Chapter 8

It was a bright, mild, beautifully sunny morning, an indefinable freshness lingering in the air after the thunderstorms of the previous night. The scent of fresh flowers wafted through the air, filling everyone who happened to be out and about with an undeniable sense of joy at merely being alive to appreciate such a morning.

That was outside.

Within the dark, foreboding stone walls of Magus' castle, conditions were less jolly and sunshiny. Indeed, one might even say that they were decidedly icy, tense, and uncomfortable.

Lucca stole a careful glance at Magus over the top of her coffee cup when she was fairly certain that he wouldn't be looking at her. Even something as small as letting him see her looking at him might set him off right now…

"What?" he snapped.

She sighed. Apparently, she hadn't been careful enough.

"Nothing," she replied hastily, taking another sip of coffee.

He rolled his eyes and made a disgusted face.

Patience expired, Lucca slammed her coffee cup down on the table.

"It's not my fault, okay?! The damn zipper got stuck!"

Despite his obvious annoyance, Magus smirked wickedly.

"I'm sure I could have gotten them off of you another way."

She gave him a foreboding glare.

"I spent four hundred gold pieces on those stupid pants," she pointed out. "There's no way in Hell I'm letting you decimate them by ripping them off of me, just because you haven't touched a woman in…how old are you again?"

"That is not true," he growled.

"I already told you, Flea doesn't count as a woman," Lucca said boredly.

"Stop that!"

"Hey, at least we've got a dialogue going. That's a start."

"Hmph. Well, what now?"

Lucca glanced from side to side uncomfortably.

"You…uh…got a stitch-ripper around here?"

Magus frowned.

"A stitch ripper would be…?"

"A little doo-hickey used to remove stitches from sewn clothing? Most likely to be used when you sew a seam in the wrong place, or when it comes out crooked or something," she replied, annoyed.

"Oh. The little hook thing?"

"Yes, Magus. The 'little hook thing'. So you have one?"

"I think so. Why?"

Her cheeks reddened slightly.

"I'll need to borrow it."

"Why?" he asked, honestly bewildered.

"Well…to get out of my pants. Call of nature, you know…"

"Oh, so you can rip them, but I can't," he scoffed, crossing his arms.

"I'm not planning on ripping them! I'm taking them apart at the seams, at which point I will take them home and ask Mom to sew them back up for me. What?" she finished suspiciously as a devious smirk crept onto Magus' face.

"If you're using the stitch ripper to get out of your pants, that means you'll be out of them."

She laughed.

"Very good, Magus. Brilliant deduction."

"I thought you were supposed to be the smart one," he groused. "That also means that we'll be able to…continue what we started last night."

"You mean, my supplies are here?!" she asked excitedly. "Cool!"

"Your supplies are not here," he bit out. "But. You will be out of your pants, which may aid in something else that we started last night. Do I have to draw you a diagram?"

Lucca pondered this carefully.

"No, thanks. I somehow get the feeling you can't draw, and if I see your take on what we look like naked, it would probably get me immediately out of the mood."

"Oh, so you've figured it out."

"Yeah, I knew what you were talking about right away," Lucca said easily. "It's just so much fun to tick you off."

"Fun for you, maybe."

"That's the important thing," she informed him airily.

"Oh, shut up," he grumbled, rising from the table. "I'll go find the stitch ripper."

As he departed from the room, Lucca grinned widely.

"Things are lookin' up!"

"You know, something just occurred to me," Lucca said slowly several hours later, drawing the bed sheet up over sweat-drenched skin starting to cool in the chill air of the room.

Propping himself up on one arm, Magus watched her curiously.

"Go on," he prompted.

"I don't have any pants to wear home now."

Magus rolled his eyes, and then opened his mouth to tell Lucca that she was a stupid idiot, a needless worrier, a big cootie-head, and all those other nice things that little boys say to little girls when they're trying to pretend they don't like them, despite the fact that he had made his 'liking' of her fairly clear; after all, Magus had something of a nasty tendency to miss a step occasionally.

Then, as his expression changed to one of deep consideration, he flopped back to the sheets, and moments later, after having a narrow escape involving a fly and his gaping-open mouth, he shut it.

Several more moments later, he turned to Lucca again.

"You make a definite point. Ordinarily, in this situation, I would just suggest that you go directly home, and very quickly, but dammit, no one else is going to see my…uh…student without her pants!"

She delivered a death-glare even more effective for lack of her glasses.

"And just how many of your 'students' have you taken to bed?" she demanded hotly.

"All of them," he replied carelessly.

Then, just as he had begun to see his life flashing before his eyes in the face of wrath of woman finally told the truth about this sort of rather important thing, he continued with a smirk.

"After all, you're the first student I've ever taken, and I've clearly taken you to bed."

After one more suspicious glare, Lucca put down the pillow she had been brandishing in a manner that made the sheet slip away from her upper half and thus distracted her illustrious mentor quite effectively.

"Geez, Magus, as I recall it, I was the one dragging you off to the sack," she cackled, grinning wickedly as she snuggled into the pillow and dragged the sheet back up.

"Yeah; after I forcibly removed your pants, which are now in several pieces."

"Oh, you say it like it was an accomplishment! If you hadn't found the stitch-ripper, I'd still be stuck in those damn things, doing the frantic gotta-potty dance."

"You know, Lucca," Magus said pointedly, "it takes a lot to kill the libido of a man when there's a naked woman in bed right next to him. Still, a comment like that will just about do it."

"Just about?" she repeated, grinning.

He returned her grin with one of his own, only slightly more predatory, and then, in one quick motion, flipped her back down to the mattress, pinning her by her shoulders.

"Just about."

Meanwhile, in a dark cave somewhere else entirely, two shadowy figures pored over a delivery report that the shadowy figure clearly of lower rank, if the lesser degree of menace in his shadowiness was any indication, had stolen upon being ordered to do so by the shadowy figure of higher rank and greater menace.

Finally, after several moments of perplexed silence, the lesser shadowy figure turned to the greater shadowy figure in the light of the flickering torches on the walls.

"Whaddaya think this means?"

The greater shadowy figure, a tall, imposing shape, face obscured by a long black cloak, presumably glared.

"I might be able to figure it out, if you'd shut up and let me think about it."

"Sorry," the lesser shadowy figure, a smaller shape with face similarly obscured, muttered contritely. "I guess I thought three hours was enough to think about it."

The presumed glare fixed on him intensified. There was just something in his boss' posture that suggested that he was supposed to feel thoroughly chastened.

"So, are you tired of living or something?"

"No," he whimpered, shrinking back.

"Then shut up."

"Okay."

"That's not shutting up."

"Sorry."

"Neither is that."

"…"

"Better."

"Thanks."

"You're really not getting the hang of this."

"…"

"Are you?"

"…"

"Ah, you've learned."

With that, the greater shadowy figure fell silent, leaning forward on the rough wooden table and trying to figure out if he had heard this name before. Certainly, the supplies this person had ordered spoke of them being no ordinary citizen. Seven tonnes of high-quality, light, durable metal, and several other items that he had never heard of and would have been hard-pressed to pronounce (not being a very technical-minded shadowy figure)! What could this Lucca Ashtear be up to?

"Um…"

He turned to presumably glare again at the lesser shadowy figure, who had just piped up nervously.

"What?"

"Does that address seem familiar to you?"

"Hmm…Magus' Fortress. Yeah, I think I've heard of it. Didn't it belong to someone named…uh…oh, geez, the name's on the tip of my tongue!"

The lesser shadowy figure said nothing. He would never have claimed to be particularly bright, but he was smart enough to know that pointing out something so obvious, when his boss had so effectively missed it, would probably result in his wanting for his head. So, instead of working towards his own decapitation, he simply looked nervously down at his fingers, currently twisting themselves into knots.

"Ah!"

The lesser shadowy figure jumped at this abrupt shout from his boss.

"Uh, something wrong?" he ventured timidly.

The greater shadowy figure glared at him.

"Of course not! I just remembered who lived there that I've heard of! Do you remember that Ozzie fellow? Big, green, smelly—"

"That's your grandmother," the lesser shadowy figure said helpfully.

"Shut up! I meant the other big, smelly, green creature we know!"

The lesser shadowy figure looked blank for a moment, and then his expression brightened, nearly lighting up the cave.

"Oh, right! Ozzie!"

"Yeah. He lived in Magus' Fortress with that Slash guy and that Flea chick!"

"Uh, Flea was a guy…"

The greater shadowy figure stared.

"Stop spouting your nonsense!"

"It's not nonsense, boss. I was as surprised as anyone else, believe me. Let's just say I will never, ever, EVER drill a hole in a girl's dressing room again."

"Uh, right. Hey, who did those three work for? They all lived together in Magus' Fortress, and they worked for someone named…uh…damn! I can't remember! It was, like, Margot, or Maggie, or Mavis, or something like that."

"Could…could it have been Magus?" the lesser shadowy figure suggested hesitantly. It might mean his life, yeah, but this could otherwise take hours!

"Yeah! That's it! Good memory! I'll think about reducing the number of lashes you'll get for your next cock-up."

"Uh…thanks," the lesser shadowy figure said, blinking in bewilderment and resisting the urge to scratch his head in the same. Damn, but he worked for the most unpredictable man in creation!

"Magus, eh?" the greater shadowy figure cackled. "I wonder what that old boy could be up to. Last I heard, he had gotten into heroing."

"Such a tragedy," the lesser shadowy figure sighed.

"But these deliveries make me wonder…unless he's building some sort of crime-fighting fortress, which frankly doesn't seem like him, this could very well mean he's back."

"Magus is one of us again?!" the lesser shadowy figure gasped, eyes wide, shiny, and adoring, and hands clasped.

"But the deliveries weren't in his name. I wonder who this Lucca fellow is…"

He pondered this for a moment, a hand to his chin, before his head snapped back up.

"Go use the Viewing Portal of Mysterious and Unexplained But Likely Mystical Origin to a good, clear view of that fortress! Then come back here and give me a full report. I want to know exactly what he's up to."

"Right away, sir," the lesser shadowy figure agreed, scuttling away.

His minion gone, the greater shadowy figure passed the moments the way all great evil masterminds do: he pulled a deck of cards from the front pocket of his long, black robe and began a game.

"Black seven on the red eight," he was muttering, when he heard the footfall of his underling returning.

He hastily snatched up the cards and tucked them away. Then he began drumming his fingers together and laughing a laugh of studied evil glee.

"This could very well mean…the end of all life as we know it! Brought about by us! Muahahahahaha!"

"Uh, sir?" the lesser shadowy figure called as he stepped back into the room of the surprisingly large cave where his master sat, rocking back and forth on the back legs of his chair, drumming his fingers and plotting.

The greater evil mastermind looked up, manufacturing as much surprise as though he had actually been surprised. He frowned.

"You look a little green. What did you find?"

"Well…first of all, this Lucca Ashtear is a woman."

"Alright…"

"And…uh…you remember when I said I was never gonna drill a hole in a woman's dressing room ever again? Well, I'm also never gonna spy on someone in their bedroom ever again. I got a really, really graphic look into Magus' love-life."

"A woman," the greater shadowy figure muttered. "Young?"

"Yes."

"It seems," he said, eyes glinting sinisterly in the light that had been carefully set just for that purpose, "that Magus has taken on an apprentice."

"How do you figure?" the lesser shadowy figure asked, a frown creasing his brow.

The greater shadowy figure made an impatient noise.

"Oh, come on. Whenever a villain takes a cute young woman as an apprentice, he always sleeps with her. It's, like, an established rule. And let's face it: how else could Magus get a chick?"

"Heh-heh-heh…I want to take a cute young woman as an apprentice now," the lesser shadowy figure confided.

"Yeah; me, too," the greater shadowy figure agreed.

The two of them laughed crudely for a moment over this, before the greater shadowy figure sobered.

"Alright, alright. Just…go keep an eye on them. Let me know when the delivery gets there, and then give a full report on what they're doing."

"Of course, my lord."

The greater shadowy figure frowned, watching the lesser shadowy figure go with an expression of deep consideration.

"Hey," he called as the other man reached the door.

"Yeah?"

"Just for the record, I like 'my lord' much better than 'boss'. 'Sir' is good, too, but 'my lord' is my favourite."

"Uh…sure."

End Notes: Another Vaguely Lacklustre Chapter from Rhianwen! Dance for joy! Or…just mill about indifferently. Whichever. :o)

Anyway, I rather like my Shadowy Figures of Greater and Lesser Shadowy Menace, even if they're walking clichés and none too bright. And I hope it wasn't as annoying reading "lesser shadowy figure" and "greater shadowy figure" over and over as it was typing it. :o)

On the bright side, I think we're nearing The Plot again. Yaay!

Oh, well. Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you thought if you've got a second or three. :o)