A/N: I don't own any LOK characters, but Myria Lemarott is my own creation.
The inside of the dating agency was remarkable, in the sense that it was remarkably unspectacular. In the room Malek stood in, there was nothing but a wooden table, a chair behind it and a chest of drawers. The place was very dusty and Malek was glad he wasn't human - the dust would have made a human very uncomfortable. Then he remembered just how bad being a soul trapped in a suit of armour was and how he would suffer like this for all eternity and the gladness faded away.
There was no one else in this room, but Malek could see a door leading into a room in the back. He walked over to the desk. There was nothing on it apart from a bell and a piece of paper reading 'Please ring for assistance'. Malek, not the brightest light in the drawer (a term created by circle member Bane who wasn't terribly good with figures of speech) wondered if it meant ring the table or ring the bell. After all, the paper was lying on the table, not the bell. After slowly weighing things up he came to the conclusion that ringing the table was not terribly practical or possible, so he rang the bell and waited. No-one came.
Growing impatient now, he rang the bell again and again no-one came. Strange that the agency would be open yet no-one seemed to be here. He turned to leave (actually feeling a bit relieved and foolish for coming in here in the first place) but just as he reached the exit he heard the door that lead to the back open. Turning again, he saw a young woman in her twenty-something's walk in.
"Hello!" she said nervously. "I'm very sorry to have kept you waiting: I was doing some cleaning in the back. The place is a mess isn't it? I tried to get it sorted out before today, but there simply wasn't enough time, and I REALLY wanted to open today. Which I have!"
The woman was very attractive indeed. Malek would have found himself aroused (sadly one of many things that were impossible when you were just an extension of a suit of armour) if he were human. She had long brown hair going half-way down her back, pale, smooth skin, wonderfully full lips and eyes - such friendly looking eyes.
"This is your first day open?" asked Malek.
"Indeed! The first day of the first dating agency!" she said. She sounded less nervous now, and this was replaced by enthusiasm and friendliness. "And the first CLIENT of the first day of the first dating agency."
Malek looked around as if expecting someone else to be in the room.
"I mean you, silly," she said and followed this with a pretty little laugh.
"I'm the first one?" he queried, clearly having a hard time grasping the situation.
"That's right. I was getting worried. I was thinking that no-one would come at all. I've taken such a huge risk opening this place. My mother kept telling me it was a bad idea. 'No-one will want to join a dating agency' she kept telling me. But YOU do, don't you Mr Malek?" she said. Malek was a little surprised - he couldn't remember telling her his name.
"How do you know who I am?" he asked. She waved her hand dismissively.
"Everyone knows Malek of the Sarafan," she explained. That was true, thought Malek.
"I AM pretty famous!" he boasted.
"I remember the story of how you let some of the circle members get slaughtered," she said in an entirely pleasant voice. If he had a throat Malek would have choked.
"Er... well there WAS that..." he said quietly.
"But anyway, let's get down to business, shall we?"
"Um... I'm not too sure actually. I think I may have made a mistake coming here."
The young woman looked rather disappointed.
"Oh, I see. What makes you say that?" she asked. Malek felt rather embarrassed now. If he were still human he would be blushing.
"Well, there obviously isn't anyone you could pair me with, what with me being the first customer and all," he said awkwardly. The look of disappointment faded from her pretty face and her lips rose in a smile before her mouth opened just a little and she giggled.
"If everyone felt that way, I'd never get any clients at all would I? Someone has to be the first, don't they? Please don't let that put you off. We'll have a full list of clients soon enough, I'm positive of that. And I'm SURE someone will be a perfect match for you," she said kindly, and with such conviction that Malek himself believed it. His mind went back to the idea of the woman's soul in armour he had pictured before coming into the agency. Okay, it was a foolish fantasy, he thought. If there was a female equivalent of himself he would know about it. Yet he was still rather keen to give this place a try, embarrassed though he may be. He had spent a long, long time alone. Sure, he sometimes had the other members of the circle for company, but he found that he didn't like them very much (apart from the kind Moebius, but he wasn't about to date him.) Malek shifted uncomfortably when he noticed the woman was staring at him. He got the awful feeling she was reading his thoughts. Nonsense of course. She smiled kindly as if to reassure him on this issue. Of course, Malek finally realised, she was smiling because he hadn't spoken in some time.
"I didn't catch your name..." he said. This wasn't a question, and therefore technically required no response, but she gave one anyway.
"I'm Myria. Myria Lemarott. So, Mr Malek, are you going to give this place a chance?" she asked. Malek was still somewhat unsure, but he knew Myria's patience would eventually run out no matter how kind she appeared to be.
"Why not?" he said and thought practically at the same time.
"Well, come into the back and we'll get started," she said sweetly.
The 'Kain is Dead' party was still going strong and showing no signs of slowing down as Kain and his sons arrived. It was taking place in a huge grassy field, a rare thing to find in these days of decay in Nosgoth. Moebius had been forced to do an inspiring speech to the townsfolk on the evils of cows, and how they were 'a plague that must be cleansed from Nosgoth' in order to gain use of the field.
Various tents, entertainers, stalls and strange contraptions that you could sit on and would move had replaced the cows. Someone was in the stocks, wearing a Kain mask and getting tomatoes thrown at them. Kain saw this with little amusement and wandered over to take a closer look.
"What is the meaning of this?" he asked sternly. The man in the stocks looked over at him. Kain tutted when he saw the mask, a horrible green mess with an inane grin on it.
"Oh, at last, you're here. I've done way more than my share in here," said the man with the mask. Someone helped him out of the stocks and two men, coming from behind Kain, grabbed his arms and took him over to the stocks. Kain, taken by surprise, quickly found himself trapped in the stocks with a rather large line of people waiting to throw tomatoes at him.
"I demand you cease this at once!" he yelled angrily. This only resulted in people laughing and throwing tomatoes at him. They made nice squelching noises when they hit. Kain was seeing red, both due to his rage and due to the large amounts of tomato juice in his eyes. "I am Lord Kain and YOU WILL STOP HUMILIATING ME!"
Raising his voice like that was, on reflection, a mistake. It worked like a homing beacon, attracting more customers than the man behind this particular attraction could have ever thought possible. Kain screwed up his eyes as more and more rotten tomatoes hit right between them. Now he knew how Vorador must have felt all those years ago. Apart from the part where his head got cut off. Vorador had been rather pissed at Kain after that, what with Kain not saving him and all. Still, how was Kain to know that after getting his head cut off Vorador would go on to live for another few hundred years? The old guy was still going strong too, and even got his head back on somehow. Kain would love to know how he pulled it off. Although right now he would settle for a way out of this baby.
After blinking rapidly and a short break from tomatoes hitting round his eyes (they were hitting his nose at the moment) he found he could see Rahab and Dumah standing nearby.
"Ah, excellent. Rahab, hurry up and get me out of here!" he shouted. Rahab laughed at this.
"Hey Dumah, that guy in the Kain mask knows my name!"
"Hit him right between the eyes Rahab!"
Rahab wound back.
"This is for being such an asshole!" he shouted as the tomato flew from his hand. It hit it's target.
"Rahab you idiot I swear you will pay for this," said Kain. Dumah stepped up to take his turn.
"You can't tell me what to do anymore, you old bastard!" he said. Kain opened his mouth to retort and got the whole tomato in his mouth as a result. He spat it out and growled as his two sons laughed.
"Hey, I have a great idea Rahab," said Dumah loudly. "Let's throw rocks at him!"
"Let's not," said Kain furiously. Rahab and Dumah began picking large rocks off the ground and hurtling them at Kain's head.
"OW! ARRGH! ACK!" went Kain.
"Good thing this isn't the real Kain," said Rahab cheerfully.
The back room was not much better than the front one. A few candles were all that illuminated the darkness, and Malek could see that there were several cobwebs in the room. He could only assume that (Miss? Mrs? Ms?) Lemarott was not afraid of spiders. She certainly did not appear afraid at the moment. Malek was sitting on a chair with his hands (although in a sense they weren't his hands due to what he was) and Myria had his back to him, searching through a drawer for a quill to write with. She had a piece of paper in her free hand.
"Here it is!" she exclaimed happily and pulled it out of the drawer. There was a bottle of ink already on the table. "Sorry I'm not more organised."
"It's fine," said Malek, and it was only now that he realised that the unpleasant amount of dust did not appear to be affecting her at all. She sat down opposite him now and Malek felt almost a tinge of regret that he would not be dating the rather lovely Myria Lemarott. She wrote something on the bit of paper and then looked up at Malek.
"I'm just going to ask you a few questions," she said in her cheerful voice. "Questions?" asked Malek. Despite the fact that he had just asked a question he gave the impression that he had no idea what one was.
"Nothing to worry about," she said with a sweet smile. "Just a few personal details, so that someone else who joins the agency can find a few things out about you and see if they're interested in you." Malek's gaze fell to the table.
"What if no-one's interested in me?"
She reached out and gently put her hand under his chin (the SUIT'S chin at any rate) and softly raised his head so his eyes (again, in a manner of speaking not his eyes) locked with hers.
"Trust me - we'll find someone for you. There are a lot of girls out there who would die to meet a guy like you."
Malek nodded slightly and she removed her hand.
"So describe yourself," she asked, leaning over so she could scribe while he spoke. Malek felt as though she had just asked him to describe what 'yellow' looked like.
"Erm..."
"Just say whatever comes to mind.," she said encouragingly.
"Well, I'm, uh, a suit of armour?"
"Don't worry too much about that. It's the person INSIDE that we're interested in. Tell me about the kind of person you are."
"Well, kind of adventurous, a little quiet sometimes, good sense of duty and responsibility..." Her hand moved quickly as she wrote everything down.
"Okay, that's super. Now what are your hobbies? What kind of things do you enjoy doing?" she asked without taking her eyes off the paper.
"I enjoy fighting and hunting vampires. Especially Vorador. How I hate him... I want to kill him. I want revenge against him..." he stopped then, surprised by what he had said. Myria was just nodding her head and writing as though he had told her he liked pony-riding.
"What's your occupation?" she asked once she had finished scribbling.
"Well, it's like a job that you have..." he said helpfully.
"I mean what occupation do YOU have, " she said patiently.
"Oh. I'm the guardian of the circle of nine," he said. "The pay isn't good."
"Don't worry. I don't think money is a factor here at all."
Malek suddenly grew very nervous. For the first time he realised that he would surely have to pay this woman to join - and he had no money with him whatsoever. He felt like an utter fool.
"Uh, I've just realised - I can't afford to join this place. I'm really sorry to have wasted your time."
He got up and hoped to leave as quickly as possible, but she motioned that he sit down and he did.
"Like I said. I don't think money is a factor here at all," she said in a soft whisper of a voice.
"Bu-" Malek began.
"We can always work something out later. For now, let's forget money."
Malek was only too happy to forget all about it. She asked him a few more questions, nothing too taxing, then filed away the piece of paper.
"Welcome to Nosgoth's First Dating Agency," she said happily. "You are now our first official client."
The inside of the dating agency was remarkable, in the sense that it was remarkably unspectacular. In the room Malek stood in, there was nothing but a wooden table, a chair behind it and a chest of drawers. The place was very dusty and Malek was glad he wasn't human - the dust would have made a human very uncomfortable. Then he remembered just how bad being a soul trapped in a suit of armour was and how he would suffer like this for all eternity and the gladness faded away.
There was no one else in this room, but Malek could see a door leading into a room in the back. He walked over to the desk. There was nothing on it apart from a bell and a piece of paper reading 'Please ring for assistance'. Malek, not the brightest light in the drawer (a term created by circle member Bane who wasn't terribly good with figures of speech) wondered if it meant ring the table or ring the bell. After all, the paper was lying on the table, not the bell. After slowly weighing things up he came to the conclusion that ringing the table was not terribly practical or possible, so he rang the bell and waited. No-one came.
Growing impatient now, he rang the bell again and again no-one came. Strange that the agency would be open yet no-one seemed to be here. He turned to leave (actually feeling a bit relieved and foolish for coming in here in the first place) but just as he reached the exit he heard the door that lead to the back open. Turning again, he saw a young woman in her twenty-something's walk in.
"Hello!" she said nervously. "I'm very sorry to have kept you waiting: I was doing some cleaning in the back. The place is a mess isn't it? I tried to get it sorted out before today, but there simply wasn't enough time, and I REALLY wanted to open today. Which I have!"
The woman was very attractive indeed. Malek would have found himself aroused (sadly one of many things that were impossible when you were just an extension of a suit of armour) if he were human. She had long brown hair going half-way down her back, pale, smooth skin, wonderfully full lips and eyes - such friendly looking eyes.
"This is your first day open?" asked Malek.
"Indeed! The first day of the first dating agency!" she said. She sounded less nervous now, and this was replaced by enthusiasm and friendliness. "And the first CLIENT of the first day of the first dating agency."
Malek looked around as if expecting someone else to be in the room.
"I mean you, silly," she said and followed this with a pretty little laugh.
"I'm the first one?" he queried, clearly having a hard time grasping the situation.
"That's right. I was getting worried. I was thinking that no-one would come at all. I've taken such a huge risk opening this place. My mother kept telling me it was a bad idea. 'No-one will want to join a dating agency' she kept telling me. But YOU do, don't you Mr Malek?" she said. Malek was a little surprised - he couldn't remember telling her his name.
"How do you know who I am?" he asked. She waved her hand dismissively.
"Everyone knows Malek of the Sarafan," she explained. That was true, thought Malek.
"I AM pretty famous!" he boasted.
"I remember the story of how you let some of the circle members get slaughtered," she said in an entirely pleasant voice. If he had a throat Malek would have choked.
"Er... well there WAS that..." he said quietly.
"But anyway, let's get down to business, shall we?"
"Um... I'm not too sure actually. I think I may have made a mistake coming here."
The young woman looked rather disappointed.
"Oh, I see. What makes you say that?" she asked. Malek felt rather embarrassed now. If he were still human he would be blushing.
"Well, there obviously isn't anyone you could pair me with, what with me being the first customer and all," he said awkwardly. The look of disappointment faded from her pretty face and her lips rose in a smile before her mouth opened just a little and she giggled.
"If everyone felt that way, I'd never get any clients at all would I? Someone has to be the first, don't they? Please don't let that put you off. We'll have a full list of clients soon enough, I'm positive of that. And I'm SURE someone will be a perfect match for you," she said kindly, and with such conviction that Malek himself believed it. His mind went back to the idea of the woman's soul in armour he had pictured before coming into the agency. Okay, it was a foolish fantasy, he thought. If there was a female equivalent of himself he would know about it. Yet he was still rather keen to give this place a try, embarrassed though he may be. He had spent a long, long time alone. Sure, he sometimes had the other members of the circle for company, but he found that he didn't like them very much (apart from the kind Moebius, but he wasn't about to date him.) Malek shifted uncomfortably when he noticed the woman was staring at him. He got the awful feeling she was reading his thoughts. Nonsense of course. She smiled kindly as if to reassure him on this issue. Of course, Malek finally realised, she was smiling because he hadn't spoken in some time.
"I didn't catch your name..." he said. This wasn't a question, and therefore technically required no response, but she gave one anyway.
"I'm Myria. Myria Lemarott. So, Mr Malek, are you going to give this place a chance?" she asked. Malek was still somewhat unsure, but he knew Myria's patience would eventually run out no matter how kind she appeared to be.
"Why not?" he said and thought practically at the same time.
"Well, come into the back and we'll get started," she said sweetly.
The 'Kain is Dead' party was still going strong and showing no signs of slowing down as Kain and his sons arrived. It was taking place in a huge grassy field, a rare thing to find in these days of decay in Nosgoth. Moebius had been forced to do an inspiring speech to the townsfolk on the evils of cows, and how they were 'a plague that must be cleansed from Nosgoth' in order to gain use of the field.
Various tents, entertainers, stalls and strange contraptions that you could sit on and would move had replaced the cows. Someone was in the stocks, wearing a Kain mask and getting tomatoes thrown at them. Kain saw this with little amusement and wandered over to take a closer look.
"What is the meaning of this?" he asked sternly. The man in the stocks looked over at him. Kain tutted when he saw the mask, a horrible green mess with an inane grin on it.
"Oh, at last, you're here. I've done way more than my share in here," said the man with the mask. Someone helped him out of the stocks and two men, coming from behind Kain, grabbed his arms and took him over to the stocks. Kain, taken by surprise, quickly found himself trapped in the stocks with a rather large line of people waiting to throw tomatoes at him.
"I demand you cease this at once!" he yelled angrily. This only resulted in people laughing and throwing tomatoes at him. They made nice squelching noises when they hit. Kain was seeing red, both due to his rage and due to the large amounts of tomato juice in his eyes. "I am Lord Kain and YOU WILL STOP HUMILIATING ME!"
Raising his voice like that was, on reflection, a mistake. It worked like a homing beacon, attracting more customers than the man behind this particular attraction could have ever thought possible. Kain screwed up his eyes as more and more rotten tomatoes hit right between them. Now he knew how Vorador must have felt all those years ago. Apart from the part where his head got cut off. Vorador had been rather pissed at Kain after that, what with Kain not saving him and all. Still, how was Kain to know that after getting his head cut off Vorador would go on to live for another few hundred years? The old guy was still going strong too, and even got his head back on somehow. Kain would love to know how he pulled it off. Although right now he would settle for a way out of this baby.
After blinking rapidly and a short break from tomatoes hitting round his eyes (they were hitting his nose at the moment) he found he could see Rahab and Dumah standing nearby.
"Ah, excellent. Rahab, hurry up and get me out of here!" he shouted. Rahab laughed at this.
"Hey Dumah, that guy in the Kain mask knows my name!"
"Hit him right between the eyes Rahab!"
Rahab wound back.
"This is for being such an asshole!" he shouted as the tomato flew from his hand. It hit it's target.
"Rahab you idiot I swear you will pay for this," said Kain. Dumah stepped up to take his turn.
"You can't tell me what to do anymore, you old bastard!" he said. Kain opened his mouth to retort and got the whole tomato in his mouth as a result. He spat it out and growled as his two sons laughed.
"Hey, I have a great idea Rahab," said Dumah loudly. "Let's throw rocks at him!"
"Let's not," said Kain furiously. Rahab and Dumah began picking large rocks off the ground and hurtling them at Kain's head.
"OW! ARRGH! ACK!" went Kain.
"Good thing this isn't the real Kain," said Rahab cheerfully.
The back room was not much better than the front one. A few candles were all that illuminated the darkness, and Malek could see that there were several cobwebs in the room. He could only assume that (Miss? Mrs? Ms?) Lemarott was not afraid of spiders. She certainly did not appear afraid at the moment. Malek was sitting on a chair with his hands (although in a sense they weren't his hands due to what he was) and Myria had his back to him, searching through a drawer for a quill to write with. She had a piece of paper in her free hand.
"Here it is!" she exclaimed happily and pulled it out of the drawer. There was a bottle of ink already on the table. "Sorry I'm not more organised."
"It's fine," said Malek, and it was only now that he realised that the unpleasant amount of dust did not appear to be affecting her at all. She sat down opposite him now and Malek felt almost a tinge of regret that he would not be dating the rather lovely Myria Lemarott. She wrote something on the bit of paper and then looked up at Malek.
"I'm just going to ask you a few questions," she said in her cheerful voice. "Questions?" asked Malek. Despite the fact that he had just asked a question he gave the impression that he had no idea what one was.
"Nothing to worry about," she said with a sweet smile. "Just a few personal details, so that someone else who joins the agency can find a few things out about you and see if they're interested in you." Malek's gaze fell to the table.
"What if no-one's interested in me?"
She reached out and gently put her hand under his chin (the SUIT'S chin at any rate) and softly raised his head so his eyes (again, in a manner of speaking not his eyes) locked with hers.
"Trust me - we'll find someone for you. There are a lot of girls out there who would die to meet a guy like you."
Malek nodded slightly and she removed her hand.
"So describe yourself," she asked, leaning over so she could scribe while he spoke. Malek felt as though she had just asked him to describe what 'yellow' looked like.
"Erm..."
"Just say whatever comes to mind.," she said encouragingly.
"Well, I'm, uh, a suit of armour?"
"Don't worry too much about that. It's the person INSIDE that we're interested in. Tell me about the kind of person you are."
"Well, kind of adventurous, a little quiet sometimes, good sense of duty and responsibility..." Her hand moved quickly as she wrote everything down.
"Okay, that's super. Now what are your hobbies? What kind of things do you enjoy doing?" she asked without taking her eyes off the paper.
"I enjoy fighting and hunting vampires. Especially Vorador. How I hate him... I want to kill him. I want revenge against him..." he stopped then, surprised by what he had said. Myria was just nodding her head and writing as though he had told her he liked pony-riding.
"What's your occupation?" she asked once she had finished scribbling.
"Well, it's like a job that you have..." he said helpfully.
"I mean what occupation do YOU have, " she said patiently.
"Oh. I'm the guardian of the circle of nine," he said. "The pay isn't good."
"Don't worry. I don't think money is a factor here at all."
Malek suddenly grew very nervous. For the first time he realised that he would surely have to pay this woman to join - and he had no money with him whatsoever. He felt like an utter fool.
"Uh, I've just realised - I can't afford to join this place. I'm really sorry to have wasted your time."
He got up and hoped to leave as quickly as possible, but she motioned that he sit down and he did.
"Like I said. I don't think money is a factor here at all," she said in a soft whisper of a voice.
"Bu-" Malek began.
"We can always work something out later. For now, let's forget money."
Malek was only too happy to forget all about it. She asked him a few more questions, nothing too taxing, then filed away the piece of paper.
"Welcome to Nosgoth's First Dating Agency," she said happily. "You are now our first official client."