The Kid

Chapter Two: The Annoyance List

--

Now that Alviss had "joined" them, the Chess Pieces' lives were no longer boring.

Not that this was a good thing. Peta had preferred boring. In fact, it was only now that he was realizing just how luxurious being bored had been.

Peta was very fond of the night, for both personal and business reasons. As such, it was his normal practice to stay up late and then sleep thorough morning. But now he was woken every day at the crack of dawn by the ungodly racket generated by the demon hell child, also known as Alviss.

Alviss was particularly ear-piercing that morning. Peta was a bit of an insomniac, so he didn't even try to go back to sleep. He simply got dressed ,then unlocked his door and headed downstairs.

Before Alviss had arrived, Peta had always left his door unlocked. After all, no one in the castle would dare to steal from him. But after opening his door one morning only to have a bucket of paint dumped over his head, he had become more cautious. Spending an hour trying to get green goo out of his long hair had taught him a lesson he wouldn't soon forget. Irritatingly, Alviss had never been punished (Peta had kept the incident a secret in order to preserve his dignity).

Besides, many other Chess Pieces had tried to complain about Alviss, and been ignored by Phantom. The evil brat was still firmly under their glorious leader's protection. Alviss had tried to attack Phantom many times, often with booby traps involving knives and even poison, but he'd yet to succeed once. Phantom persisted in acting like the whole thing was great fun. At this point Peta was almost hoping one of Alviss' traps would succeed, and possibly make Phantom angry enough to dispose of the boy. But there had been no such luck.

Peta himself had managed to avoid being caught a second time, mostly through increased diligence. As he opened the door to the dining room, he easily dodged a piece of sausage thrown in his general direction.

"I hate this food! I won't eat it!" Alviss screamed, hurling the contents of his plate in all directions. Peta groaned inwardly. Every morning it was the same thing.

Phantom beamed cheerfully, apparently unaffected the awful noise. "So, what would you like to eat?"

Alviss narrowed his eyes, straining his imagination for some impossible food he hadn't already asked for. "I want unicorn meat!" he declared.

Phantom smiled. "Right, then, unicorn it is!" Pointing at a nearby pawn he declared, "You there, go find a unicorn!"

"But sir, unicorns are mythical creatures!" the hapless pawn protested.

"I don't care! If they don't exist, go invent one! I don't need pawns that can't carry out simple orders!"

The peon nodded and, head down, trudged towards the exit. As he passed Peta hissed to him, "Just find something and pass it off as unicorn, got it?"

The pawn trudged off gloomily.

Peta surveyed the dining room and was unsurprised to find it a mess. After all, this was the exact same as yesterday.

Phantom cheerfully said to Alviss, "There, that's settled. In the meantime, want some fried eggs?"

"I don't want anything! I won't accept any food from you monsters!"

Peta sighed. He knew from past experience that Alviss' principles would be eroded by lunchtime. It was a pity: it would be much more convenient if the boy would starve himself to death.

Meanwhile, Alviss mimed throwing a plate at one of the pawns, then swiftly turned and hurled it at Phantom. His cleverness did him no good- the Knight's Leader easily dodged. Another plate was smashed against the wall. This would be putting a strain on the Chess Pieces' budget if it weren't for the fact that they just stole everything they needed.

Phantom finally noticed his right-hand man. "Good morning, Peta. Did you see that just now? Aren't his reflexes great? He's going to make a terrific fighter!"

"I concur with your assessment, but I fail to see how this is a good thing, since he's likely to be fighting for the other side."

"But it's all the more fun that way!"

This was one of the more difficult aspects of Phantom's personality. Peta understood his leader's need to work off the boredom of his immortality. He wished that Alviss would realize that the real reason Phantom always indulged him was because he also enjoyed tormenting the lower level Chess Pieces. Then maybe the boy would stop assisting his sworn enemy's sadistic impulses.

--

After breakfast Peta decided to enjoy a bit of light reading. He picked out a book on tactics and headed out to the garden. Thanks to their plant-user Weasel, the Chess Pieces had a very nice garden, full of delicately shaped trees and blooming flowers. Of course, it was also full of carnivorous and poisonous plants. You wouldn't want to eat anything from this garden; food was strictly to be "borrowed" from neighboring citizens.

It was a wonderful day to be outside: sunny, with a nice breeze. But no sooner had Peta settled down and opened his book then a black blur swept past him, upturning his drink all over the pages.

It was no great surprise that this was followed by a shriek of "Alviss, get back here!"

Candice burst into view. "Did you see where he went?" she demanded.

Peta, annoyed at her rude tone of voice, merely glared at her. But she failed to take the hint. "That little monster stole my boulder axe ARM! Or, what will I tell Phantom?" she moaned.

"Why don't you go jump in the pond?" Peta growled.

"Is that where he went? Thank you!" Candice took off at top speed. A few seconds later, Peta heard a splash.

He hadn't meant for here to take him seriously. Well, it wasn't any of his business. Content with that thought, Peta went back to trying to mop up the spill. Honestly, what was the world coming to when he couldn't even enjoy a nice glass of his fallen enemies' blood in peace?

There was another rustle in the bushes, and Rolan appeared. "Peta, have you seen Alviss? I'm supposed to be watching him."

"Well, you're doing a great job," Peta growled.

Rolan frowned worriedly. "It's very kind of you to say so, but I'm afraid I've lost track of him."

"I know that! Can't you tell by the mess that he's been here?"

"He does seem to leave a distinctive trail. Well, Phantom says children should be energetic."

Peta restrained himself from more sarcasm only because it was ineffective. Rolan was too good at ignoring anything he didn't want to hear. "Last I saw he was armed and headed back towards the castle."

"Armed? What do you mean?"

They were interrupted by Candice's piercing shriek. "Help! These lilies are trying to eat me!"

"Oh dear. I'd better go rescue her," Rolan said, running off. In the distance Peta heard the sounds of a full-fledged battle with the greenery.

Well, there went any hope of a peaceful morning in the garden. He decided to head back to his room.

--

In the halls, Peta ran into Phantom. "Good morning, Peta!" his maniacal leader said cheerfully.

"I've been meaning to talk to you, Phantom. How much longer are you going to keep around that--?"

"I've found you, Phantom!" The knights turned around to see Alviss standing behind them.

"Speak of the devil…" Peta thought.

"Now you're going to pay! Boulder Axe!" With that, Alviss summoned Candice's axe and attempted to attack Phantom. "Attempted" was the key word, since the axe was quite a bit bigger than he was.

"Oh, that weapon is clearly too heavy for you. Come on, let's find you another one!" Phantom scooped up Alviss in one arm and the axe in the other and began to carry them both in the direction of the armory.

"Wait, you can't be seriously planning to give him weapons!" Peta cried, but Phantom was long gone. Peta decided to spend the next couple hours in his room. And he wasn't opening the door no matter what he heard going on outside.

--

That afternoon, Peta headed outside for his daily training session. He had a lot of stress to work off, mainly thanks the sheer annoyingness of the people around him.

Third most annoying was Candice. She had always been needy and loud, a combination which Peta disliked intensely, but ever since Alviss had arrived she had gotten worse. She seemed to take Phantom's attention to the younger boy as a personal affront, and constantly tried to compete with him. Mostly this just meant she inadvertently aided Alviss' schemes or just generally made bad situations worse.

Second place belonged to Rolan. The boy was polite, respectful, and helpful, so normally he wouldn't have been annoying at all. But Rolan had decided to imitate Phantom's attitude towards Alviss, treating him like a cute little brother no matter what he did, and this just rubbed Peta the wrong way. Even more irritatingly, Alviss himself had declared that he found Rolan's perpetual smiliness "creepy" and avoided the other boy as much as possible. This meant Rolan never got pranked or attacked. Secretly Peta was rather jealous. He was obviously creepier than Rolan, wasn't he? To make matters worse, Rolan was sharing a room with Alviss, and although Alviss preferred to avoid the Chess Pieces he preferred to avoid Rolan even more, so rather than staying in his room he was constantly running around the castle being a nuisance. In Peta's opinion this meant that Rolan was not only failing to take his fair share of Alviss-generated trouble, he was also making things worse for everyone else.

The most annoying one of all was Alviss himself, for obvious reasons.

To his profound irritation, he could hear the boy now, shrieking, "I don't want to! I don't want to!" And the noise was coming closer.

Phantom appeared, carrying Alviss. "Peta, I want to go out for a while, would you mind looking after him?"

Peta froze with astonishment. With a bright smile, Phantom said, "Well, that's settled. Have fun!"

Really, if it wasn't for the fact that beloved leaders were exempt from the list, Phantom just might beat Alviss for the title of most annoying.

--

After that, Peta's practice session was ruined. He tried to continue, but something about the way Alviss stared at him, as though he were memorizing every one of Peta's moves and planning how to kill him, was just too unnerving. So, Peta tied Alviss to a chair and went back to reading. Then Rolan appeared and lectured him about proper childcare, but at least he took Alviss away with him.

Dinner was also a mess. In an attempt to imitate Alviss, Candice complained non-stop then threw food everywhere. She left crying when Phantom told her she was being immature.

Feeling rather tired, mentally as well as physically, Peta headed back to his room. Unfortunately, when he opened the door a bucket of water fell on his head.

It could have been something worse. The Chess Pieces must be learning not to leave dangerous things lying around where Alviss could get to them.

Judging by the scratches around the metal Peta figured that the demonic hell child had finally figure out how to pick locks. He would have to see about having a bolt installed, or maybe a few traps. In the meantime, he propped a chair under the door knob and went to bed.

It had been another typical day at the Chess Piece's castle.

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Author's Note: Here's my next chapter! Thanks to everyone who asked for a continuation. Now that I have some idea where I'm going with this, the next update should come a little faster. I'm thinking I'll do series of one-shots about Alviss' life with the Chess Pieces as time progresses. If you have any ideas/suggestions, feel free to tell me!