Madfantasy: Ello !! Here comes chapter 5 of "The Feathered Warrior" !! XD Hope you enjoy it ! Life's been pretty messed up lately, but well, the story shall continue !! Please Read and Review, thanks ! :3

p.s: due to some technical perror which occurred while I was trying to get my friend to edit, please bear with me if there are any atrocious grammatical and/or whatever errors. Please do inform me about any of them ! Also, I'll be attempting a change of style for the next chapter of The Feathered Warrior. For now, please enjoy the adventures of our Little Kuja !

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The Feathered Warrior Chapter 5

Therefore, our feathered warrior and his newfound friend Elfia got rid of one of the filthy, dirty snorting-like-a-pig followers of the boss of the bandits who had kidnapped Skaerpekoe's Mayor!

Now, back to our brave, impish little villain, the elegant Kuja with feathers on his head...

The man in brown clothes lay on the floor, out cold.

Elfia took one of Kuja's little arms and raised it above his head. She then raised a hand in the same manner and slapped the sorcerer's upturned palm before letting it go.

"What's that about?" Kuja asked, tilting his head to the side, his hair- feather bending from one side to the other.

"It's called a Booga slap. In Skaerpekoe, we do this when we're doing a great job!" Elfia smiled. Kuja looked at his palm and raised a silvery eyebrow.

Above head, in Aunt Beeker's bakery, the man in grey shirt didn't notice that his companion was gone. The one in black shirt was now pacing back and forth impatiently, waiting for Aunt Beeker's bread and cakes to be removed from the oven.

"Hey, you old maid! Is the food done!" The man in black shirt growled rudely in the old lady's face. He kicked the door of the oven roughly and loudly.

Very suddenly, Aunt Beeker produced a large umbrella from the corner of the room. She swung it at the man's face and slammed it there. Kuja could hear it swoosh. There was some crunching noise, and then the guy fell over unconscious. Aunt Beeker gave the body a nudge with a foot.

"That will teach you not to kick my oven!" the seemingly harmless maid scoffed and placed the umbrella back in its original position, then continued to watch over her bakeries. She mumbled to herself in a thin voice as she did that. "Oh, my poor bakeries! I wish these foul men don't get to eat my delicious bakeries!"

Elfia giggled softly under her breath. "Aunt Beeker's tough, you know, you should never judge people by their looks."

She then eyed the man in grey clothes, who had shuffled out of the baking room "for a toilet break", he said, obviously thinking that his friends were still there to listen. Grabbing Kuja suddenly like a plush toy, she dashed to follow him, moving noiselessly under the floorboards. She watched as the man tumbled down the stairs outside the door and walked into a nearby bush. She poked Kuja.

"Psst, Kuja,"

"What?" Kuja said impatiently. He doesn't like being poked. He's more used to poking his subordinates and annoying them when their works didn't meet his expectations.

"I have an idea,"

"Speak," Kuja said grumpily. He doesn't like being poked around, and it took him a great effort to release himself from the unpleasant effects of that experience. Maybe the mood swings were just a few side effects of trying to adapt to his mini body.

"Go out there and tap the nice mister on his knee when he's done with his business. Then run as ghostly as you can towards that tree," Elfia whispered quietly, pointing towards a small cluster of palm tree just next to the entrance of the bakery, "I've got a plan," she grinned.

"Right," Kuja stood up and dusted himself clean despite the fact that he was quite immaculately clean already. There were two specks of dust on him and he found them rather unpleasant.

"I, the sorcerer who dominated the World, have to go at a gangster who is severely drunk, unclean and busy with his toilet break." he mumbled, but went ahead anyway. He remembered his heydays, when he gloried in the sun upon his magnificent silver dragon, Silver.

Being mean was much easier, and definitely more interesting. He wasn't poked, he didn't have to kick bandits in the eye and dirty his shoes, and he didn't have to walk around in a mini body. Kuja knew he was far too mature for whining. He was 24 when he died, and he knew when he died that he wished he had done more in his life, and the Fairy Godmother had gave him a chance.

The man in grey suit stared at Kuja intensely. Kuja woke up from the swimming trip in his thoughts and blinked for a second before remembering what he was supposed to do. He looked up, threw up his arms and tried to look scary. The man in grey fell over laughing and rolling about on the floor.

Never need to do this when I was big... Kuja thought. He had no experience of physically scaring people. He didn't used to need to do much except to command fear with his very presence. He thought hard.

Kuja's intelligence didn't fail him. He lowered his arms and attempted to look like the eerie big Kuja who commanded fear with his very presence.

The man in grey recovered from his laughing fit. Kuja glared as icily as he could in his adorable, diminutive body. He had been too cute lately. He must rediscover the nastiness and wickedness in him.

"Yes, what is it, little one?" he inquired before falling over into another whooping laughing fit.

"I was ... sent by the Great Fairy Godmother, and I command that you come with me!" Kuja said, faltering ever so slightly in his sentence. Kuja growled in his head. If he were big Kuja, he would have grilled this insulting man over a slow fire in the middle of a troop of annoying Hedgehog Pies. Nevertheless, destiny had it that he couldn't even cast a proper lightning spell to zap a Whale Zombie. So be it.

Kuja turned and trotted away ever so weightlessly, his white dress-like garment flowing behind him, making him look as if he was floating in the dark. The drunken man stood and followed perplexedly. Just as Kuja reached the clump of trees and made to look as if he disappeared, Elfia, hidden behind the trees, cast a sleep spell on the man in grey. He collapsed into a sleeping heap right there and then.

"Let's go get the last one!" Elfia commanded and dashed straight into the bakery shop. Kuja followed closely, his mind working intensely on how to be nasty even in his smallness.

Running back into the bakery shop, Elfia made a beeline for the back door. Bursting in, Elfia greeted the old lady passionately.

"Aunt Beeker!" Elfia said happily as the old lady turned to smile at her. The boss was snoring loudly on his alcohol.

"Sweet little Elfia," the old woman bent down to plant a petite kiss on the young girl's forehead.

"That's Kuja, sent by the fairy godmother!" she said, pointing to Kuja who had just come through the door.

"Oh, how adorable!" the Aunt Beeker went forward and gave Kuja a small kiss on the forehead, then pinched his cheek slightly. Kuja tried not to protest.

"I dropped sleeping pills into those men's drink containers. How are you going to take care of him?" the old maid inquired.

"Let's tie this guy up and bring him back to my daddy!" she said as Aunt Beeker dug up a length of rope and handed it to her. Kuja helped by flipping the inert body onto his stomach and putting his hands at his back for Elfia to tie. The man was heavy.

The sound of a group of rowdy men approached just as Elfia and Kuja were about to push the sleeping body out on a small trolley.

"Oh no, they're returning from their nightly hunt!" Elfia gasped, "Old Madame's crystal ball told us that they always go out of Skaerpekoe to hunt animals for fun every night. We have to get away before they catch us!"

The two then pushed the trolley away as quickly as possible, but then it seemed that the bandits were coming from both the town's main entrance in the south and from the forest in the North! They made a hasty turn westwards and sped into a narrow dark alley, just as the men caught sight of them.

"Get them!" the mob shouted and made awful warlike noises. Kuja caught a glance of a troop of people moving in for them.

"Follow me!" Elfia said as she took over the trolley. Kuja hopped onto the sleeping man's back. The men were catching up with them, and Elfia ran into a dead end.

"I thought you knew the way!" Kuja said as he turned to eye the approaching mob. He wasn't panicking or anxious, and a voice in him told him to trust the young girl, so he blinked calmly at Elfia.

"I do!" Elfia said as she dragged the man from the trolley, "Come, quick!" she dashed behind a few piles of stacked items near the dead end. Kuja followed, and saw that Elfia shoved the man down into a huge manhole and jumped in herself.

"No way!" Kuja gasped in shock.

"Yes way! You've got to come in or they will catch you!" Elfia shouted from the bottom. Kuja winced. He closed his eyes, pinched his nose and jumped down the slippery black chute. He slid down quite a distance and landed on his legs beneath. Keeping his balance he managed to prevent himself from toppling over into a puddle of water.

They were inside a dark underground chute. The violet sky could be seen above his head through a round opening. He tried to make some light, casting the most basic spell he knew. Waving a finger, he created several small fragments of light, which collide to form a ball of faintly glowing orb floating above his head. Looking up, he realized that the top was very high above his head, and the sewer was very wide, enough to fit in many whale zombies side by side. Several smaller chutes led into the big gutter where they were in.

"This is one of the drainage chutes in Skaerpekoe, it's used to remove tide water and sometimes household wastes. Good thing we haven't been in the village for about a week now, it's quite clean here for now, so don't worry." Elfia tried to make the miserable Kuja feel better, but Kuja's immaculate nose picked up wisps of strange odours still.

"There, let's go up that ladder!" Elfia pointed towards a metal ladder at the opposite end of the gutter. The duo dashed across the sewerage, treading across shallow puddles of water as they did so. In the dimness, Elfia took the unconscious gangster by the ropes around his hand and lifted him as she climbed up, with Kuja supporting the man's knee below. The ladder shook, vibrated and creaked with their every movement, and Kuja was rather disturbed by that. He told himself not to look backwards. Many bits of rust scrape off and fell away as they climbed,

It took a while to reach the top with the burden upon them, but they did so finally with effort, and found themselves at another section of the town. "Come!" Elfia said as she lifted the man across her shoulders in a manner called fireman's lift and treaded quickly towards what seemed like a warehouse. As the moon hovered just above the tips of the coconut trees, the streets were rather dark.

While Elfia moved stealthily away from the canal opening, Kuja turned around after a few paces and walked back to the round hole. He peered through it curiously with his oval blue eyes and tilted his head.

Seven men were struggling to climb up the metal stairs in pursuit of them. As Kuja was too short, they couldn't see him from below. Kuja tapped his foot slightly, waiting for a mean idea to come into his head. He hummed a song softly as he did that. Soon the head of the first pursuer appeared within a feet of Kuja's boot tips. Kuja observed the fraught men and smiled graciously. The man blinked at our little Sorcerer.

"Huh?"

Kuja cleared his throat and stood gracefully. "Oh dear, what were you doing down there? I hope you've had a good climb just now?" Kuja spoke politely as if he was an engaging gentleman. Watching the man blink, he lost his patience. Assuming he had said yes, he flashed a dazzling smile with hints of hidden malice.

"Well, why don't you go and have another try then!"

Kuja nudged the top of the metal ladder with the tip of his shoe. As the weigh of the men and Kuja's disturbance added pressure on the ladder, the joints that held it to the wall finally broke. Screws and rusty hinges loosened and fell off. The entire ladder started to topple backwards. The men below screamed with horror as they started to flop.

Kuja cupped a hand to his ears and caught the sound of metal and men crashing onto stone below a moment later. He threw up his arms and cackled with glee ("Mwahahaha..."), his voice ringing out and echoing in the darkness below like the sound of a naughty elf laughing after accomplishing a trick. Feeling accomplished, he then turned around and trotted towards Elfia's direction, - smiling as he did so - the heels of his boots making soft clicking sounds on the pavement.

Elfia had taken herself and the bandit boss into what seemed like a large warehouse on the left. On the right of the street, just opposite the warehouse she was in, stood a large square building. Having went underground and back up, Kuja could no longer tell east from west but he noted that the moon was ahead of him, slightly to the left, above the tin roofs of the warehouse so his intelligent mind told him that he was probably in the Northwestern side of the village. He scampered towards the narrower path outside the warehouse.

Wringing through the narrow gap between the thick, bulky wooden doors, Kuja managed to enter the warehouse. The warehouse was a one storey square building with lots of empty spaces, filled with large crates and hay. Some sands had been scattered on the floor. The ceiling was almost thirty feets above his head. There were only a few small glass panels near the sloped ceiling of the room, so Kuja couldn't see much.

Kuja dug out his little ball of light from the hidden breast pocket inside his clothes and held it over his head so it floats there obediently. Elfia was stuffing the bandit leader into a crate in the corner. He had come to, and she had gagged his mouth with a chunk of rag from the floor. Kuja saw cannons and stacks of wooden crates, and his nose picked out the smell of gunpowder in the air. Nonetheless, he treaded towards the busy girl.

"This is the storage place for ours and seemingly he bandits' fuels," Elfia told Kuja softly, "Just opposite from here, in the big building, is Uncle Cracker's fireworks house."

If something happens, this will be the first place to be levelled by a humongous explosion. Kuja mused, but decided that it was too horrible a thing to say of this village, which to him was not distasteful to deserve that just yet.

The two hid their captive behind several large crates and Elfia pushed out a black cannon with a lot of effort and help by Kuja. Their plan was to blast the band of bandits as they tried to come through the door. Elfia stood on her tiptoes as she cleaned the cannon's interior and rolled in a large metal sphere that was half her size.

Hearing the mob finally approach, she then struck a match and lit the fuse after Kuja did his job by filling in the gunpowders. Then scuttled behind the crates behind the cannon with their hostage, and with their backs against the crates, they covered their ears.

Out of curiosity, Kuja peeped from behind his hiding place, hands still on ears. The mob was trying to force the bulky door open, while the fuse was burned shorter and shorter. To Kuja's horror, the loaded cannon began to lower its mouth under the weight of the cannon ball. At this rate, it will fire the cannon at the floor and everything will be blown up.

Looking to Elfia, who was closing her eyes and covering her ears as if she was a defensive porcupine, Kuja leapt out in a heroic attempt to save them and bomb the mob. At that moment, the mob pulled the doors down and charged towards their direction in the darkness. Although he could see only the dim outline of everything, Kuja found the cannon. Standing under it, he used both his hands to support the cannon and tried his best pushed it back up.

The fuse hissed its last breath, and the cannon blasts out a ground-shaking explosion.