The Star Magician, his * snigger * balls, and stuff.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Treasure Isle. That was what the mortals called it. Long ago, pirates had come, hauling a shipload of treasure. They had sighted the island from afar, and entered it to hide their treasures. None would feel the kiss of Sol ever again.
This was not due to a rockslide, enemies, or anything spawned by nature. Oh, no. The entire cavern was stable enough that they had managed to construct an elaborate series of traps, by usage of underwater pulleys and big rocks. Really big rocks. Rather, their untimely demise was the product of an encounter with the cave's local demented guardian, namely, the Star Magician.
Historians have never documented a human or any other sentient creature of ever dying of boredom. This is mainly because the Star Magician rarely made himself known to the general public. There's something about hearing "Yes! It IS the three of hearts!" for the fifth thousand time in a row that makes you want to gouge your own eyes out. And this leads to excessive pain and bleeding, thus, death.
The Star Magician, deep within his domain of Treasure Isle, couldn't figure out why people did this. Nor did he care. He only knew several truths. First, he was the ruler of Treasure Isle, and all it's inhabitants. That wasn't too impressive when the only inhabitant that even understood the concept of a ruler was a pissed-off Jupiter djinni named Gale who had entered this place after a botched teleportation upon the collapse of the Elemental Star Chamber. Whatever.
The second truth was that he wielded the power of all the elements, with enough strength to form physical manifestations of them.
The third was that he was the guardian of the Summon Leviathan, a giant sea-dragon. Except the Star Magician didn't think quite so highly of the summon. He preferred to refer to it as that overgrown eel. This worked well enough until the day he had mentioned it while Leviathan happened to be listening. The dragon had promptly fired a blast of water that threw the Star Magician through a wall, and into the next room. From hereafter, the Star Magician only talked about Leviathan when the behemoth was out of earshot.
The fourth thing was that the next person to make a dumb crack about his balls would GET HIS ASS STAR MINE'D INTO NEXT WEEK SO HELP ME I'LL TURN YOU INTO PUDDING AND SMASH THOSE PIECES TO DUST AND I LIKE PIE AND STUFF. And that was about it for the extent of his knowledge.
Currently, the Star Magician was in the middle of the tablet chamber, facing down yet another foe. This was no ordinary warrior. It possessed extremely powerful psynergy, and any wrong move on his part would get him destroyed. There was only one chance. Lifting his hand, the Star Magician made a few quick gestures and-
"Checkmate."
The opposing Thunder ball would have rolled it's eyes had he been outfitted with them. Beating his master in anything generally resulted in whoever beat it being blasted into itty-bitty pieces from a Star Mine. As such, it was a wise idea to just shut up and act like the psychotic wizard in front of him currently doing the chicken dance had won legitimately. Something that seemed to grow harder and harder as the days passed.
Meanwhile, the other three elemental balls were having a "discussion of utmost importance(™)". The oldest and ostensibly wisest among them, the guardian ball, spoke up first.
"Dude! I have, like, two chickens that got fried in Colorado! Woo!"
Yes, he is the wisest of the three. Sad, huh?
The anger ball, by comparison, was angry. You can all go "duh…" now.
"You suck. It's obvious that the stupid Star Magician likes you better than me! It's not fair! It discrimination, that's what it is!"
Refresh, the youngest of the three, sighed. "Dude, chill."
"Never! Not until I get my equal rights! I have nothing! No family, no food, no home, no games, nothing!"
"Um, we're technically your brothers, we don't eat, the cave is our home, and we have never played games of any sort other than Thunder down there."
"Stop interrupting! As I was saying, I have nothing, except… dammit, where is it? I knew I put it around here somewhere… ah! Here we go!" Somehow Anger managed to hold up a glinting implement in the dark caves, despite the rather pronounced lack of hands or limbs.
For once, Guardian stopped mumbling about his chickens to stare at the shiny ring in front of him. "Anger, how in all sam hill did you manage to get the One Ring?" Refresh, by contrast, merely stared at it.
"My precioussss……" Anger replied, and everywhere, Gollum haters sent up a collective shudder. Refresh suddenly made a grab for it, with which Anger replied by jumping onto a nearby ledge, out of reach for the moment. Not to be deterred, Refresh leapt up after Anger trying to distract him. Guardian rolled in front of the drop off point, attempting to cut off Anger's escape route, and the War of the Ring was on.
From Thunder's vantage point atop the chair, however, it looked more like the Best of the Three Stooges. From what he could see, that is, not much, considering the dust cloud, Refresh had the current advantage. It seemed strange that an orb filled with only healing energies would have the upper hand in such a battle. Guardian had somehow managed to pull out a baseball bat from somewhere and was now engaged in the process of beating the brains out of Anger. Thunder groaned mentally. Anger was beginning to glow. And when Anger glowed, bad things happened. Such as the tiny matter of him self-destructing and sending Refresh and Guardian flying. Refresh he didn't care too much for. He was more concerned with Guardian. Mainly because Guardian had smashed into him and knocked him off his chair. Curses, swears, and various bad words were used in excess.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Thunder rolled along the floor languidly. The past couple of weeks, aside from the Star Magician summoning up another copy of Anger, had been boring. But then again, when you lived had a complete and utter nutcase for a master; you took what you could get. The Star Magician had been hunched around Leviathan's summon tablet recently, for reasons known only to himself. Now, however, he was calling all the balls to another meeting.
"I swear to whatever higher being that is out there, if he's called us back to show another card trick, I'm going to fry him with Shine Plasma." Thunder muttered as he entered the chamber.
As it turned out, the Star Magician hadn't called them back to look at a card trick. If only they'd been so lucky…
"Looklooklook!" The Star Magician cackled, pointing to the summon tablet. Thunder glanced at the summon tablet. It seemed unchanged from the last time he'd seen it. Well, except part of it looked extra worn…
Refresh, always a believer in getting to the point, said it first. "Forgive us for our ignorance, o' great one. But what exactly do you want us to look at?"
The Star Magician cackled with glee as he rubbed his hands together, looking for all the world like the crackpot he was. "I scratched out some of the words on the tablet, and made new ones! I changed that stupid eel's name! Weeheeheeheeheehee!"
Thunder rolled over for a closer look. Yes, the words had been changed somewhat. He couldn't read it, of course, but he suspected his master would tell them Leviathan's new name soon enough.
Beaming with pride, the Star Magician pronounced each syllable carefully and clearly. "His new name…… is Azul."
Silence. Complete, utter silence.
Thunder was the first to break it. " I suggest all of us back out of the room reeeaaaal slowly. And no sudden movements."
The other three balls nodded.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Leviathan, or Azul now, was understandably not pleased when he awoke from his nap and realized what the Star Magician had done to him. His once glorious name had been reduced to something that sounded like a medicine along the same lines as Pepto-Bismol. He punished the Star Magician by dunking him underwater and held him there until he screamed for mercy. Or maybe it had been raucous laughter. Azul couldn't tell. After that, he had whiplashed the Magician through another wall. Then he went to sleep again. When Thunder and the others finally dug him out from the ruin, the Star Magician was still giggling.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Thunder was sick and tired of putting up with the damned Star Magician. Every few days, it was another painfully obvious card trick that a two year old could see through, or a chess game that Thunder had to invariably throw away for fear of getting incinerated. Refresh, Guardian, and Anger and him were constantly plotting ways of killing the Star Magician, but just as about Anger would blow himself up in front of the Star Magician, Guardian would throw up a Guard Aura. "Force of habit." He explained sheepishly.
Thunder perked up as he heard the sound of footsteps along on the cave. Rolling forward, he nearly got stepped on by a boy wearing a yellow scarf. Nice fashion there, Thunder muttered under his breath.
Taking the shortcut back to the summon tablet room, he dropped down in front of his master. "Master! There are humans coming to challenge us for the tablet!"
The Star Magician, instead of replying, merely stood up, stretched, and glared at the doorway, as if daring the humans to step in now. "Let them come." He snorted, for perhaps the first time in his life sounding cool. This effect was pretty much ruined when he put on a pair of oversized sunglasses and whipped out a shotgun from somewhere in his robe's pockets.
Just then, the humans entered the room. The lead one, the one with the yellow scarf, jerked back in surprise at seeing the Magician dressed like a complete retard. Another human, a dark-eyed one with long brown hair stepped forward, and raised his sword in a symbol of challenge.
"You wanna challenge me? Huh? Huh? HUH?! Well, fear me! Fear me, I say! I guard water and stuff! Diediediediediedie! Kekekekekekekekekekeke!!!" Thus saying, he began firing Star Mines in every direction, causing most of the humans to split up and dive for cover. Even his own balls were forced to roll away to seek shelter from the endless explosions. Thunder, faster than most, had managed to hop onto a recess in the wall, and had a pretty good view of the mayhem.
Thus, he got an excellent view of Azul emerging from the tablet and swallowing the Star Magician whole. After which the sea dragon gave a loud burp.
"Darn thing woke me from my nap." He explained to the nonplussed humans. "I'll come with you if you promise not to be as goddamned noisy as that numbskull."
At this, Thunder and the rest of the balls rolled out from their recesses on the wall.
"Can we, uh, join you too?" Thunder asked the dumbstruck warriors hopefully.
