6. Manners

Alright, so today, Alito finally managed to make some recognizable furniture. I have to applaud his dedication, but honestly, I don't think he's really the best guy to be doing this. That is because, first of all, who makes a table and then forgets to make chairs?! I believe I've already mentioned that I really freakin' want a chair, but even without my mild obsession this is ridiculous. No one just stands at a table and eats. But that is apparently what we Barian Emperors are going to have to do for the foreseeable future. And second of all, Alito is still not that great at making smooth surfaces, so the table is covered in spikes... maybe I wouldn't want him to make a chair at this point, anyway.

The point of all this, though, is that we have a table. The girl - Merag, said Alito's Table of Spiky Death was "wonderful," so she whipped up some energy-meatloaf and pretty much ordered us all to gather 'round and have dinner together. I've noticed that whenever Merag is involved, we all dare not refuse her or Nasch will give us the Glare (which I suppose should count for a point - I'll have to remember that for the next time I get it).

Anyhoo, Merag cooked this energy-meatloaf, and it turned out to be revolting. What's the point of having just one girl if she can't cook for s***? Girls are supposed to be good at that stuff, right?

Well, it was gross, but everybody else at least tried to eat it to avoid hurting Merag's feelings. Me, I have no such scruples. And my stomach has thanked me for it, trust me. Mizael the dragon guy was only able to stomach one little tiny piece of it, but he has a frail constitution, I think. Alito and Girag got about halfway through before they had to stop, and Nasch ate two-thirds of it, but that Durbe guy was definitely the winner. He fought through the gag reflex and shoved down the whole thing. He must really like Merag.

Anyway, while we were eating, Nasch and Durbe managed to secure a place at the table where they could plop down their rears on a small crystal outcropping, so they didn't have to stand up. Not gonna lie, I was a little mad about that. But I was waiting for one of them to "move their meat" and "lose their seat," so I didn't really think about counting that for a point.

Anyhoo, I tell you all of that to get to this. While we were "eating," Nasch started doing something that really pissed me off. I don't think he even knew he was doing it, and that's the worst part.

He had his elbows on the table. The whole freaking time.

Now, I don't know why that annoys me, and I don't know if it annoys other people, either. But I just get this FEELING that elbows on the table are frickin' annoying. None of us remember anything before we became Emperors, so maybe it was bad manners wherever the h*** I came from, but honestly, I don't really care. If I see one more purple elbow rub its nobby purple skin against that table I will flip it. Seriously.

7. Numbers

Alright, now this one really ticks me off. It kind of goes along with the point I already made about Nasch's ego, but this one takes it to a whole new level.

Today, I was given a Numbers card. Apparently they're special. Woo hoo. Oh, but it's not just any Numbers card: it's an OVER NINE THOUSAND NUMBERS CARD!

...no, wait, it's just over one hundred. But hot dang, nine thousand would be awesome.

Anyway, the Number that I got was No. 104: Masquerade, which is basically just an over-glorified version of The Tricky with some hoops. Really, it is. It's kinda disappointing, actually.

But the worst part, of course, is Nasch's Number. His is 101, and he freaking knows it. Heck, the guy won't shut up about it. You know what he told me?

"Hey Vector, the closer your Number is to one hundred, the more powerful you are. That's totally why I'm Number One! And you're Number Four."

What?! No. F*** you, man. That is NOT how this works.

Oh, and you wanna know what's even worse? According to Nasch Logic (aka Nonsensical Ramblings), Durbe and Merag are BOTH more powerful than me. Now, unless we're talking powerfully lame or powerfully girly, there is no way that either of those two would ever be better than me in any respect. Ever. Never. No. God, I still can't believe he said that! Who does the pompous prig think he is, Don freaking Thousand?!

You know what, if I ever end up betraying these guys, the first ones I'm gonna take out will be Durbe and Merag. That'll show him.

Surprisingly, though, I'm actually not the only one who's mad at Nasch for this one. Alito and Girag are kinda used to being the bottom of the barrel, so they weren't too upset. But Mizael, man, I thought he was gonna KILL Nasch right then and there. That's because his Number is 107. And let me tell you, if there's anyone here who has an ego bigger than Nasch (or me), it's Mizael. I could've sworn he was going to summon his stupid dragon and go rampaging through the throne room like some insane Trogdor-loving maniac, you know, burninating the countryside, peasants, and thatch-roofed cottages.

Y'know, it's weird actually having somebody on my side, now that I think about it. I don't think I like it.

8. Merag

Okay, so I've already said quite a bit about Nasch's sister, but I need to say this now. She's like some sort of land mine, except the part that actually explodes when you touch her is wired up to Nasch. And he's hyper-sensitive about it, too. Breathe too hard on Merag, and he will find you and forcibly shove your head up your own anus.

Now, those two somehow know they are related, even though we've all lost our memories. No one knows how this is possible. If I had to guess, I'd say plot convenience, but Durbe seems to think it's because of the strong sibling bonds between them and no one has the heart to tell him he's a freaking idiot. So everybody just kind of pretends that makes total sense and leaves it at that. Well, I could go on but I think I'm digressing, so I'll just leave it at that, too.

Anyhoo, today, I suddenly became extremely hungry about an hour before lunchtime. I don't like to eat meals with the other Emperors, so I just kind of skip them. And then I get these bouts of excruciating stomach pain about once a day that warn me when I need food to avoid collapsing embarrassingly. So I snuck into the royal pantry like a ninja and started looking around for something to munch on.

I bet you can already see where this is going.

For some reason, I couldn't find anything that wasn't labeled "Energy Spam-in-a-Can," so I was starting to get desperate. Then, lo and behold, my eyes came to rest on a delicious-looking energy-BLT, sitting quietly by itself in a corner of the pantry. Thinking that I was saved, I started to scarf it down when I realized something: it tasted like wool and was burning my insides.

Luckily, I managed to cough up most of what I'd swallowed before it caused any internal hemorrhaging, but honestly, I thought I was going to die. I'm not joking. My three days of life as a Barian flashed before my eyes.

Furious, I stormed out of there and went to confront the creator of that monstrosity, who was, as you all know by now, Merag. There's only one woman in the whole of the known universe who can cook that badly. She acted all innocent and told me that she hoped I liked her BLT, because she knew I raided the pantry and wanted to make sure I wasn't forced to eat Spam-in-a-Can. I asked her, very politely, if she was trying to freaking poison me and told her, also very politely, that I didn't know what was in that sandwich but it certainly wasn't B, L, or T, and that I would gladly eat all of the Spam in that godforsaken room before I so much as looked at something she cooked.

And whaddaya know, before I even finished my sentence, I saw a flash of blue lightning and then received an electric shock so jarring I felt like my face was melting off.

The good news is that my head hasn't been shoved up my anus yet. The bad news is that I'll smell like burnt barbecue for at least a week.

9. Bathrooms

Apparently, we Emperors are all really new to Barian World; it has its own customs and language and all that crap and for some reason we were born here knowing none of it. The others have had time to wrap their heads around the weird glyphs that everybody uses, but I got here last, so I'm really behind. Turns out, there's actually two forms of written language; informal phonetic characters (which are what I've been writing this list in) and formal glyphs. The only words I really know how to spell in formal Barian-ese are "Vector," "hates," and "Nasch," along with some various and sundry cuss words, but that vocabulary range kind of defeats the purpose of using the formal text anyway. Now that you know that, here's where the story starts.

Because I don't eat very often, I don't need to use the restroom very often, either. So it wasn't until about halfway through yesterday that I realized I didn't really know where it was. Sure, I've used it a couple of times already, but this place is surprisingly labyrinthine, and it's not like I could leave a little trail of energy-breadcrumbs or something. Sometimes I swear there's a Minotaur who lives here, somewhere, but we've just never run into him.

Anyway, eating that "sandwich" yesterday made me feel… not so good in my bowels. I don't know why I'm even writing this down, because if somebody read it I would probably have to kill them, but I really had to go. So I ran through the palace, trying to remember where the bathrooms were.

Finally, I found them. But guess what? I couldn't read the signs. I had no idea if the one on the left said "Men," "Women," or "Wombats," but frankly, I was too desperate to care. Besides, I reasoned to myself, there's only one girl and odds are, she won't be in the bathroom at exactly the time I need to use it.

Guess what happened. Go on, guess. I dare you.

I opened the door on the left, and found myself face-to-featureless-face with Merag. Who promptly screamed and slammed the door on my fingers.

It's not like I'm embarrassed about accidentally going into the girl's bathroom. But someone, who shall remain nameless for his own protection but whose name starts with an "A" and ends with an "O," happened to be washing his hands next door and heard the whole thing. This person also has a potty-mouth because he is mentally a small child, and he just HAD to tell the story, with some untrue embellishments, at dinner that evening, when I was not present to defend myself.

I was told later that Nasch spent the rest of the dinner cracking jokes about my mix-up and saying other generally inconsiderate things. So that's this point. And the next one, which happened after dinner when I was hanging out in the throne room, is…

10. Nasch Gave Me "The Glare" for an Hour Straight

I do have to hand it to him, though; I didn't know anybody could stare for that long.

Author's Note: Special thanks go to Girl with the Fireheart for No. 6 and 8, and to Durbe the Barian for No. 7. If anybody else has suggestions (or you guys have more), GIVE THEM TO ME! *strokes Suggestions creepily* My precious... *runs off cackling into the night*

Ahem. This kind of turned out to be the "Merag" chapter, didn't it? Ah, well.

I keep telling myself that I'm going to try to make this Barian-World-culture stuff at least semi-consistent, and then I don't. I think there's a bit of Vector that's implanted itself in the part of my brain that writes this and is flagrantly ignoring everything I tell it to do.

Also, dumb Trogdor reference is dumb.