Chapter 7
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"I'm back," Magus announced as he entered the library.
Lucca, seated at the table spread with various catalogues, decorating magazines, paint swatches, and a cup of cold coffee, glared at him icily.
"Oh, that's nice," she said with a forced sort of sweetness. "Because, you know, I've only been sitting here in your library by myself for FOUR HOURS!"
He looked at her oddly.
"And your point is?"
"I'm bored!" she whined. "All I've got to read is 12 Easy Steps, and I've read that to the point that I quote it in my sleep! And you didn't leave me any books! Some stupid library this is…"
"No books? What do you call those?" he demanded, gesturing to the magazines.
"I call these 'tedious crap'," she replied, scowling in disgust at a copy of The World's Most Beautiful Lairs of Evil and Destruction.
He sighed, setting several bags down on the floor by the wall.
"So, I take it you aren't done yet."
"Done what?"
"Done deciding on colour schemes and layout. You know, the things I asked you to do when I left?" he reminded her snippily.
"Oh, I finished that a long time ago," she said tiredly. "Then I taught myself to play Solitaire with these paint card thingies."
"Paint swatches, thank-you very much."
She rubbed her eyes beneath her glasses, grumbling about everything in the universe as she did so.
"Right, right, paint swatches. When did you turn gay, anyway?"
"I am not gay! I just know the beauty of a well-designed, well-decorated work space."
"So, you're gay. Same thing," she shrugged.
"I am not!" he exclaimed in something remarkably close to a whine.
"Whatever," she said, waving the matter away impatiently. "So, where did you disappear to?"
"I was fabric shopping," he admitted reluctantly.
She stared at him for a long moment, and then fell from her chair to the ground in a fit of helpless laughter.
"Oh, no, you're not gay at all," she gasped, wiping away tears of mirth.
"I'm not!"
"No, you're just effeminate," she agreed, pulling herself from the floor with great difficulty.
"I hate you," he informed her coldly.
"Don't worry; I hate you, too," she grinned. "Aren't villains supposed to hate each other, anyway?"
He heaved a sigh of annoyance, pulling a few purchases from one bag.
"I get the feeling that you're still not taking this seriously."
She raised an eyebrow.
"You're holding an armful of dark purple velvet, and you're talking about taking things more seriously?"
"Ah! This will be your window treatment."
Lucca, who had chosen this unlucky moment to try her luck with the dubious contents of her coffee mug, choked on the bitter, cold liquid, and began coughing and sputtering uncontrollably.
"Window treatments?!" she gasped between coughs. "I didn't know you were this far-gone!"
"Hey, you try having the kind of free time I've had since we defeated Lavos!"
"So…your 'show'," Lucca began slowly once she could breathe again. "Is it on the Home and Garden channel, by any chance?"
"None of your business," Magus shot back defensively, tossing the velvet at her.
"It is," she sighed with mock sadness, her words muffled slightly by the mass of purple material draped over her head. "I'll bet it's Martha Stewart Living."
"It is not! I can't stand that woman!"
"Hey, you've got to admit," Lucca shrugged, struggling her way out of the sea of velvet. "She personifies true evil."
"Hmph. Perhaps you could consider obliterating her as a nefarious scheme sometime down the road."
"Wouldn't that fall under the title of public service?" Lucca wondered, scratching her head.
"Never mind. What do you think of the material?"
"It's very purple," she replied carefully.
"Of course it is. It's your trademark colour."
"But…purple? And hey, wasn't I deciding on the colour scheme?"
"Yes, but if you've truly learned anything, you'll have chosen dark colours, and the purple will blend beautifully."
"What if I'd picked red, huh?" she demanded smugly.
"Then we'd alter it to a deep wine red, and purple can look quite striking and elegant with deep red."
"You have no idea how much you are scaring me right now, Magus," Lucca said solemnly, backing surreptitiously toward the door, preparing to bolt. "Window treatments?! Seriously! And for that matter, where am I going to have windows in an underground lair?"
"Your workspace will not be underground. I have a suitable tower set aside for you."
"But…how do I put a bottomless pit in a tower without disrupting the rooms under my lair?"
"The entire tower will be yours to do with as you wish, of course," he said unconcernedly.
"Gee, thanks," she said dubiously. "That's really generous, but it's not necessary. I mean, I don't think I'll need a whole tower. All I really need is room for my drafting table and a fairly big space for construction. For that matter, why do I even need a bottomless pit?"
Magus looked aghast.
"A bottomless pit is the one thing no villain can afford to be without!"
"Yeah; I have chilling memories of yours. Of course, it had a bottom. And a bunch of damn Save Points," she grumbled. Then she stopped and frowned. "Hold on; you told me before that a cape was the one thing no villain could afford to be without."
"Yes, the one accessory no villain can afford to be without," Magus said patiently. "The bottomless pit is the one instrument of torture no villain can afford to be without. Personally, I think you ought to invest in a full collection of instruments of torture, but of course, you know best, even though I've been in this business far longer," he finished sarcastically.
"Well, I'm not really planning on inviting the heroes back to my evil lair for tea, you know."
"And what do you expect to do when they try to break in?"
"I'll sic my robots on 'em! What else?"
"You're still set on those robots, are you?"
"For the last time, I am not going with cat-people!"
"No one said you had to use cat-people," Magus assured her innocently.
She glared suspiciously at him, arms crossed.
"I'm also not using wolf-people, shark-people, bear-people, vulture-people, or mimes!"
Magus looked vaguely disappointed.
"You won't even give the mimes another thought? They do have enormous potential for evil…"
"Yeah, so does Martha Stewart, but you don't see me using clones of her as my evil minions," Lucca said dryly.
Magus' brow creased as he considered this.
"You know-"
"I'm not using clones of Martha Stewart!" Lucca hastened to interrupt.
"Fine," he huffed. "Now, come on. I'll show you to your tower of darkest iniquity."
"Hey, hey, hey! Don't make it sound like a brothel! It'll look enough like one, with the velvet curtains," she finished, eyeing the load of fabric loathingly.
"What do you mean? It'll add a touch of elegance!"
"Because, of course, what could be more elegant that a drafting table and a mecha-building space?" she murmured. "The velvet will compliment the blueprints pinned up all over the walls perfectly."
"Will you quit complaining?"
"Y'know," she said thoughtfully, leaning against the bookcase nearest to the door. "It suddenly hits me that I don't know what else I'm doing in this place. I mean, I've got curtains, a drafting table, and lots of empty space for a work area, right? But I get this feeling that it's not going to be that easy."
"Why do you get that feeling?" he asked with a smirk, leaning up against the bookshelf next to her.
"What is that easy with you?"
He chuckled.
"Well, in any case, you're right. Empty workspace aside, we'll definitely have to do something else with all that space. What I'm thinking-"
"Hey, isn't this my room to plan?"
Rolling his eyes, he turned to her.
"Have you got any ideas?"
"Nope, not a one," she replied cheerfully, grinning up at him. "The only swatches I picked out were the red one and the black one."
"I thought as much," he grumbled. "Completely ignoring the wide range of hues in both colours. Alright, then. I think we'll go with furniture in a deep wine red."
"What furniture?" she asked suspiciously.
"Just a few simple pieces," he assured her. "A couch, perhaps an armchair or two, a few simple cushioned chairs, a coffee table in the middle – maybe in a rich mahogany or something similar – and two little side tables. We'll be able to forego lamps, since we'll have torches. But you'll want to put up a curtain to divide your work area from your rest area."
"Hold on; I hope you're not getting the impression that I'm spending all my time here."
"Of course not," he scoffed. "Why would I inflict that upon myself?"
"Then why bother spending a bunch of money decorating? Why bother, even if I was going to be here a lot?"
"What, are you planning to sit on the floor during your lunch breaks?"
She blinked in confusion.
"Lunch…break? What is this 'lunch break'?"
"Oh, right. We're talking about the girl who goes for eight hours straight without stopping for coffee every now and again, let alone bothering to check a clock. Let alone bothering to look up once in a while."
"Hey, you've gotta admit," she grinned up at him, "it's an effective way to work. I get tons more done than people who spend all day glued to the clock."
"That's not the point. The point is, you cannot have an evil lair, furnished only with a drafting table and a few sconces."
"Of course not," she agreed. "The sconces are unnecessary. I have a lamp."
"And where are you going to plug it in?"
"I'll put in some wiring."
"No, you will not!" Magus shot back, alarmed. "There is no way I'm letting you run wires throughout the walls of my home, just because you have something against a little touch of elegance!"
"But putting torches, or sconces, or whatever they are, up on a wall that's going to hold all my blueprints – my paper blueprints, by the way – seems a little dangerous. I know you don't want wiring, but would you rather have your entire tower catch fire?"
"If I let you do the wiring, the two might not be mutually exclusive."
"I'm going to ignore that," Lucca said airily, "because I know you couldn't wire a room to save your life."
"Which has surprisingly little impact on my life."
"You're so boring!"
He smirked.
"I'm not as boring as an army of evil robots."
"Hey, leave my guys alone!"
"Don't worry; I've said all I want to say on the topic of your love life."
Lucca pushed decisively away from the wall at that.
"Y'know what? Those robots probably have a lot more personality than you. They're probably better company, too. So if you're going to keep acting like this, I'm just going to go home and spend some time with them."
"Who's stopping you?"
She sputtered furiously for a moment.
"Well…fine!"
With that, she wheeled about grandly, her cape billowing out dramatically behind her, and stalked from the room. The sound of footsteps grew gradually softer.
Magus smirked again, eyeing a small object that lay on the table.
Seconds later, the sound of footsteps began to grow louder again, and Lucca reappeared in the doorway.
"I forgot my book," she explained sulkily, crossing the room and snatching her copy of How to Be an Evil Villain in 12 Easy Steps from the table.
"Now that your plan of leaving in a huff has failed utterly, how about we start drawing up some design sketches for the layout of your lair?" Magus suggested.
Lucca was silent for a moment, considering this. The bastard was trying to distract her from his infuriating words and actions, with the promise of interior decorating! Interior decorating! As if she had any interest in interior decorating! If a more tedious pastime existed – aside from shoe-shopping – she didn't even want to know about it. Interior bloody decorating! Well, to an insult like this, there was only one possible answer.
"Yeah, okay," she agreed with a shrug.
Then she sighed. She'd really have to get around to checking out what had happened to the connection between her brain and her mouth one of these days.
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"You know, Magus," Lucca called back to the rather miffed sorcerer standing behind her, arms crossed and eyes narrowed, "I had my doubts about this place, but I've gotta say, you really knew what you were talking about! It's a little hard to see at night time with just these sconce thingies, but the extra elbow room is fantastic!"
The candles contained in the "sconce thingies" had long since burned low during the seven hours for which Lucca had been hard at work on massive blueprints of her evil robot armies and mechas spread out over the floor, nearly to scale. This period of nearly uninterrupted work had all but restored her mood after the process of decorating, during which she had prayed more than once for the world to end.
While helping Lucca to recover from her less than efficient state of thinking, these seven hours were a large part of what lead to Magus' being rather miffed, although the robot diagrams and mecha diagrams didn't help. He couldn't make heads or tails of what they were, how they would work, or what good they were, and Magus was very much the type who dismissed or condemned what he couldn't understand. This, he would have hastened to tell anyone who had asked, wasn't much.
To merely add to Magus' annoyance with the world in general, he had quickly found that a shadowy, secluded tower lit by candles, a starry night sky, and plans of widespread destruction had a very different effect on Lucca than such a romantic atmosphere should have on any woman. While these factors gave him the urge to focus his attention unwaveringly on his lovely protégé, that same lovely protégé seemed, if the past seven hours were any indication, to be little inclined to focus her attention on anything aside from her work.
"Funny," he grumbled. "I'm beginning to have second thoughts about it."
"And once I get some of my supplies," she continued on cheerfully, seeming to have not even heard him, although whether this was the case or whether she was simply ignoring him was anybody's guess, "I'm sure things'll go even better!"
"So," Magus began slowly, uncrossing his arms and starting forward, "you've managed to spend seven hours on the construction of your little toys—"
"Little?! Each robot is eight feet tall, and each mecha is twenty feet!"
"Fine, then. Your big toys. And you've spent seven hours on them, without any supplies?"
"What can I say?" she murmured absently, carefully measuring an angle with what would have been a normal protractor, if not for all the little extra parts sticking out, attached to springs. "I'm amazing."
"You certainly play up the stereotype of the mad scientist to perfection," he noted thoughtfully, eyeing the overly complex protractor as he drew closer.
Suddenly, she stopped short and turned slowly. She sent Magus, who was now leaning over her shoulder, a suspicious look.
"Hey, you weren't planning on grabbing me and kissing me until I was too distracted to know which end was up, let alone to work on my blueprints anymore, were you?"
"No," he assured her far too innocently, inwardly demanding of the universe in general how on earth women caught onto these things. "Where would you get an idea like that?"
She smirked up at him, eyes alight with humour.
"Come on, Magus. I've been in Rhianwen-fics before. They follow a certain…what's the nice word? Pattern."
"Well, the 'pattern' ends right now."
"Oh," she said rather flatly. "Well, good. While I wouldn't object to a torrid love affair as a concept, I really don't want to make mad, passionate love on top of my blueprints. Problem of paper cuts aside, the pencil might smudge."
"My, my," he groused. "You really know how to kill a mood, don't you?"
She frowned sternly at him over the tops of her glasses.
"What mood? I thought you weren't planning that."
"Of course not," he said rather nastily, stalking over to the couch at the other end of the tower, separated from the workspace by a heavy black curtain that was, just then, drawn back.
"Like I said, I don't have anything against the idea in principle," she said, hopping briskly from the freezing stone floor and joining him on the couch. "Like, if it started raining buckets and a huge thunderstorm started, and I couldn't get home, well, we'd have a set-up right there."
It is likely that Lucca would have continued, being Lucca and thus none too economical with her words, had a brilliant flash of lightning not lit up the tower from the four small, high windows facing each direction, joined nearly simultaneously by a massive clap of thunder. Seconds later, the repeated thud of heavy raindrops striking the windowpanes filled the air.
Magus looked up at the windows, rain streaming down them. Then he looked down at Lucca. Then he smiled a rather evil smile.
"Not bad, hmm?"
"Oh, come on," Lucca scoffed. "Don't even try to pretend that you're responsible for this. You cannot control the weather. It was just lucky timing. Really, really lucky timing," she finished under her breath.
"Of…course it was," Magus said soothingly, with the air of one allowing a very small child to keep believing in Santa Claus, simply because it will make them happy. "Actually, the weather around here does this a lot. All the time, to be more precise."
Lucca rolled her eyes good-naturedly. Then the two proceeded to sit in an uncomfortable silence for several minutes, simply listening to the howl of the unsettlingly sudden wind around the tower and the periodic claps of thunder.
"So…" Lucca finally began.
"So?" Magus prompted.
"It's probably a bad idea to fight a pattern this well-established. You…wanna go take advantage of the set-up?"
Magus considered this for a long moment.
"Well, there are matters to consider. Decency, for example."
"Wait a second," Lucca requested, holding up a finger as she flipped through 12 Easy Steps. "As villains, don't we flout decency with all the glee and defiance we can muster?"
You did that before you took up the business, Magus wisely did not say.
"I think you're right," he did say thoughtfully, uncrossing his arms and sitting slightly more bolt-upright than he had already been. "But villains don't necessarily break vows made to others that they care about."
"Well, I haven't got any of those to worry about," Lucca said ominously, glaring viciously at him. "How about you, Magus? Have you got a wife hiding somewhere around here?"
"Not a living one," he replied carelessly.
"Ah," she laughed. "Bluebeard's chamber. Or I guess, Bluehair's chamber. Well, as long as they stay dead, I don't think they're an issue here."
"I don't think we'll have to worry. So…"
"So?" she prompted.
"Can you think of any other good reasons against it?"
She grinned.
"How about I think about it on the way down to the room you're letting me use for the night?"
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End Notes: Hoo boy, what the heck just happened? I guess this is the result of not giving my characters a plot: they get bored and screw like bunnies. Or…did they?
[Sigh]
Yeah, probably, unless I can think of a really good way out of it.
Oh, well. I think this is a redeemable set-back. Despite the fact that characterization got sacrificed to 'shippiness yet again. I think I've been watching too many action movies. That always happens, doesn't it? No matter what the established characterizations are, the main characters always end up going at it, and usually during the worst possible moment. "The volcano's erupting! You know what this means! Time to get me some!"
Ahem. Anyway, I hope you can forgive this random hook-up enough to keep reading. I promise, we'll get a plot next chapter.