Disclaimer: Whatever happened, neither Suulsa-Krii nor Huntress is responsible for it.
A/N: Huntress and I are writing this on the eve of May the fourth. You may be aware that the end of the world is projected for tomorrow when the planets align. We've planned for this eventuality. We know what we're gonna do. We know when and how. We know where our towels are. Anyways, my point here is that I'm not sure if anyone will actually read this or if you'll all be too busy evaporating into a puff of ozone. Anyhow, we've decided to update since it was fun writing the first on the spur of the moment and because the reception of it wasn't too bad. Not too bad at all. To answer some questions...
To everyone who pointed out the "Beatleguise": Why did we misspell it? Well, we didn't know how to spell it, googled it, and chose the one that looked best. Guess we were wrong.
To ElvenPirate41: We (Huntress and I) talked about Zaphod's heads, and decided that he must have had some sort of personal cloaking device to go to the party, at least how Arthur tells it. Remember Zaphod's great grandfather from the little seance they had in the book? He was two-headed too. And Ford seeing Zaphod after years was surprised to see Zaphod's third arm, but his second head didn't seem so unusual. It seemed to us it would appear to be trait of his species. Also, in "Mostly Harmless", the party story's changed a bit and in Trillian's version of what happened, Zaphod was hiding his other head under a parrot cage and a cloth.
To Scanner-Cat-Scat: We talked about time lines too. It was decided that we'd have a minor little AU (should be one of incredibly few in our fic. We're not foreseeing anymore) in order to keep the particular sort of conflict shown in this chapter a bit more plausible. (i.e. the pseudo-sibling rivalry between Zaphod and Ix being based on the fact that Zaphod used to be the youngest in the family and an only child and so spoiled rotten by everyone around him until Ix appeared out of the blue from some other planet and started taking up people's time and attention).
Don't worry froody people...there's method to our madness! Hoo-boy that was a long A/N...on to the story!
Chapter 2 ("Matter/Anti-Matter")
There are many theories regarding the behavior of opposites. Unfortunately, no one agrees on which one actually works. The main problem with that is that in what is supposedly a structured universe there cannot be two ways a thing can act in a single situation. For a law to be true, it must be universally applicable.
This makes opposites such continually complex ideas that they must be first introduced at the earliest point in education.
The two main governing theories are that opposite forces attract and the other is that birds of a feather do the same thing as the opposite forces. All the people in the second group are telling the first group, "But what about matter and anti-matter? Mix an ounce of those together and you get an explosion like 300 pounds of dynamite (Or like five pounds of the saliva of a Bendofian Ultra-Camel). Those don't attract. I'd even say massive explosions are rather unattractive." to which the first group retorts "But what about two positively charged ions? Good luck getting them to flock together. And what's all this rubbish about birds?"
One of the most interesting things about interactions on the infinitesimal level is how they mirror interactions on the personal level. When two beings with clashing personalities are placed in a room, it can never be quite predicted if they'll subscribe to the first or second theory.
The introduction between Ix and his cousin Zaphod looked like matter and anti-matter getting to know one another personally. The first trouble came the very day they met. From the spaceport, they went to the house where Zaphod lived with his parents and that was it. He had no siblings. He had reams of cousins, but he was by a considerable bit the youngest, or had been until Ix showed up. Ix was about four going on five and Zaphod five going on six.
The first thing Zaphod did when it was made clear that Ix was staying on the planet and probably in the neighborhood was show him around his room.
"You see this, Ix?"
"My name's not Ix!"
"What is your name, then?"
Ix tried to tell Zaphod his original Betelguesian name, stuttered, hesitated and trailed off. It was a complex language and it was relatively common for children not to get the hang of their names for several years after they started figuring out how to say everything else.
"Ix it is, then." Zaphod said, sounding very conclusive on the point.
"But my name's not–"
"You see this bed?"
"Yes."
"Well, it's my bed. See this chair?"
"Yes."
"It's mine too. And see the rug? And the pictures on the walls? And drawing stuff? And all the toy boxes? And everything in them? And the game-computer? And the mini Tri-D? Those are all mine too."
Ix goggled.
His father (he had no memory of his mother) had made a living monitoring a computer that only done anything once and then exploded with the rest of the planet. The pay had been on the lower side of modest and so they'd lived in a smaller house without nearly so much stuff in the whole thing never mind in his bedroom. They'd been the only branch of their family living on that planet and hadn't had the same privilege Zaphod had. Namely, he hadn't been the youngest in a wealthy, localized extended family, having about eight of ten aunts and uncles and a number of cousins only a corporate accountant for the legendary Magrathea could calculate all living in the area, all of whom were quite older than him. This had resulted in Zaphod getting all the advantages of being the youngest in a family, but multiplied exponentially. In short, the young Zaphod had been given new toys several times a week, taken to exciting places, been given pretty much everything he asked for, had never been forced to eat his vegetables, and been constantly told what a great boy he was (his father had sometimes raised concerns that all the attention might have a negative effect on the boy's personality when he was older, but never did anything about it). In even shorter, Zaphod was a touch spoiled.
Ix reached out a careful hand to Zaphod's computer.
"Can I play..?"
Zaphod pulled Ix's hand back. Zaphod was also a touch greedy.
"No, it's mine! I just told you that...guess two ears isn't enough to hear well."
Ix looked around again and smiled, spotting a small metallic toy on the table beside Zaphod's drawing things.
"I have one of those!"
He picked up a toy Guide off the table and started looking at it. Zaphod took it back.
"Well, mine's better! Besides, I have two."
"How is it better? They're the same..."
"Because one's mine."
"Oh..."
By the time Ix and his father had found their own place to stay several days later, the relationship had only gotten worse.
The problem was that Ix and Zaphod were different. Zaphod always loved to interact with people, especially if they were telling him how great he was, Ix sometimes liked some alone time. Zaphod was loud and energetic, Ix was a comparatively quiet boy. Zaphod had been quite a few places for his age, Ix had been to a total of two planets including the one that blew up. Zaphod wasn't always in trouble but would have been if the rules had applied to him in his family. Ix got into trouble, but a lot of it was Zaphod's fault.
But a really large part of it was that Zaphod was competitive, largely because he didn't often lose. But with Ix's appearance, he felt he was losing some ground. Not only was Ix younger than he was but also was getting all the attention just because his bloody planet blew up.
Outside of the conditions under which they met, Zaphod had nothing against Ix.
So it was nothing personal when he went to Ix one day and said, "Do you want to play a game?"
"Alright!" Ix readily had replied, hoping he would get to play with one of his cousin's exciting toys.
"Great. We're going to play with this." Zaphod pushed a large cardboard box he'd been dragging over to Ix.
Ix looked disappointed.
"But I thought.--"
"Nope."
"Couldn't we--"
"No we couldn't."
"But it's--"
"No it isn't."
"Okay." Ix sighed. "What are we playing?"
"Just get in the box."
"In the box?"
"Yeah. And I close it and–"
"I don't want you to shut me in a box!"
"But that's just half the game! Then I write something on the box and move it, and you have to try and guess what I wrote and where I put the box without getting out."
Ix was suspicious. But agreed.
Had the rules applied to Zaphod, he would have gotten in trouble for putting his cousin/brother in a box, writing "To: Squornshellous Zeta. Contents: One Mattress (not Ix)" on it, sealing it shut, and putting it out for the postman to find.
Another, but less dialogue-intensive incident involved Zaphod's trying to sell Ix on a street corner.
The turning point came quite some time after this. It was just over a year later and Ix was almost done being five (phrased to spare you from unnecessary rhyming) and Zaphod almost seven. His attempts to get rid of Ix had not subsided, though they hadn't increased: there is a certain ceiling level on everything, even on "sibling" rivalry and they were at it.
Zaphod tried to take Ix into the woods and accidentally lose him, allowing the younger boy to be raised by a herd of wandering nensels– rather like deer, but taller and with green skin under their fur. (No one's quite sure why this is, but some scientists who supposedly study this sort of thing claim it's so the nensels can perform photosynthesis when food is short and as a trick to entertain other animals at parties.) And besides: a visit to the "haunted" house in the woods sounded like a good idea on that day.
The woods fan for quite a ways around a single house a ways from Zaphod's and quite a ways from where Ix and his father were living. After the woods, there was a rather imposing drop. Most of the local children considered this house, in the middle of nowhere compared to the ones around it, to be haunted, or at least inhabited by a madman. But then this is a natural assumption given a house in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees with a sheer drop in the back yard.
The one who lived in this house was in no way violent at all, actually, and was one of the best confectioners in the galaxy of lightly sugared Betelgeusian Wood-Boring Grub, which is fist-sized, unpleasantly wet, and possessed of transparent skin that allows one to see all the profoundly unappetizing inner workings of the insect. They taste vaguely like Vaseline and toothpaste. Chewing on a lightly sugared one is not unlike chewing on an elastic band that had been coated in shampoo and Listerine.
"Come on, Ix, it'll be fun! Don't you wanna see the haunted woods?"
"No. Not really."
"Sure you do! Come."
Zaphod led Ix down a disused driveway and into the tall grasses. It was winter, but there was no snow, and all the grasses and thick brambles were grey and lifeless. Zaphod was wearing a brownish coat and dark green clothes, planning on blending in with the plant life. He had, of coarse, neglected to inform Ix of the plan, and let Ix wear his usual: red something and blue something else. In this case, red shirt and blue pants. He stuck out like a hyena in a small-town postoffice.
Dead plants crackled and complained under the weight of their foot prints, though being so young the weight was rather insignificant. The debris was just bad-tempered and looking for something to complain about. The close brambles and grasses gave way to squelching marshes of wet leaves. The edge of the cliff was coming into sight. So was the grub-sugarer's house.
It was average, if slightly dilapidated, for a house on Betelgeuse. It was greyish on the outside, and had some windows with reinforced glass and a door that opened by splitting down the middle and sliding open to either side. It was tapered on the ends and around the sides and on the whole looked a bit like a throat lozenge, except flat on one side. The house was surrounded by some flat, mowed grass. Ix and Zaphod went wide around the open lawn and skulked through the woods and mud to the unfenced backyard.
"Why do we want to do this Zaphod?"
Zaphod shrugged.
"Dunno. Seems like fun. Besides, wouldn't it be cool to see what's in the backyard of this place?"
"Uh..."
"Yes. Yes, the answer's yes."
"Oh. Alright."
They slunk around until they were hiding in a ditch with the drop to their backs and the back of the house to the front. Zaphod got ready to bolt through the woods, leaving Ix lost in the brambles and woods and swamp and in the back of a supposedly haunted house. He lunged his weight forward to run in an unexpected direction then stumbled, tripping hurridly back into the briar-ditch.
The one they didn't know cooked grubs stepped out of the house carrying an axe. (If you're reading this on earth, it's probably not the axe you're thibking of. None of that mucking about with cumbersome wooden handles and heavy iron heads. These axes were had visible-energy heads with light alloy handles. It was much easier to heft and chop with and was able to fulfill all the possible uses anyone might care to put it to.) He was less then fifty meters in front of them, and for the moment couldn't see them. Ix and Zaphod gasped. If they moved the man with an axe (though he was harmless, they didn't know that and it doesn't matter what planet their from, children's imaginations run even faster than their owners).
The man with the axe gathered a large pile of wood. If they wanted to try and risk waiting and hoping they weren't discovered, they'd be there until after nightfall. And days on Betelgeuse were pretty long. For a moment, it looked like they wouldn't have to worry about it: it looked like he was going to look at the ditch and discover them.
"No, no, don't look." Zaphod muttered. "Nothing here but us nensels, and we're over there somewhere."
"Sway-oo, sway-oo." added Ix quietly, imitating a nensel. He was smiling. Actually seemed to be enjoying himself. Showing a bit of a taste for excitement.
There was only one thing for it: they had to bolt. And, Zaphod hoped, leave Ix in the lurch. Suddenly, Ix spoke up.
"I'll run out and distract him, you run on past me. Then you distract him and I'll run past you, and then you run past me again. We keep doing that until we get all the way across the field and back into the thick woods."
Zaphod nodded. He had to admit. It was a good plan.
Ix dashed out, waving his arms and shouting.
"Your sweater is on fire!"
Zaphod saw his opportunity and shot out past him, kept running. He was going to keep running and just leave him, but stopped. Zaphod had never had a very strong conscience. But sometimes it acted up. He hated it because it usually spoiled his fun, but it did. And it was doing it then. He stopped, shouting loud enough to get the axe man's attention as Ix ran like hell past him.
"I am slowly becoming a mattress!"
And he ran as Ix began to shout.
"Is that your hair or are you wearing a bird's nest!"
And Ix ran.
"Were you soiled by an Arcturian Megadonkey!"
And Zaphod ran.
"I've met bugs smarter than you!"
And Ix.
"They're nicer to look at too!"
They'd made it across the field, leaving in their wake a perfectly harmless and extremely confused grub confectioner. He shook his head and went back to cutting wood. Not that he had any archaic wood-burning devices. He just liked cutting wood.
Some time later, Ix and Zaphod arrived at Zaphod's house. Zaphod was deciding on whether or not he would continue his efforts to get rid of Ix and decided that, no, perhaps he wouldn't. Ix had been useful back there, and he clearly knew how to have fun.
Zaphod decided he could use someone who could be almost as damned fun as he was.
"Hey, Ix. Wanna come up to my room? We can watch some Tri-D or play on my computer or something."
Ix smiled, rather broadly.
"Really?"
"Yeah. Let's go before I change my mind."
The two thumped upstairs making a sound like a herd of Arcturan Mega-horses. They watched some Tri-D. They played a new game on Zaphod's game-computer. Ix won. Zaphod grumbled about it, then forgave him.
They'll probably never act like magnetism. But that's okay: a little "sibling" rivalry can keep things interesting. Agreeing can be down right dull at times.
At least they weren't matter and anti-matter anymore.
A/N: Well, that's the end of chapter two. Little time-jump in the middle there, not bad. Bigger time-jump in the next chapter. Personally, I liked the first chapter better. I think this one might be a touch boring. Our point was to introduce Zaphod as a character (and why such an ego when he grows up), Ix more-so and introduce the root of why they spend so much of our fic arguing about things.
Anyways, stay hoopy, all you cool froods! ;) Suulsa-Krii and Huntress out.