Saying Gattas was mad would be a major understatement. Saying he was furious would also be an understatement. Saying he was livid beyond belief and was prepared to murder the next thing that breathed to close to him? That would describe how he was feeling to a lesser extent.
He pulled out the book he had so masterfully crafted and wrote out furiously,
I KNOW YOU HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH THIS!
I have no idea whatsoever what happened, but I am tensing with anticipation. Or I would be if I could, you son of a bitch!
SILENCE! Your stupid alien accomplice stole my daughter!
You mean MY daughter, you sick bastard? And you mean he liberated her from your tyrannic rule?
SHUT UP!
Sorry, just translating what you were saying out loud. Or, you know, not.
YOU PIECE OF SHIT!
Funny, I usually say that to you. What did you do to her, by the way?!
Just made her into the perfect daughter.
FUCK YOU!
Oh? You are upset she is now perfect?
No, I'm translating sick, creepy, kidnapping lunatic-ese into a language I can speak. And "made her into the perfect daughter" translates into "I transformed her into something that made her miserable, is completely horrifying to think of, and once I find out what exactly it is will make me want to kill you even more than I already do. And I already want to choke you to death so badly right now.
SHUT IT!
Yeah, funny thing about that, I don't care anymore what you do to me. You cannot make me shut up, even though I can't speak except by writing. You hurt me and my family and you will pay for it, I'll make sure of that. At the moment, all I can do is annoy you, but once I'm human again, I will kill you as painfully as possible.
When... you're human again? HAHAHAHAHAHA! You managed to cheer me up!
What? You don't think I'll become human again?
Not at all. See, I managed to put in a fail safe in my transformation spells that made it so no matter what, it will be impossible for anyone to make any of you human again, except for me of course, when I want to bed my wife.
FUCK YOU, YOU PIECE OF SHIT! LEAVE MY WIFE AND SON ALONE! At least my daughter isn't anywhere close to you anymore! And never say never, I can't ever give up hope on becoming human again. I won't give up! And you better remember that one day you will find yourself being slowly choked to death by me.
I'm absolutely terrified. The book is going to kill me.
Laugh all you want, but I can promise you I will have the last laugh. Don't underestimate me or that guy who helped me. We'll both kick your ass.
Gattas snarled and slammed the book shut. That insolent weasel! This guy was more trouble than he was worth...
... (^0^) ...
"So... you wanna draw some more?"
"...no."
"Play some more air hockey?"
"...no."
"Video games?"
"...no."
"Try on some more clothes?"
"...no, I like the ones I have on. Thank you for buying them, by the way."
Alit was sitting next to the doll, who was wearing a white ancient roman styled shirt and dark-blue leggings with simple slip-on shoes. She appeared very content with her new apparel with the fancy dress she had been wearing having been used as a bunched up ball for an impromptu game of trash can basketball and then was set on fire and roasted marshmallows around, even if neither of them ate them since Alit didn't want to eat them when she couldn't.
It had been a few weeks since Alit had rescued her and she still wouldn't smile. She was walking fine now but couldn't play any sports because she could break or swim because she would sink. She also didn't seem to be terrified of him anymore. He wanted to go back and rescue her dad and brother and try to find her mother, but Gattas had upped the security and Dumon was still trying to find a way around it.
"Do you want to meet the other emperors?" Alit asked.
She hesitated, then nodded, "...I guess."
Alit 'grinned', "Great! Let's go, Princess!" he carefully picked her up and she wrapped her arms around his neck as he teleported away. They arrived in the emperors' throne room and the emperors looked over at them. The doll glanced at them, then buried her face in Alit's cloak. Merag teleported from her place beside Nasch's throne in front of Alit and the doll.
"Hey, sweetheart," Merag cooed softly, "How are you doing?"
She peaked out at Merag and said softly, "...aside from being a doll, okay."
"That's good, he's been taking care of you?" Merag asked.
The little girl nodded, "...yes. He's been playing games with me."
"Yeah, playing games is the only thing he's good at," Misael snorted.
"Lay off!" Alit complained.
She looked over at Misael, still keeping close to Alit. "...is he not good at anything else?"
"He's just being a jerk, I'm good at lots of things!" Alit complained.
"Sure you are," Misael rolled his eyes.
Alit growled softly at him. "Shut up!"
"Hey, so this is the kid?" Gilag asked. She looked up at him, then squeaked in fear and buried her head back into Alit's cloak.
"I think she's scared of you," Alit commented.
Gilag winced, "Sorry, kid. I may look scary but-"
"-really he's just a giant fluffy teddy bear with an obsession with a human pop singer," Misael finished, making Gilag scowl at him.
She looked back up at Gilag and hesitantly held out her hand for him to shake. "...hi."
Gilag 'smiled' and shook her hand while Merag sighed, "She is so adorable! Mind bringing me along next time you go to beat the crap out of that jerk?"
"Unfortunately, that is not possible," Dumon stated, "It will be difficult enough to get one person in, two would not be able to get in without complications."
"Shame," Merag muttered, "I would love to give Gattas a piece of my mind. And by that, I mean kill him."
Nasch teleported next to Alit and looked at the doll. "You look like you're settling in well," he commented.
She nodded. "It's better than living with him."
"Anything is better than that, from what I've heard," Misael commented.
Nasch looked sad. "Believe me, kid, you are never going back there."
"I know," she said, "Red promised and I actually believe him."
Nasch looked at Alit. "Red, huh? She still hasn't told you her name?"
"Nope! And I'm keeping true to my word and not telling her mine," Alit 'grinned'.
"Jyan, jyan jyan~!"
Nasch groaned, "No, not him. Oh dear God, not him."
"W- who?" she asked shakily.
Alit started to answer but was cut short when Vector teleported uncomfortably close to him. The insane barian looked down at the little girl, who had buried her face in Alit's cloak again. "So this is the little squirt? Aw~ She's so tiny!"
"Keep away from her, Vector," Nasch warned.
Vector feigned hurt, "Aw, but Naschie, I wanna see her! She's adorable! I mean, minus the doll thing."
The doll looked up at him and quietly asked, "Aren't you the insane one?"
"What? So that's what he told you? That I'm an insane psychopath who likes to kill and torture people for funsies?" Vector cried in mock indignation.
"...are you insane?" she asked.
Vector laughed, "Of course I am, kid!"
She trembled and buried her face back in Alit's cloak. Alit glared at Vector. "Stop traumatizing her!" he snapped.
"Aw, c'mon! I was playing! Seriously, what this guy did is messed up by my standards! And that is saying a lot considering I kill people as messily and painfully as I possibly can and without remorse, I torture people with various instruments including knives, glass, carrots, rubber chickens, needles, pill bottles, dog liver-" Vector was cut off when Merag smacked him across the head with a crystal.
The barian queen looked down at Vector. "That'll keep him out for a good two hours at least."
"And this is why it is a terrible idea to piss off Merag," Alit preached as the girl looked down at Vector's unconscious body. Suddenly he felt something tugging at his cloak and he saw a little barian with white skin and black markings similar to Merag's with hair that, except for the green color scheme, was almost identical to Merag's as well.
"Hey Iris!" Alit chirped.
"Hi! Is this that girl?" Iris asked.
The doll nodded. "...hi."
"Hi!" Iris giggled, "Do you want to come down and play with me? Nasch-sama got me a new board game we could play!"
She hesitated, then looked up at Alit. "...can you put me down?"
Alit 'smiled' and set her down on the floor. "Go have fun."
She ran off with Iris to a corner of the room while Alit and Nasch watched them. "Looks as if she is adjusting well," Nasch commented.
"Yeah, except..." Alit trailed off.
"Except?" Dumon prompted.
"Well, she won't smile. She's enjoying herself, but she won't smile. Ever," Alit said.
"That's... sad," Gilag whispered, summarizing everything the others were thinking in two words.
"Incredibly," Merag muttered.
Nasch's eyes narrowed, "I can't help but think of Iris having to go through what she did and that is just pissing me off beyond belief."
"Yeah, I just keep thinking of my little sister from my past life having to go through this atrocity and I want to kill him even more," Alit said softly.
"You had a sister?" Dumon asked.
"And a brother," Alit added.
"Damn... you lost a lot when you died, didn't you?" Gilag asked.
Alit nodded, tears in his eyes, "Yeah, I did. I can only hope the rest of my family's lives were happy."
"That's all any of us can hope, at least the ones that left behind a family to speak of, aka you, Dumon, and Gilag," Merag said.
Alit 'smirked' bitterly, "I'm going to kill that bastard for harming her, you know. She didn't deserve this, she's a great kid. She didn't deserve any of this, none of her family did."
"Alit, we all know that bad things happen to good people. Look at most of us!" Misael cried, "But you need to stop being a pansy and stop talking about murder and actually do it!"
"Oh there we go. The first part was touching, but then it got Misaelian," Alit sighed.
"He does have a point," Gilag added, "You really do need to kill the bastard."
"Yeah, yeah, I intend to. I have a plan this time," Alit said.
"Oh? And what plan is that? Punch everything within arm's reach?" Misael asked sarcastically.
"Piss off! And my plan is to tell him if he calls for back-up again, I'll call the rest of you guys and make it clear that you are all much more powerful than I am," Alit exclaimed.
"Alit, we can't all come through. One being could get in and out without setting off the defense mechanisms, if he hasn't changed that aspect," Dumon explained with a sigh.
"I know that, you know that, he doesn't," Alit said.
Misael looked shocked. "...did you just make an intelligent plan? YOU?!"
"I thought you were giving me a compliment until the second you, which was not necessary, by the way!" Alit snapped.
"Yes, it is," Misael retorted.
"Oh just shut up," Alit pouted. He looked over at the doll and Iris, who were still playing their board game. He 'smiled' again, "It's good that she made a friend."
"I'm just glad that Iris is playing with someone her own age who looks and acts the age that she appears. And that little girl fits both criteria," Nasch said.
Merag 'smiled'. "They're so adorable together!"
Alit nodded. "Yeah, they are. She looks so happy!"
"I'll take your word for it," Gilag muttered, "She isn't smiling at all."
"Well, she never does, as I said," Alit sighed, "She's just... too hurt right now to crack a smile."
"It's not healthy for a child to never smile," Dumon stated.
"I know, I know, but we can't make her," Alit said.
"True, but for now just keep her happy and comfortable. We want to give her the childhood she should've had, a happy one, not a nightmare," Dumon reminded.
"I know that! And I try to spend as much time as possible with her! So she's not alone like she probably felt like she was for all that time. And I'll get her whatever she wants no matter what," Alit promised.
"You sound really attached to her," Merag commented.
"Well, I am. I can't help it," Alit shrugged. He leaned back and watched her play with Iris contentedly.
... (^0^) ...
Inside of his mind, a man sighed. Being a book was awful. No matter how many years he had spent as one, it never got any easier. And knowing the world had changed while he remained immobile and unable to interact with anything... it was almost unbearable.
Honestly, he had three comforts nowadays. One was the vague promise that the alien he had befriended would manage to find a way to turn him human. The second was that his family, excepting his oldest son, was alive, but that had its monkey's paw. They had been tortured beyond belief and he was terrified even dreaming what that bastard had done to them. The third was his daydreams of what he would do that son of a bitch who had harmed him and his family and annoying that bastard in the mean time.
He often tried to move, but of course he was never able to. Not that he would know if he had succeeded since he couldn't feel anything, except for that light tingling sensation from when that other alien had preformed an energy scan on him and the intense pain from when the bastard had made him reveal all his conversations.
This book may be his body now, but it didn't feel like it. He was in the worst prison possible. He couldn't move, see, smell, feel, or hear anything at all! All he could do was think and talk, but even that wasn't really talking. He felt like he was almost floating in dark nothingness.
All he could do was wait. Thankfully patience was a virtue he had mastered over the years spent as a book. Just wait, you damn bastard, he whispered, knowing his words appeared on the page, Just wait until I get out of here. You'll be sorry you ever messed with me or my family. Especially my family.