- Tale Number One: The First Time -

After the Royal Exploration Agency pulled their fat out of the fire, the "adventuring party"(as Eddie liked to call it) retired to the Brown mansion to rest.

At least, that was the idea. Pad couldn't rest. After talking a bit with Eddie, he found himself pacing around one of the mansion's half dozen living rooms, running the battle with the Ancient Father's Cabal over and over in his head.

Three things in particular dogged his mind: the fate of Scarlett and Astell, the suspicious appearance of the Royal Exploration Agency, and his failure to save Melody. He'd tried with all his might to pull her to safety, he really had, but he wasn't strong enough. Much as he hated to admit it, if the Royal Exploration Agency hadn't showed up when they did, Melody would have fallen to her death. That really bugged him. Scarlett and Astell was bad enough, but they'd run off on their own, so as worried about them as he was, he knew that whatever had happened to them wasn't his fault. But Eddie and Melody were his partners; he was supposed to watch out for them. What kind of adventurer couldn't even pull someone back from a precipitous drop?

On top of it all, it had to be the Royal Exploration Agency which had saved them. It wouldn't have been so bad if Eddie or his dad had had to rescue him and Melody, but now they owed their lives to these shady organizational types. Pad didn't like that one bit.

The sound of the door opening interrupted his thoughts, and speak of the devil, there she waltzed in, her broad hat barely fitting through the doorway.

"There you are," she said primly, stepping forward to thrust her proud jaw at his face. "Now listen up, loudmouth! If you ever make a crack about my weight again -"

"Again?" he echoed, nervously backing away from her and scratching his head.

"'You're too heavy...'" Melody mimicked, in a tone of voice not at all like the one he'd said those words in. "That sound familiar, meathead?"

"I wasn't trying to say anything about your weight," he protested. "I was just scared for y-"

"Skip it!" she snapped, strutting forward to close the distance between them. One hand was on her hip, while the other emphasized her points by jabbing her index finger in his face. "I know what you meant, so don't try to weasel your way out of this! I'm not even going to ask for an apology, because dragging one out of an insensitive creep like you wouldn't be worth the trouble. But if -"

"Hey, back off!" He shoved her away from him. "I saved your ungrateful skin, in case ya hadn't noticed! You'd have slipped right off of that edge if I hadn't grabbed ya and held on. You almost died, and it all coulda been avoided if you hadn't been so careless and grabbed onto something like I did!"

"Oh, so I'm supposed to be grateful?" she returned, folding her arms. "Saving each other is something friends are supposed to do for each other!"

"So we're friends now?"

"Yeah, except you're not being much of a friend right now, jerk!"

"I was just sayin' you should be more careful 'cause I don't want to lose you, ya thickheaded bimbo!"

"You... illiterate thug!"

"Fruitcake!"

"Rat's spawn!"

"Tart!"

Melody raised an eyebrow. "Tart? What the heck does that mean?"

"It..." Pad fumbled. "Well, it means you're spoiled rotten and just take it for granted when someone tries to be nice to ya."

There was an awkward pause. They'd gotten so caught up in their argument that they had come within a hair's breadth of each other without realizing it. Their noses were almost touching, and the brim of Melody's hat was sitting on Pad's head, as though sheltering the two of them from prying eyes. The two of them took in these facts together in silence, their hearts pounding not just from the intensity of their argument, but from fear of what would happen next.

"Loudmouth," Melody said weakly.

It was a rather ironic choice of insult, since Pad would say nothing at all for the next several minutes.

Eddie was spending some of his rest time with a walk in the garden. He enjoyed the lush variety of blooms, the soothing quiet, the calming scents. It was good to have a place like this to come back to in between adventures. It gave him a feeling of comfort and peace, and cleansed his palette so that when the next adventure came along, he would enjoy it all the more.

Passing by the back of the mansion, something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. Through one of the windows he saw what looked like two heads, but they were moving in a decidedly strange fashion. And while Eddie was fairly certain that one of the two heads was Pad's, he didn't recognize the other person at all.

Curiosity aroused, Eddie pushed his way through the bushes adjoining the mansion. The window was rather high - at least by Eddie's admittedly low standards - so from this angle, he couldn't see inside at all. The wall didn't have any substantial flaws, so Eddie had to balance himself on the heaviest branches of the adjoining bushes in order to get the height boost needed to grab the window sill. This accomplished, the minimal purchase his feet could get on the wall was all the additional boost he needed to pull himself up to the window pane. What he saw inside, however, nearly made him drop back to the ground.

It was Pad and Melody. Eddie struggled to figure out what they were doing. Are they... making out?

It certainly looked that way. They were on the couch, Melody with her back against the arm pillow, and their mouths were locked together in an apparent struggle to get a death grip on the other. He saw immediately why he hadn't been able to recognize Melody; her witch's hat, which had never before left her head to the best of Eddie's knowledge, lay discarded and forgotten on the floor beside Pad's jacket.

They had their eyes serenely closed, locked together in an embrace that seemed as though it would never end. At one point they stopped for air, but after just a few moments of panting and staring into each other's eyes, they were at it again with just as much intensity as before. It was like they couldn't get enough of each other. Pad was running one hand up and down Melody's back, and cupping her face with the other. Melody had her arms wrapped around Pad's neck, her left hand gripping his hair so tightly that it looked like she was trying to yank it out.

Eddie gawked at the two of them in astonishment for a minute, but he did respect his friends' privacy, and besides, he really didn't want to see that. So he lowered himself to the ground, taking care to land quietly, and scampered away.

Pad came up for air again, and found himself admiring Melody's face. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair even more disheveled than usual, but she looked all the more beautiful that way, those brown strands adorning her face in a lovely mess. As always, her eyes sparkled with warmth.

He moved in to kiss her again, but this time, he was greeted with a hard slap across his face.

"Ow!" He rubbed his jaw ruefully.

"Jeepers creepers, don't you know when to stop?" she demanded, brows knit in an angry expression that was most becoming.

"It's not my fault yer so irresistible," he protested as she climbed off the couch.

"Don't try to sweet talk me. I'm homely and we both know it." She went to the mirror and started fussing with her hair.

"I wasn't sweet talking you. I was just -"

"Shut up!" He noticed that her hands were moving awful frantically in their misguided attempted to straighten her hair. "You're going to be the one to tell Eddie, got that? It's his dad we're out to find, so he should know if there's romantic tension between two members of his adventuring party. And you'd really better stop making wisecracks about me, because I won't hesitate to put you in the doghouse. The elder always said, if you like a girl you've got to treat her right. So -"

"Geez, calm down," Pad cut in. "There's nothin' to get so excited about. I've made out with lots of girls before; it doesn't mean anything. And stop trying to fix your hair; it looks fine."

Melody turned to glare at him. "'It doesn't mean anything'? So you just assumed that it wouldn't mean anything to me, either?"

Pad scratched the back of his head. "Uh... so this was more to you than just having fun?"

"Of course not!" she fumed. "I don't have feelings for you at all! But you should have considered that I might! Didn't it occur to you that you could hurt some poor girl's feelings by leading her on like that!" She practically had smoke shooting out of her ears by now. "Or are you really that thoughtless and insensitive?"

Pad held his hands up. "Well, none of the other girls I've been with got upset like this..."

She slapped his face again.

"Geez louise, you really slap hard, ya know that?" he said, rubbing his stinging cheek. It felt like he'd walked into a running airship propeller.

"That's for giving no consideration to women's feelings," she huffed. She snatched her hat off of the floor, stuffed it back on her head, and marched out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

He stared after her. Dammit. Maybe I shouldn't have said that about it not meaning anything. But she sounded so frantic and upset about us making out, I hadda say something to get her to calm down. And if I told her the truth - that she's the only girl I've ever kissed - she'd think I'm a total loser. Besides, she doesn't feel that way about me, or she wouldn't have slapped me like that just for kissing her.

So why do I feel like such a heel?

Eddie wandered around towards the front of the mansion in a daze. He was weirded out by what he'd seen on more than one level. First of all, he'd never even seen anyone making out before. Sure, his parents had open-mouthed kisses every now and then, but never anything as intense and, well, raunchy as what Pad and Melody were doing. Eddie had never seen passion like that before, and frankly, it scared him.

On top of that, there was the weirdness of the simple fact that it was Pad and Melody doing it. From everything he'd seen up till then, those two could hardly stand each other. And Eddie would know; half his job as leader of their adventuring party was keeping them from tearing each other apart. How did they go so quickly from mutual antagonism to mutual infatuation?

Maybe they've been pretending to fight, to keep people from finding out about them? No, that can't be. Melody MIGHT be that duplicitous, but I doubt it, and Pad? No way. So how in the world did their feelings change so drastically?

As he came around to the front door, Melody popped out and did a little sprint down the steps. She looked rather distracted for a moment, but then she saw him and smiled. "Oh, hi, Eddie! I was just getting some air."

"Er, hi, Melody." It was hard not to stare, knowing that that same face had just a minute ago been cleaning Pad's gums. "I was just, um, going to ask Pad something. Have you seen him around?"

Her smile dissolved into an angry scowl. "I don't want to see, hear, or otherwise spend a minute with that insensitive louse! He's inside somewhere, probably getting his dirty fingers all over your stuff."

"Uh..."

"Look, I know he's your friend, but I can't wait until this adventure is over and I never have to see that creep again."

"But... but you two were just..."

Melody arched an eyebrow. "We were just what?" she demanded.

Did I imagine it? "Um... nothing."

"Hmmph." Melody folded her arms and walked by him. "If he asks about me, tell him I said to drop dead."

Eddie watched her go for a minute, then turned and went inside, closing the door behind him.

What in the world is going on? She's never been on good terms with Pad, but now that I think about it, they've always sort of tolerated each other. They were always arguing, but it was like they didn't mind the arguing. I never thought I'd hear Melody say she can't stand to be around him... and right after she was... well, doing something with Pad that I'd rather not think about.

He could only find one answer to all of this: Love was very, very weird, and completely unlike other well-respected sentiments such as compassion, sincerity, and etiquette.

With this new knowledge in hand, Eddie concluded that he'd better make sure that he didn't wind up in love himself. Fortunately, despite his being an adventurer, he only had a couple romantic prospects to worry about. One of them was close at hand, so he went into the mansion in search of Fiona.

He found her still standing by the balcony. "Hi, Fiona," he called.

She smiled - not too radiantly, to Eddie's relief - and answered, "Hi, Eddie."

"Listen, can I ask you a question? It's... it's sort of like a hypothetical question, only it's not hypothetical; I don't know what it's called." She just nodded. "You know how I saved you from the Ancient Father's Cabal?"

"It was very heroic of you, and not something I'd easily forget."

"Um, yeah. But that doesn't mean the two of us have to fall in love with each other, does it?"

"Well, of course not," she smiled. "That's just a storybook cliche."

"Exactly!" Eddie said, with an emphatic nod of agreement. It really was great that he and Fiona always seemed to be on the same wavelength. He didn't think he'd ever been so happy to find she agreed with him.

"But that doesn't mean we shouldn't fall in love if the urge hits us."

Eddie's eyes grew as big as the buttons on his waistcoat. "Wh-what?"

"After all, we do have so much in common," Fiona pointed out. "We're both pretty soft-spoken and have a strong belief in justice. We both enjoy adventuring, long walks on the beach, and making new friends."

"Wait a second! I don't like long walks on the beach. Ten minutes is good enough for me!"

She shrugged. "Well, close enough. I think we have enough in common to be compatible in anyone's book. If you want to ask me to accompany you to a ball or some such event, I'd be -"

"N-no!" Eddie yelped, taking three long steps backwards. "I mean, I know how it looks, but I'm really not you're type. You like puppies, right? Well, I kicked a puppy the other day when you weren't looking! ...A-anyway, I have to go now! Bye!"

As Eddie ran off, Fiona stared after his retreating figure in perplexity. She had expected him to be a bit embarrassed by her teasing, maybe even blush a little, but to react with what could only be called panic and fear? What sort of sense did that make? She could only find one answer to his bizarre behavior.

"Englishmen are very, very weird," she sighed.