Chapter 10 - Second Fiddle To a Stick
"Hey, guys," Zidane announced, completely unnecessarily, "we're inside Ipsen's Castle!"
"Uh...yeah, Zidane," Vivi agreed tiredly. "The big glowing sign saying 'Welcome to Ipsen's Castle' kind of helped with that."
"Oh! I didn't notice that!" the young man proclaimed with a sheepish grin.
"How garish!" Steiner commented in disgust, waving his arms about and clanking accordingly. "How tasteless! How...how..."
"How convenient," Dagger broke in, her gaze darting about suspiciously. "Doesn't it seem a little too easy to you, that we wander into some random upside-down, inside-out castle, and, on our first try, it's the right one? You know what? I don't think this is Ipsen's Castle at all! I think it's all a clever scheme!"
"...Of...who?" Zidane asked, scratching his head, utterly lost. Dagger blinked.
"Oh...I don't know. Some...guy." She dismissed the matter with a vague wave of her hand.
"Why is it always a guy?" Zidane demanded, angry. "Why do you assume that, when someone has a clever scheme, it's a guy? Why can't girls ever have clever schemes?!"
Steiner shook his head.
"Zidane, would one not think that Queen Garnet should be the one defending the intelligence of women?"
"Oh...yeah. That's a good point, man. Yeah, it must've been a man. Just imagine a woman having a clever scheme; what a stupid idea!"
"There's gonna be a blood-bath, isn't there?" Vivi murmured mournfully to Steiner.
"No! There is no time for this! We must continue on to find the bowls!"
"I thought we were looking for saucers..." Zidane reflected.
"How silly!" Dagger laughed. "We're looking for collector's edition Elvis plates!"
"U-um...aren't they mirrors?" Vivi piped up, then continued, confused. "Who's Elvis, anyway?"
Dagger's brow wrinkled.
"I...don't know. But, strangely enough, something is telling me that he...isn't dead."
Vivi patted Dagger's hand comfortingly.
"Dude, he's dead. Accept it. Alexandria hasn't had a King in a long, long time."
"Okay, guys, whatever," Zidane proclaimed proudly. "Let's just get moving, okay?
"Wow..." Yezo commented, glancing about nervously. "This place is...weird. It's, like, all inside-out and upside-down and stuff." Then she brightened. "I feel right at home! My house is all upside-down and inside-out! At least, it was after I had that party...that was pretty bad. I'll never know how that pancake got onto the roof...never to speak of that kid with his motorcycle. Wait a second...it wasn't a motorcycle! It was a small creature of some sort...like a puppy...or...or...a BUNNY!!!" She stopped wandering and leaned against one of the upside-down-ish pillars with a sigh. "I wonder where my bunny went, anyway. And my Bezo. I'm all alone now! Come to think of it, coming in here by myself, with all these scary monsters, was probably a bad idea. I'm not even properly equipped! I wonder if I should go find a better...hitting thingy..."
Before our young...heroine.....addict could put this plan, or even the one of finding her floppy-eared pal the bunny, into effect, a series of snarls and growls and barks drifted towards her. Wide-eyed with fear, she turned toward the sound. Then she clapped her hands and bounced up and down happily as her gaze lit on exactly what was behind her.
"A puppy! Oh, look at the cute, fluffy little puppy! C'mon, puppy, come play with me!"
Cerberus, for his part, was not used to being called cute, or fluffy, or little for that matter. And he certainly was not used to being asked to 'play,' particularly by members of the cat family, which this little...thing seemed to be.
'Maybe if I eat her,' he reflected, 'she'll shut up.'
Had Yezo known of this plan, she might have re-thought her next suggestion.
"Hey! I know! We can find the bunny, and Bezo, and we can all be best friends and play together forever!"
'The...bunny?' Cerberus reflected, licking his chops. 'Sounds tasty.'
A smile spread itself over his vaguely canine features. One which Yezo misinterpreted completely.
"Aww...the puppy's happy to see me! The puppy wuvs me! Yes, you do! Yes, you do! Don't you, puppy-wuppy?"
'Puppy...wuppy? I'm not sure how much more of this I can take.'
'Just eat her!' a voice in the back of his mind suggested.
'Eat that?! I don't know where she's been! And I'm pretty sure she's bad for my cholesterol.'
'Oh, you and your damn cholesterol! Just eat her, for crying out loud! I'm getting sick of her, too!'
'You just never stop, do you? Always telling me what to do. You can never just let me live my life, can you?'
By this time, Yezo was somewhat confused.
"What are you thinking about, puppy?" She brightened. "Do you have a game for us to play?! Waay! Waay! Waay!"
Wrapping her arms around the ravenous beast (or, its front paw, at any rate...) in an affectionate bear-hug, she continued to chirp merrily about all the games that the bunny probably had for them to play, too, and all the fun they could all have playing together for eternity.
'Eat her!' the voice at the back of the bemused and dismayed monster's mind insisted. 'Eat her, eat her, eat her, EAT HER!!!'
Heaving a long sigh, Cerberus rolled his big ravenous-beast-eyes, and was just preparing to reach down and grab Yezo by the back of her yellow t- shirt, when another voice echoed through the air.
"YEZOOOO!!!" it howled, then stopped. "Sweet! I sound like the Phantom! Sing, my angel of...oh, wait. Yezo! What are you doing?!"
"Bezo?!" she chirped, whirling about. "Bezo!"
In the process of whirling about, Yezo's tail struck her new pal full-on in the face.
"Ow..." Cerberus muttered, collapsing, the corpse instantly disappearing.
"Wow..." Bezo commented, raising an eyebrow. "It must have been a Jedi."
Yezo blinked, then pouted.
"Darnit! I lost my bunny, AND my puppy!"
She had just begun to collapse to the cold stone floor, once more in her favourite cute little anime sitting pose, tears just beginning to fill her eyes, when, all at once, she began to feel more powerful...almost as though she had become, somehow, more experienced.
"Weird...I feel...smart. It's very different...I don't like it! Out, damned smart! Out, I say!"
Balling up her fist, Yezo proceeded to punch herself repeatedly in the head, when she noticed something odd. 'Level up' floated past in little white letters. And again, and again, and eight more times after that.
"Dude!" Bezo exclaimed. "You're Level 11! D'oh! I'm still Level 0! Waaaaaait a minute! Shouldn't I have got half the experience from that? Did I not distract the beast at the pivotal moment, just as Mighty Sephiroth might? Ah, master, I am becoming more like you every day...except for the fact that I'm still Level 0. This sucks!" he decided, turning around and storming into a corner. Then he turned, his eye caught by something decidedly shiny.
"Ooh!" he exclaimed, bouncing over to where the prize lay on the floor, unguarded. "Money! Sweet! I just found 1984 gil! I can't believe I was able to count them so...quickly. This'll really come in handy if we ever need to buy, like, say, a Golden Chocobo, or something."
"You can't buy a Golden Chocobo, Bezo," Yezo informed him, giggling.
"Maybe YOU can't," Bezo scoffed. Yezo shrugged, flinging an arm about his shoulders and nuzzling closer.
"Whatever, honey."
Bezo turned to glare at her.
"And DON'T leave me alone here! I don't know this universe, because YOU won't give me the game!"
"Tell ya what: As soon as we get back home, I'll give you Final Fantasy 9. I think I'll have had enough of it to last a lifetime."
"No, you won't," Bezo foretold glumly. "If anything, this'll only fuel your obsession. You can't get away! You can't escape! You are trapped forever! Forever! My Angel of Music! AHAHAHAHA! God, I love this reverb!"
"Uhm...um...no, I'm not," Yezo protested nervously, eyes huge and yellow...like the priestess that she was...for some reason.
"Oh. Thank the gods I've finally found you. Now I can die happy," a voice proclaimed, utterly deadpan, from behind them.
"Hey, look, Yezo! It's Rat-Face!"
"Uh...do you WANT to look like a pin-cushion, Bez'?" Yezo asked sadly.
"Because it could be arranged," Freya assured him, brandishing the Obelisk menacingly. She was quite distracted from threatening the death of this maddening boy, however, when an ominous growl sounded behind her. Whirling about, she leapt into a defensive stance, eyes glued to the Cerberus before her. Then, in a brilliant and stunning display of hitting things with really cool lookin' sticks, she darted up to the snarling beastie and delivered a crushing blow.
Or so she thought.
"Ping!" went the weapon against the ferocious puppy dog, who stared at it, blinking calmly. Then he took a deep breath and voiced his thoughts on what had just happened.
"Tpthtpthtpthtpth!!!" the demon-beast raspberried.
"Oh!" Freya intoned mournfully. "What just happened there?"
Once again, her thought was quite derailed, this time by a joyful squeal of,
"PUPPY!!!"
She stared in consternation as Yezo bounded forward and proceeded to huggle the slavering, ravenous beast in what seemed to Freya a most reckless manner.
"Yezo!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing?!"
"Huh?" Yezo chirped, turning around. As it had before, her tail swung around and collided with the monster, sending him shooting off into the upper regions of the castle, where he disappeared with a "Ping!" and a flash of twirling light.
"Damn, Yezo," Bezo exclaimed. "You rock!" Then he pouted as it became apparent that once more, he was being bypassed in the 'experience' department. "I never get any experience," he whimpered sadly. "No experience!"
He turned away with a mournful sigh and slunk off into the corner.
"Yezo's, like, Level 30 now, and I'm still stuck here at 0! It's not fair! I'm the warrior! The warrior of might and power and...stuff!"
Just as tears had begun to trickle their ways from the corners of his eyes, out of that same corner, he caught sight of a beam of light of purest white streaming down from a hole in the roof, and falling upon an object that would change his life forever, the very object that was his destiny.
"Masamune!" he gasped reverently. "The great demon blade Masamune has come at last! Oh, you are so dead, monsters of the world! And you, too, Flaming McMuffin!"
"Flaming...McMuffin?" Freya repeated, blinking. "Not only is that uncreative, it's also a copyright violation!"
Yezo's protest was somewhat different.
"Dude, that's a twig," she pointed out.
"You're just jealous that Masamune didn't come to you," he sneered. "Masamune chose meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. And together, we will destroy EVERYTHING, especially the other members of the party - I mean, especially evil," he finished, laughing nervously, then sauntering away, whistling.
"No, Bezo, it really is a twig," Yezo insisted. "Heck, I'll bet I could take that thing out...like, my tail! Hee-hee!" she giggled as an afterthought. "I wuv my tail!"
"Blasphemy!" Bezo howled. "Blasphemer! Blasphemist! Do not speak ill of the Great Blade of Justice!"
"Oh; I fear the Twig of Justice (tm). Freya, please come protect me from the Twig of Justice," she pleaded sarcastically.
"OH, no! Leave me out of this," Freya protested severely.
"Let me get this straight, Yezo," Bezo ground out ominously. "You blaspheme, you sarcaz, and you belittle my destiny, forcing me to choose between the woman I love, and the weapon for which I long."
"I will not be second-fiddle to a stick!" Yezo shrieked, stamping her foot angrily. "En garde! Draw your twig and prepare to fight, you salty dog!"
"I shall defeat you, you salty gopher!"
"No, you won't, you salty...bail 'o hay!"
They both stopped, recalling a sweet memory of a song that they had shared.
"I remember...that was our first dance," Yezo sighed happily.
"Wait a second...wasn't our first dance 'I Wanna Sex You Up' by Maestro Horndog III?" Bezo recalled, frowning.
"Oh, yeah!" Yezo chirped. "'The Last Saskatchewan Pirate' was our second dance!"
"That was a weird dance," he announced, shaking his head. "Do you remember the third dance?"
"How could I forget the Time Warp, baby?" Yezo giggled.
"Just a jump to the left," Bezo began.
"And then a step to the righ-igh-igh-igh-ight!" Yezo added. Bezo took up the tale again.
"Put your hands on your hips..."
"And something your knees in tigh-igh-igh-igh-ight!"
"And something pelvic thrusts...pelvic thrusts are cool," Bezo reflected, grinning, forgetting the song temporarily. "Let's just stop and do some more of that!"
"Men," Yezo sighed. Then she brightened. "And do you remember how, after that, we danced to the Bulgarian Funeral March by Laslo Buterkupsky?"
"Yeah," Bezo sighed, eyes growing dreamy. Then he leapt up and glared at her. "Heeeeeey! Weren't one of us mad at the other one?"
"Finally, they remember," Freya commented from the corner, tossing the Gameboy Advance aside. 'I've had about enough of Pokemon Garnet for now. These damned RPG's...they're so addictive!'
'They sure are,' Yezo thought to herself, having somehow contrived to hear this thought.
'Dammit! Get out of my mind!' Freya thought at the cat-girl ferociously.
'No!' Yezo shot back snippily. 'I don't wanna!'
'Oh, for Gods' sake, would you just fight Bezo so I have something to watch?!'
'Oh...right,' Yezo giggled, then scowled at the twig-wielding love of her life.
Then, as both leapt into defensive stances, it seemed as though the fight had finally begun...at least, if the battle music in the background were any indication. It didn't count, though, since they were the ones humming it, accompanied by Freya on her trusty harmonica.
"Ow!" she lamented sadly as he counterattacked, striking her soundly on the tail, giving both of them some odd sense of satisfaction.
"Give up now, or I'll really kick some tail!" Bezo advised, grinning at the brilliance of this remark.
"Oh, no," Yezo countered, also grinning. "You won't be kickin' any tail, boy! The tail will be kicking you!"
With that, she whipped around, sort of hopped, sort of shuffled back, and smacked him upside the head.
"Ow!" he mourned. "The upside of my head!"
"What's the downside?" Freya wondered idly, tossing the harmonica aside, incidentally taking out a Tonberry that had approached silently without notice.
"Well, the downside is that I'll probably have a headache," Bezo informed her, clutching his head in pain.
"Oh, brother," another Tonberry, who had observed the fight, unnoticed, as he leaned against a post eating popcorn...very, very slowly.
"Hey, give me a break! I just got the upside of my head pounded!" Bezo protested. "My Masamune and I will not be thwarted so easily! Defend yourself, or die!"
It was at about this time that Freya, watching from the sidelines, noticed that the ring of Tonberrys that had gathered were slowly edging closer to the two combatants.
"Oh, this can't be good," she noted, although a part of her was tempted to just let this go. Watching them get knifed by these adorable, though deadly little green...fellas was probably more entertaining than the alternative, which didn't bear thinking about. However, that damned conscience of hers chose just that moment to fire up again, and she found herself quite unable to leave Bezo and Yezo to their demise. Standing up resolutely, she stalked toward them and seized Yezo by the back of the collar in one hand, and Bezo in the other.
"Alright," she snapped, shoving Yezo away from her to the left. "You in that corner! You in that corner," she continued, shoving Bezo away from her to the right, "and neither of you are coming out until you've learned to get along like civilized people!"
Then she turned and addressed the little green lizard-clerics.
"And all of you, could you just bear with us for a few minutes? They've got some personal issues to work out, so no killing, alright?"
"Oh, of course," thirty-seven Tonberrys said in unison, inwardly grinning wickedly, knowing full well that they wouldn't.
"Hey, guys," Zidane announced, completely unnecessarily, "we're inside Ipsen's Castle!"
"Uh...yeah, Zidane," Vivi agreed tiredly. "The big glowing sign saying 'Welcome to Ipsen's Castle' kind of helped with that."
"Oh! I didn't notice that!" the young man proclaimed with a sheepish grin.
"How garish!" Steiner commented in disgust, waving his arms about and clanking accordingly. "How tasteless! How...how..."
"How convenient," Dagger broke in, her gaze darting about suspiciously. "Doesn't it seem a little too easy to you, that we wander into some random upside-down, inside-out castle, and, on our first try, it's the right one? You know what? I don't think this is Ipsen's Castle at all! I think it's all a clever scheme!"
"...Of...who?" Zidane asked, scratching his head, utterly lost. Dagger blinked.
"Oh...I don't know. Some...guy." She dismissed the matter with a vague wave of her hand.
"Why is it always a guy?" Zidane demanded, angry. "Why do you assume that, when someone has a clever scheme, it's a guy? Why can't girls ever have clever schemes?!"
Steiner shook his head.
"Zidane, would one not think that Queen Garnet should be the one defending the intelligence of women?"
"Oh...yeah. That's a good point, man. Yeah, it must've been a man. Just imagine a woman having a clever scheme; what a stupid idea!"
"There's gonna be a blood-bath, isn't there?" Vivi murmured mournfully to Steiner.
"No! There is no time for this! We must continue on to find the bowls!"
"I thought we were looking for saucers..." Zidane reflected.
"How silly!" Dagger laughed. "We're looking for collector's edition Elvis plates!"
"U-um...aren't they mirrors?" Vivi piped up, then continued, confused. "Who's Elvis, anyway?"
Dagger's brow wrinkled.
"I...don't know. But, strangely enough, something is telling me that he...isn't dead."
Vivi patted Dagger's hand comfortingly.
"Dude, he's dead. Accept it. Alexandria hasn't had a King in a long, long time."
"Okay, guys, whatever," Zidane proclaimed proudly. "Let's just get moving, okay?
"Wow..." Yezo commented, glancing about nervously. "This place is...weird. It's, like, all inside-out and upside-down and stuff." Then she brightened. "I feel right at home! My house is all upside-down and inside-out! At least, it was after I had that party...that was pretty bad. I'll never know how that pancake got onto the roof...never to speak of that kid with his motorcycle. Wait a second...it wasn't a motorcycle! It was a small creature of some sort...like a puppy...or...or...a BUNNY!!!" She stopped wandering and leaned against one of the upside-down-ish pillars with a sigh. "I wonder where my bunny went, anyway. And my Bezo. I'm all alone now! Come to think of it, coming in here by myself, with all these scary monsters, was probably a bad idea. I'm not even properly equipped! I wonder if I should go find a better...hitting thingy..."
Before our young...heroine.....addict could put this plan, or even the one of finding her floppy-eared pal the bunny, into effect, a series of snarls and growls and barks drifted towards her. Wide-eyed with fear, she turned toward the sound. Then she clapped her hands and bounced up and down happily as her gaze lit on exactly what was behind her.
"A puppy! Oh, look at the cute, fluffy little puppy! C'mon, puppy, come play with me!"
Cerberus, for his part, was not used to being called cute, or fluffy, or little for that matter. And he certainly was not used to being asked to 'play,' particularly by members of the cat family, which this little...thing seemed to be.
'Maybe if I eat her,' he reflected, 'she'll shut up.'
Had Yezo known of this plan, she might have re-thought her next suggestion.
"Hey! I know! We can find the bunny, and Bezo, and we can all be best friends and play together forever!"
'The...bunny?' Cerberus reflected, licking his chops. 'Sounds tasty.'
A smile spread itself over his vaguely canine features. One which Yezo misinterpreted completely.
"Aww...the puppy's happy to see me! The puppy wuvs me! Yes, you do! Yes, you do! Don't you, puppy-wuppy?"
'Puppy...wuppy? I'm not sure how much more of this I can take.'
'Just eat her!' a voice in the back of his mind suggested.
'Eat that?! I don't know where she's been! And I'm pretty sure she's bad for my cholesterol.'
'Oh, you and your damn cholesterol! Just eat her, for crying out loud! I'm getting sick of her, too!'
'You just never stop, do you? Always telling me what to do. You can never just let me live my life, can you?'
By this time, Yezo was somewhat confused.
"What are you thinking about, puppy?" She brightened. "Do you have a game for us to play?! Waay! Waay! Waay!"
Wrapping her arms around the ravenous beast (or, its front paw, at any rate...) in an affectionate bear-hug, she continued to chirp merrily about all the games that the bunny probably had for them to play, too, and all the fun they could all have playing together for eternity.
'Eat her!' the voice at the back of the bemused and dismayed monster's mind insisted. 'Eat her, eat her, eat her, EAT HER!!!'
Heaving a long sigh, Cerberus rolled his big ravenous-beast-eyes, and was just preparing to reach down and grab Yezo by the back of her yellow t- shirt, when another voice echoed through the air.
"YEZOOOO!!!" it howled, then stopped. "Sweet! I sound like the Phantom! Sing, my angel of...oh, wait. Yezo! What are you doing?!"
"Bezo?!" she chirped, whirling about. "Bezo!"
In the process of whirling about, Yezo's tail struck her new pal full-on in the face.
"Ow..." Cerberus muttered, collapsing, the corpse instantly disappearing.
"Wow..." Bezo commented, raising an eyebrow. "It must have been a Jedi."
Yezo blinked, then pouted.
"Darnit! I lost my bunny, AND my puppy!"
She had just begun to collapse to the cold stone floor, once more in her favourite cute little anime sitting pose, tears just beginning to fill her eyes, when, all at once, she began to feel more powerful...almost as though she had become, somehow, more experienced.
"Weird...I feel...smart. It's very different...I don't like it! Out, damned smart! Out, I say!"
Balling up her fist, Yezo proceeded to punch herself repeatedly in the head, when she noticed something odd. 'Level up' floated past in little white letters. And again, and again, and eight more times after that.
"Dude!" Bezo exclaimed. "You're Level 11! D'oh! I'm still Level 0! Waaaaaait a minute! Shouldn't I have got half the experience from that? Did I not distract the beast at the pivotal moment, just as Mighty Sephiroth might? Ah, master, I am becoming more like you every day...except for the fact that I'm still Level 0. This sucks!" he decided, turning around and storming into a corner. Then he turned, his eye caught by something decidedly shiny.
"Ooh!" he exclaimed, bouncing over to where the prize lay on the floor, unguarded. "Money! Sweet! I just found 1984 gil! I can't believe I was able to count them so...quickly. This'll really come in handy if we ever need to buy, like, say, a Golden Chocobo, or something."
"You can't buy a Golden Chocobo, Bezo," Yezo informed him, giggling.
"Maybe YOU can't," Bezo scoffed. Yezo shrugged, flinging an arm about his shoulders and nuzzling closer.
"Whatever, honey."
Bezo turned to glare at her.
"And DON'T leave me alone here! I don't know this universe, because YOU won't give me the game!"
"Tell ya what: As soon as we get back home, I'll give you Final Fantasy 9. I think I'll have had enough of it to last a lifetime."
"No, you won't," Bezo foretold glumly. "If anything, this'll only fuel your obsession. You can't get away! You can't escape! You are trapped forever! Forever! My Angel of Music! AHAHAHAHA! God, I love this reverb!"
"Uhm...um...no, I'm not," Yezo protested nervously, eyes huge and yellow...like the priestess that she was...for some reason.
"Oh. Thank the gods I've finally found you. Now I can die happy," a voice proclaimed, utterly deadpan, from behind them.
"Hey, look, Yezo! It's Rat-Face!"
"Uh...do you WANT to look like a pin-cushion, Bez'?" Yezo asked sadly.
"Because it could be arranged," Freya assured him, brandishing the Obelisk menacingly. She was quite distracted from threatening the death of this maddening boy, however, when an ominous growl sounded behind her. Whirling about, she leapt into a defensive stance, eyes glued to the Cerberus before her. Then, in a brilliant and stunning display of hitting things with really cool lookin' sticks, she darted up to the snarling beastie and delivered a crushing blow.
Or so she thought.
"Ping!" went the weapon against the ferocious puppy dog, who stared at it, blinking calmly. Then he took a deep breath and voiced his thoughts on what had just happened.
"Tpthtpthtpthtpth!!!" the demon-beast raspberried.
"Oh!" Freya intoned mournfully. "What just happened there?"
Once again, her thought was quite derailed, this time by a joyful squeal of,
"PUPPY!!!"
She stared in consternation as Yezo bounded forward and proceeded to huggle the slavering, ravenous beast in what seemed to Freya a most reckless manner.
"Yezo!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing?!"
"Huh?" Yezo chirped, turning around. As it had before, her tail swung around and collided with the monster, sending him shooting off into the upper regions of the castle, where he disappeared with a "Ping!" and a flash of twirling light.
"Damn, Yezo," Bezo exclaimed. "You rock!" Then he pouted as it became apparent that once more, he was being bypassed in the 'experience' department. "I never get any experience," he whimpered sadly. "No experience!"
He turned away with a mournful sigh and slunk off into the corner.
"Yezo's, like, Level 30 now, and I'm still stuck here at 0! It's not fair! I'm the warrior! The warrior of might and power and...stuff!"
Just as tears had begun to trickle their ways from the corners of his eyes, out of that same corner, he caught sight of a beam of light of purest white streaming down from a hole in the roof, and falling upon an object that would change his life forever, the very object that was his destiny.
"Masamune!" he gasped reverently. "The great demon blade Masamune has come at last! Oh, you are so dead, monsters of the world! And you, too, Flaming McMuffin!"
"Flaming...McMuffin?" Freya repeated, blinking. "Not only is that uncreative, it's also a copyright violation!"
Yezo's protest was somewhat different.
"Dude, that's a twig," she pointed out.
"You're just jealous that Masamune didn't come to you," he sneered. "Masamune chose meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. And together, we will destroy EVERYTHING, especially the other members of the party - I mean, especially evil," he finished, laughing nervously, then sauntering away, whistling.
"No, Bezo, it really is a twig," Yezo insisted. "Heck, I'll bet I could take that thing out...like, my tail! Hee-hee!" she giggled as an afterthought. "I wuv my tail!"
"Blasphemy!" Bezo howled. "Blasphemer! Blasphemist! Do not speak ill of the Great Blade of Justice!"
"Oh; I fear the Twig of Justice (tm). Freya, please come protect me from the Twig of Justice," she pleaded sarcastically.
"OH, no! Leave me out of this," Freya protested severely.
"Let me get this straight, Yezo," Bezo ground out ominously. "You blaspheme, you sarcaz, and you belittle my destiny, forcing me to choose between the woman I love, and the weapon for which I long."
"I will not be second-fiddle to a stick!" Yezo shrieked, stamping her foot angrily. "En garde! Draw your twig and prepare to fight, you salty dog!"
"I shall defeat you, you salty gopher!"
"No, you won't, you salty...bail 'o hay!"
They both stopped, recalling a sweet memory of a song that they had shared.
"I remember...that was our first dance," Yezo sighed happily.
"Wait a second...wasn't our first dance 'I Wanna Sex You Up' by Maestro Horndog III?" Bezo recalled, frowning.
"Oh, yeah!" Yezo chirped. "'The Last Saskatchewan Pirate' was our second dance!"
"That was a weird dance," he announced, shaking his head. "Do you remember the third dance?"
"How could I forget the Time Warp, baby?" Yezo giggled.
"Just a jump to the left," Bezo began.
"And then a step to the righ-igh-igh-igh-ight!" Yezo added. Bezo took up the tale again.
"Put your hands on your hips..."
"And something your knees in tigh-igh-igh-igh-ight!"
"And something pelvic thrusts...pelvic thrusts are cool," Bezo reflected, grinning, forgetting the song temporarily. "Let's just stop and do some more of that!"
"Men," Yezo sighed. Then she brightened. "And do you remember how, after that, we danced to the Bulgarian Funeral March by Laslo Buterkupsky?"
"Yeah," Bezo sighed, eyes growing dreamy. Then he leapt up and glared at her. "Heeeeeey! Weren't one of us mad at the other one?"
"Finally, they remember," Freya commented from the corner, tossing the Gameboy Advance aside. 'I've had about enough of Pokemon Garnet for now. These damned RPG's...they're so addictive!'
'They sure are,' Yezo thought to herself, having somehow contrived to hear this thought.
'Dammit! Get out of my mind!' Freya thought at the cat-girl ferociously.
'No!' Yezo shot back snippily. 'I don't wanna!'
'Oh, for Gods' sake, would you just fight Bezo so I have something to watch?!'
'Oh...right,' Yezo giggled, then scowled at the twig-wielding love of her life.
Then, as both leapt into defensive stances, it seemed as though the fight had finally begun...at least, if the battle music in the background were any indication. It didn't count, though, since they were the ones humming it, accompanied by Freya on her trusty harmonica.
"Ow!" she lamented sadly as he counterattacked, striking her soundly on the tail, giving both of them some odd sense of satisfaction.
"Give up now, or I'll really kick some tail!" Bezo advised, grinning at the brilliance of this remark.
"Oh, no," Yezo countered, also grinning. "You won't be kickin' any tail, boy! The tail will be kicking you!"
With that, she whipped around, sort of hopped, sort of shuffled back, and smacked him upside the head.
"Ow!" he mourned. "The upside of my head!"
"What's the downside?" Freya wondered idly, tossing the harmonica aside, incidentally taking out a Tonberry that had approached silently without notice.
"Well, the downside is that I'll probably have a headache," Bezo informed her, clutching his head in pain.
"Oh, brother," another Tonberry, who had observed the fight, unnoticed, as he leaned against a post eating popcorn...very, very slowly.
"Hey, give me a break! I just got the upside of my head pounded!" Bezo protested. "My Masamune and I will not be thwarted so easily! Defend yourself, or die!"
It was at about this time that Freya, watching from the sidelines, noticed that the ring of Tonberrys that had gathered were slowly edging closer to the two combatants.
"Oh, this can't be good," she noted, although a part of her was tempted to just let this go. Watching them get knifed by these adorable, though deadly little green...fellas was probably more entertaining than the alternative, which didn't bear thinking about. However, that damned conscience of hers chose just that moment to fire up again, and she found herself quite unable to leave Bezo and Yezo to their demise. Standing up resolutely, she stalked toward them and seized Yezo by the back of the collar in one hand, and Bezo in the other.
"Alright," she snapped, shoving Yezo away from her to the left. "You in that corner! You in that corner," she continued, shoving Bezo away from her to the right, "and neither of you are coming out until you've learned to get along like civilized people!"
Then she turned and addressed the little green lizard-clerics.
"And all of you, could you just bear with us for a few minutes? They've got some personal issues to work out, so no killing, alright?"
"Oh, of course," thirty-seven Tonberrys said in unison, inwardly grinning wickedly, knowing full well that they wouldn't.