front of Rezo). I expect you to have this memorized by tomorrow.
Rezo: (Flipping through book) Hmm? What are these squiggly lines and things?
Lina: Those are runes, you moron!
Zel: He can't read, Lina. He was literally born yesterday, after all.
Lina: Then why the hell can he talk like a book-learned scholar?
Rezo: It's a secret.
Zel: It's a plot device.
Lina: What good are you to me if you can't do magic, you big, red twit? You'll just be a liability, eating up all my food and acting annoying while you do it!
Zel: Kind of like Naga. Except he lacks that...endearing laugh of hers. And her taste in clothing, thank L-sama for small favours.
Rezo: L-sama? Who's L-sama--hey, why are you blue?
Zel: (touchy) A crazy sorceress used me as a subject for her experiments, and turned me into a chimera.
Rezo: Oh, you mean there are more crazy sorceresses out there?
Zel: Yep. Scary, but true.
(Lina has been getting angrier and angrier throughout the conversation.)
Lina: (sweetly) Rezo...please follow me, will you?
Rezo: Whatever for?
Lina: I've got a surprise for you.
Rezo: Oooh, goody! I love surprises. Well, I think I do. Haven't been around long enough to really know.
Zel: Trust me, you're going to be very surprised. Inverse surprised.
(The innocent newborn Red Priest follows Lina out of the lab, through the winding hallways of the castle, and onto a balcony)
Lina: You can't see it, but if you walk a few steps forward you'll get your surprise.
Rezo: What is it? Is it a pickle? I'm awfully hungry, you know. I can't seeWAAAHAAAAHHHhhhh!!!
(Predictably, he falls to his doom off the balcony.)
Lina: (pleased) That settles that.
(A little later, in the Inverse Laboratory)
Zel: (Doing a chemical titration) Work, work, work, that's all I do! If only we'd kept whatsisface around to do the manual labour for that bloody slavedriver...
Lina: What was that, Zel?
Zel: Er, ah, nothing. I was just thinking, it's kind of a shame you killed Rezo. I was just starting to bond with the big guy.
Lina: ...that's rather ironic.
Zel: Doesn't matter now. Even if the creature is dead and all your research came to nothing, I've still fulfilled my five-year contract. So I get free use of the lab for a year, as you promised.
Lina: Fine, fine. Just make sure you don't break anything.
Zel: I'm not the one who broke the transmogrifier six times because of repeated temper tantrums.
Lina: (dangerously) You wanna see a real temper tantrum, Stone Boy?
Zel: (deftly changing the subject) Ah, I almost forgot; you got a letter from Gourry.
Lina: Gourry knows how to write letters?
Zel: I'm assuming Amelia or someone helped him. Here, read it.
Dear Lina,
Hi! I hope you're doing good over there. We're pretty good over here, except everyone's crying for some reason. I can't remember why right now, but I think it's really important. Amelia told me to write this letter to you asking you to come home right away. She said she's too "mentholly distraught" to write. When I asked her what breath freshener has to do with it, she just burst into tears again. But Amelia's always been kind of strange, you know?
Anyway, come home quick, Lina. No one knows what to do, and your sister's not around to handle things. She got a waitressing job in France last week.
We miss you,
Gourry
p.s. I remember the important thing now! I think someone died or something.
Lina: Crap. Zel, I'm going home. Family crisis, plus it's a good opportunity 'cause Luna's away.
Zel: A good opportunity to finally get hitched with Gourry, you mean.
Lina: What...you...I don't...argh! GAAV FLARE!
(Zel gets really crispy.)
Lina: You deserved that.
Zel: (twitches) Don't you think a Gaav Flare was a little much?
Lina: Nope.
Zel: Thought so.
Lina: While I'm gone, I expect you to keep the castle perfectly clean. The floors have to be waxed once a day, and the gargoyles hand-polished, and the garbage taken out, and--
Zel: That's why you hired the cleaning staff.
Lina: I fired them all five minutes ago.
Zel: ...I refuse to do this. I'm not your caretaker.
Lina: Yes, you are, although 'servant' is the more exact word. It's in the small print of our contract.
Zel: I didn't see any...wait, was it in that bit of poetry at the bottom?
Lina: Yep.
Zel: Goddamn Romantic poets. You really are a witch, you know that?
Lina: Hey, a deal's a deal. Don't forget to feed the cat.
Unbeknowest to Lina, Rezo is not quite dead. He luckily fell into the castle's huge landfill of garbage, and so survived Lina's little murder attempt. He crawls out pitifully from a pile of Lina's discarded chicken bones.
Rezo: How can this be? How could you, my creator, discard such a good and innocent creature as me?...actually, that's pretty normal behavior, for her.
Some poor sob: You get used to it.
Rezo: Who are you?
Some poor sob: Kahran Ramsus. Another man of untapped potential who was tossed into the trash by an uncaring creator--
Rezo: Don't interrupt my soliloquoy. (Instinctively fireballs Ramsus to a crisp)
Ramsus: Wah!
Rezo: W-what? What just happened? Did I...?
(The Red One realizes that when he raised his hand in a dismissive gesture, he somehow subconsciously willed a flaming ball of death into existence as well. Realizing the implications, he smiles in a not-so-good-and-innocent way.)
Rezo: So...looks like I don't need to be taught magic after all. I was born with natural ability and knowledge! Magic is my birthright! I am far, far superior to my foolish creator. Beware, Lina Inverse, for I shall take my revenge upon you for throwing me to the seagulls...seagulls?
(Rezo notices that a large number of seagulls are congregating around the delectable smells of the trash pile, and many of them are pecking at the bits of food on his robes.)
Rezo: ...but first, I'll take a bath.
Author's Notes:
That trashy Ramsus fellow is from Xenogears. No, there will be no more RPG character cameos, I already feel vaguely ashamed using this one.
I've had this, er, monster, sitting on my hard drive for the longest time now. One day, I really will finish this, but it'll be slow going, I promise you.
This tale is based on the fact that I've had to study Mary Shelley's novel three bloody times, three bloody years in a row, and I never liked reading it even in the beginning. Plus, I was quite disappointed with the end of the first season of Slayers, which was trying to touch on all the same philosophical themes that every semi-serious monster flick does--but did it badly. Not nearly as badly as the most recent Frankenstein movie, though. Get thee hence, Kenneth Branagh! Oblivion awaits thee!
So, does anyone want to start fudging around with the themes of Frankenstein? Why, the switching of the genders of most of the cast already produces astounding implications! For one thing, we can throw out that whole 'usurpation of female reproduction' thing out the window. Yes! Let's write scholarly papers! What joy!
But first, here's a partial cast list:
Lina as Victor Frankenstein
Rezo as the monster
Gourry as Elizabeth, fiance
Zelgadis as Fritz/Igor/Loyal Lackey
Amelia as Henry Clerval, best friend
Xellos as himself
Luna as herself
Note: Luna and Xellos won't be getting much screen time, sorry.
Oh, and if fanfiction.net allowed it, this story would have a black background and Bach's Toccata in A minor (I think) playing. Cheesiness is key.