But, of course, any other Zoalord wouldn't have been caught dead acting so much like… like a kid. That thought made Zektor remember Lord Mirabilis' oddly young-sounding telepathic voice; it also prompted the leader of Team Five to consider that fact in a whole new light.
"Your Excellency? Just how old are you?" Zektor asked, wondering for a moment if he really wanted to know the answer. Lord Mirabilis paused, but the view Zektor had of the back of the Ninth Zoalord's head didn't really let him know if the Overlord did anything else.
"I'll be seven next month," Lord Mirabilis said, squeezing Darzerb's arm.
"Oh, right," Zektor said, firmly squashing his urge to go bang his head against the nearest clear patch of wall that he could find until he had managed to wake himself up from what just had to be a particularly bizarre dream. "Uhm, when were you born, sir?"
"June 17th, 1983," Lord Mirabilis answered as he and Darzerb continued walking.
Yeah, that works out, Zektor thought as he started to notice the world going blurry at the edges. He vaguely heard Lord Mirabilis asking what was wrong with him before everything tilted and went black. When Zektor woke up again, he found Elegen hovering over him, an expression of concern on his face.
"Hey, lover." The leader of Team Five grinned up at his favorite subordinate. "Gimmie a kiss?" They kissed, and Zektor pulled back with a chuckle. "I've got to tell you about this really weird dream I had. We were going to meet the new Overlord for this base—you know, Lord Ingriam Mirabilis? Anyway, I dreamed that he was a kid. But not really a regular kid, you know? I dreamed that he was a kid in an adult's body, however the hell that happened. Go figure, huh?"
Elegen, instead of laughing at the sheer and utter absurdity of what he'd just suggested, just gave Zektor a mildly uncomfortable look. It was almost like he'd known about the dream already, but that wasn't really possible. Elegen was a Hyper Zoanoid, after all. None of their kind could read minds like the Overlords. And why was the bed so damned hard?! Slamming his hand into the mattress beneath him produced the same sound that it did when he hit the metal floors. And the surface under him was cold, really cold. Too cold and too hard to be his nice warm bed in his room, so that meant that he wasn't in bed at all. And that meant that he hadn't been asleep. And that meant… Well, shit.
"You're not going to faint again, are you, boss?" Zancrus asked, slightly snidely.
"I didn't faint," Zektor said, turning to glare at the smallest member of his team. "Hyper Zoanoids don't faint."
"Then what would you call falling down like you did a second ago?" Zancrus chuckled. "You just suddenly decided to take a nap there, boss?"
"Shaddup," Zektor snapped, glaring at Zancrus even as Elegen helped him stand up again.
That was when he noticed that their commanding Zoalord, the guy they were going to be taking orders from hereon out, was laughing again. He was also sitting on Darzerb's lap, but for the moment Zektor decided to ignore that little fact to focus on the more important thing.
"Yeah, yuk it up there, kidlet. It's not like you're ever going to have problems like this," Zektor snapped without thinking.
"Yeah, that's 'cause I'm not stupid," Lord Mirabilis said, still laughing.
When he noticed all of the rest of Team Five, even Elegen, staring at him like he'd just declared himself to be legally insane, Zektor stared back at them. "What?"
"Nothing," Elegen said, after checking to see Lord Mirabilis' reaction. "Nothing at all. Just forget about it."
"Can we go have those waffles now, like you promised?"
"Sure," Darzerb said, patting Lord Mirabilis' shoulder. "But you have to get washed up and dressed before we go down to eat. You're going to have a big day today."
"Sounds fun," the still pajama-clad Zoalord said, almost skipping as he and Darzerb headed for his large bathroom/dressing room.
It was severely Not Normal to see a Zoalord doing something like that, at least when people would be able to see him doing it. So that meant that in addition to making sure that Lord Mirabilis knew what to do and what to expect when he was running this place, they were also going to have to teach him how to act while he was here. It was going to be a little weird, teaching a Zoalord how to act like… well, like a Zoalord. But then, maybe that was why Lord Imakarum had sent all of them out here with him.
Wait, that's Lord Imakarum… Mirabilis. And this guy's… well, only one way to really find out, I guess. "Hey, uhm, kidlet?"
"Yeah?" Lord Mirabilis turned to look at him with those strange, cat-slit eyes of his.
"You wouldn't happen to know Lord Imakarum, would you?"
"Oh, you mean you've met my dad, too? Was he the one that gave you Kaji?"
"If you're talking about that stuffed tiger that I saw you cuddling when you were in bed, then yeah," Zektor said, deciding then and there that nothing else that Lord Mirabilis – this kid, this baby Zoalord – said was ever going to surprise him again.
"How did he sound?"
"What do you mean by that?" Zektor asked, raising his eyebrow at Lord Mirabilis as the six of them arrived in front of his bathroom/dressing room.
"Well, he hasn't contacted me yet," Lord Mirabilis said, looking confused enough that Zektor stepped forward and patted him on the shoulder. "He usually does that when he sends Zoanoids to pick me up. Did he say anything; like maybe he was too busy?"
"No." Zektor shook his head, moving to wrap his right arm around Lord Mirabilis' broad shoulders. "But hey, you know your dad better than I do. He might have just been too swamped to tell me he was swamped. And he did send all five of us to look after you, you know."
"Yeah, you're right," Lord Mirabilis said, grinning as he turned and gave Zektor a quick squeeze around the midsection. "Well, I'm going to go wash and dress up. Wait out here for me, okay?"
"Of course, Your Excellency," Zektor said, just managing to suppress the urge to call Lord Mirabilis "kidlet" again. Once had been bad enough.
Even if the Zoalord himself hadn't mentioned it, it really wasn't proper to call your commanding Overlord something like that. Anyone who knew him knew that Zektor wasn't normally one to put much stock in propriety, even at the times when it was most called for, but this situation was different. In the extreme sense of the word.
Team Five was here to make sure that Lord Mirabilis learned how to run the African Section, and more than that they were here to make sure that the little Zoalord learned how to operate inside Chronos. Or at least, that was the impression that Lord Imakarum had given him, and one that had been thoroughly reinforced by watching the way Lord Mirabilis himself acted. His innocence, while charming in its own way, wasn't going to win him any obedience from the humans. Lord Mirabilis was a bit too… cute to make it as a Chronos Overlord. The humans wouldn't respect him if he kept acting the way he did.
That was why Zektor was going to take care of him, and make certain that the new Overlord of Chronos Africa knew what to do and how to act so that he could make it in Chronos. The rest of the guys were probably going to want to help him with that, and even if they didn't, Zektor knew they'd still be willing to do it.