A Horrendous Tale of Hyperness and Indignity Inspired By A Night Of Escaflowne And Way Too Much Halloween Candy, a.k.a., Our Trip To Gaea...
By Yumemisama
It was a beautiful day in Glendale, Arizona. The sun was shining high in the sky, the cactus wrens were hopping lightly here and yon, twittering and singing, and the gardeners of the neighborhood were humming merrily to themselves as they tended their beds of desert roses.
Shannon and Julie were arguing.
"What's wrong with my Sephy-poo?" questioned Shannon.
"Nothing... he's just evil. And insane."
"And?"
"Well..."
Shannon got that murderous look in her eyes. "Well -what? -"
Erin had been watching the fight from a safe distance, on the couch, and now that she saw her furniture was about to be put in imminent danger, she decided to step in. "Hey, guys, isn't there a way we could settle this..."
"Swordfighting?" asked Shannon eagerly.
"...without bloodshed?"
"Murph."
Sarah glanced over at the PlayStation sitting on the entertainment center. "Tekken death match?"
Shannon looked at Julie. Julie looked at Shannon. In an instant, they both dove for the controllers on Erin's living room floor.
"I wanna be Player One!"
"No, me!"
"I hate being on the right side of the screen!"
"I got there-- grn-- first!"
"Aaaa!"
This last was from everyone else in the room. The prospective combatants were momentarily blinded by a flash of slightly pinkish light and then managed to run headfirst into a teenage boy who had not previously been in the room. He had, in fact, not previously been on this planet, not that anyone realized this until he spoke up.
"That was worse than running into Hitomi...."
Erin and Sarah, up until this point, had not been paying all that much attention to the looks of their new visitor. Julie and Shannon, on the other hand... well....
"Van!" squeaked Shannon.
"Eh?"
"VAN FANEL!!!" she screamed.
"The snot-nosed kid?" asked Erin. Well, after you took a good squiz at the boy he did kinda look like Van Fanel. Awfully scrawny to be a king, though.
The kid-- Van, for argument's sake-- recognized the tone. He glared. "I am not a snot-nosed kid."
"Oh, -now- I see it... wow. He is Van Fanel."
Sarah cleared her throat. "What's he doing here?"
"Sitting smack in the middle of my rug." Erin looked at the kid for some seconds and then had a horrifying thought. "You're not gonna get followed by another dragon, are you? I am -not- sacrificing my living room for the sake of an Escaflowne remake."
"No, I'm not gonna get followed by another dragon. And how do you know about Escaflowne?"
Julie grinned. "Television."
Van dismissed that as completely irrelevant. "Where am I?"
"Earth. Well, the Mystic Moon, rather."
Van blinked and it was plain on his face that he was thinking frantically about how to get home.
Erin rolled her eyes. "Geez. Here," she tossed a handful of glowing red rocks at him from the basket on the end table. "Just use those."
Shannon, Julie and Sarah turned as one to look at her.
"Magic rocks," she said. "Mom keeps 'em around for any extraterrestrials that drop by."
They kept looking.
"-What?- It's cheaper than cab fare."
They all shrugged.
Van looked dubiously down at the rocks. Well, they -did- look kinda like Hitomi's pendant thingie. He squinted at them, and tapped two together.
>ZAM!!< Instant light show. Erin, Shannon, Sarah and Julie waved madly goodbye to the boy-king until the blinding alien flash subsided.
"...and good riddance you hot-headed twelve-year-old snot...."
Shannon elbowed Erin in the ribs.
"What?" she demanded irritatedly. She was still having a hard time seeing, having been the closest to Van when he activated the rocks.
"Van's still right in front of you," Shannon hissed.
"What, it didn't work?"
"I wouldn't say -that-," put in Julie.
"Well, then, what -would- you say?" responded Erin testily.
"We're on Gaea," said Sarah.
Pause.
Pause.
Pause.
"How can you tell?"
"Other than the twenty-five foot Guymelefs?"
Pause.
Pause.
"Yes."
"Well, that Van looks like he knows where he is now is a pretty good clue," said Sarah.
"Don't tell Shannon," added Julie, "but I see--"
"ALLEN-SAMA!!!!!!!!"
"Too late," said Erin, blinking a few last times and -finally- getting her sight back. Glowing purple in spots, but serviceable.
"Oh, crud," said Julie.
"Get back!" yelled Sarah, dragging Erin and Julie off by the hair just before Shannon decided to make a run for it. Van didn't hear them in time and before he could get his scrawny little self out of Shannon-chan's path, she elbowed him in the throat and he fell back at Hitomi's feet, little warking chocobos circling his head.
"Ooh. That's gonna leave a mark," Julie commented.
Erin chuckled at Hitomi's confused expression. "And you thought -you- were fast."
Shannon, for her part, had completely missed that Van was even there and was still sprinting full-steam ahead across the camp to where Allen Schezar was standing. She reached the spot and attempted to share spatial coordinates with him, fastening herself onto the swordsman with a noise that sounded distressingly like *glom*, with the asterisks and everything. Shannon pillowed her head on his chest with a silly feline 'pet me' grin and hugged him tighter, trapping his right arm and successfully distracting him from the fact that both of her hands were sneaking around his body and latching onto the hilt of the sword on his other hip.
"Hello," he said, surprised and more than slightly amused.
Erin and Sarah stifled snickers.
Julie, truly evil, called out, "Allen-sama! Behind you!"
Allen quickly but (relatively) gently wrestled himself out of Shannon's death-grip and turned deftly around, drawing his sword.
At least, that was the idea.
His hand closed on empty air; confused, he glanced down at the scabbard and when he looked back up again Shannon was swinging his broadsword in gleeful two-handed arcs in front of her. She gave him a sheepish smile and dashed off with his sword into the trees, Allen hot on her heels. Considering he was six feet tall and she was not, it was not without a little mirth that Shannon's three companions noticed she was still leading him by a healthy distance once they were both halfway around the glade.
Hitomi was looking -confused- by now. "You four... are from Earth?"
"Technically speaking," said Erin. "We're starting to doubt."
Shannon and Allen were back to their starting point now. Shannon abruptly turned and started snaking through the trees, shouting something about a pretty sword.
"Don't worry," Sarah reassured her. "That's just Twink."
Hitomi's brow furrowed. "Her name is Twink?"
"No, her name is Shannon. Twink's just the leading personality right now."
"You can tell because if Shannon-chan were leading, both the sword and the girl would still be attached to Allen," Erin continued.
"Ah, soo...."
"It'll end as soon as LBM takes over. That's as close to rational as she ever gets."
"Ah," said Hitomi, and wandered quickly away to have another vision.
"What's with this place, anyway?" Sarah asked no one in particular. "It looks like a war camp."
"It is." Van walked up behind them with his royal pain-in-the-nevermind expression and tone displaying itself in full. "The invisible giants are due to attack any minute now."
"Hitomi have a vision?"
"No, but it's about ten minutes into the episode and nothing's been blown up yet."
Sarah looked at Erin looked at Julie. Then the look traveled back again.
"Yahoo! There's gonna be a fight!"
"Dibs on Escaflowne!"
"I want Scherazade!"
Van scrambled in front of the frantically screaming bunch. "Wait! You can't take the Guymelefs, you don't know what you're doing!"
"Wanna bet?"
Well, no, he thought, but there had to be -something- he could do. Were -all- the girls from the Mystic Moon this bizarre?
At that moment, Allen and Shannon-chan burst back into the clearing, and finally he caught up to her. The knight clamped his fingers down on her thin wrist and pried the sword out of her sticky grip. Shannon squeaked indignantly. Allen ignored her and sheathed his blade, or at least he tried to. Shannon-chan, back in control, clung tenaciously to his arm and, once she got a grip, to his shoulders. The more he struggled, the harder she giggled and gripped, until they were finally nose to nose. Then she kissed him. Full on the lips.
Screams and shouts of "GO SHANNON-CHAN!" echoed across the forest loudly enough to alert the Zaibach Empire had it been based on Earth. That wasn't even counting in the applause and the whistling.
"Woo-hoo, Shannon!" shouted Sarah.
"Are her hands -really- where I -think-...?" asked Julie.
Erin nodded, arms crossed. "Yup. Clamped onto his swordbelt."
Thunderous stomping shuddered through the ground, while plumes of dust rose from the footfalls of unseen tons of metal. Warriors unsheathed their blades; Allen finally persuaded Shannon that he -really- had to go now and managed to retrieve himself with all limbs intact. Van pounded for his Escaflowne and started to climb in.
"No fair!" shouted Erin, catching him by the collar and hauling him back three or so feet. "I wanna ride the mecha!"
"What? No!"
"Why not?"
"Because-- because--" he sputtered. "It would take too long to explain!"
Erin folded her arms and stood between Van and his mecha. "So talk ~really~ fast."
Van grumbled. He tried to shove her aside, but she just smacked him upside the head. "OW!"
"Guess you're not charging aggressively enough," she said with a smirk.
Van seethed, he boiled and considered ripping her head off for a moment before he saw two more deep impressions in the ground. Invisible giants. Glancing around him, he saw Sarah engaged in a similar fight with Allen and Julie grappling with a frightened and clingy Merle. Shannon was still standing and floating slightly where Allen had left her, with his sword, swordbelt and scabbard clutched tightly in her hands. Schezar didn't seem to have noticed.
"Look," he gritted, then yelled it louder at all the new girls scattered about the glen. "Is there anything I can do to keep you three-- four-- out of the fighting?"
All four blinked for a moment or two, then turned as one to face Allen.
The words "Oh, no," fell out of his mouth and he tried to think of a way to abstain while Van burst out laughing.
Ten minutes later, all four girls and Allen Schezar were safe and sound in a carefully hidden tent beneath the trees. The girls were having fun; Allen, so far, was not. Erin sat on a cushion behind him, brushing his hair with a cheerfully sadistic tactic that was less due to actual happiness at getting to attack his head with a comb than to a certain dark joy at having Allen trapped like a rat in front of her. Julie and Sarah each had their paws clamped around one of his wrists, and they were doing something to his fingernails with tiny little paintbrushes and giggling maniacally to boot; Shannon-chan was seated, grinning, in front of him and polishing his sword with a disturbing sort of vigor. Well, Shannon wasn't so bad. She seemed to appreciate his skill with the blade and his gallant charm. At least, he -hoped- that was what the look she was giving him indicated.
"What the hell is all that stomping out there?" Erin groused. She yanked at the brush and jerked Allen's head back. "They sound like flat-footed tap-dancing brontosauri."
"Don't do that to Allen-sama!" snapped Shannon. Silently, the Caeli Knight thanked her. Then she smiled. "Put it in a French braid instead."
He heard Erin's evil alto giggle behind him and thought it was going to be a terribly long day.
Allen-sama never really got the chance to find out. Two plaits in, something very, very big and very, very invisible crashed through the corner of the tent, thankfully missing all the people inside, but sending up a flurry of swearing in several different tongues from the girls whose various ministrations had been interrupted and in some cases ruined.
Erin glanced at Julie; Sarah looked to Shannon. Then all the looks and glances and evil eyes went back around the circle in such a vicious melange of frustration Allen -really- wished he weren't sitting smack in the middle. Shannon picked up his swordbelt and started to stomp off with it.
"Ah! I'm afraid I must stop you there," protested Allen, standing gracefully despite Erin's annoyed squawk. He held out one impeccably gloved hand. "I'm going to need that."
"But...."
"Please," he pressed.
"But... it's such a -pretty- sword...."
All right. Two could play at that game. Allen-sama swept forwards, bent Shannon over backwards and kissed her firmly on the mouth. He came up taking the swordbelt and leaving the furiously blushing Shannon-chan.
"Forget the battle," muttered Sarah, "-That's- entertainment."
That seemed to snap Erin up. "Yeah, they're fighting, and they're not including us. They just shove us out of the way. It's starting," she finished significantly, "to piss me off."
"Well, to the Batmobile, then," said Julie with a healthy dose of sarcasm.
"You're more right than you know," Erin said flatly.
Sarah peeked out a shredded tent flap. "There're two mecha out there that aren't moving," she observed.
"Think they're empty?" asked Julie.
"If they're not now, they will be in a second," said Erin.
Ten minutes later, two rather unsteady melefs of uncertain alliance stumbled heavily out of the clearing and into the fight proper. A pair of insane llama-like draft animals followed closely after, each carrying a girl.
"You really think this is gonna work?" asked Julie. Sarah, on the other llama-thing, shrugged around the coil of rope on her shoulder.
"It worked in The Empire Strikes Back."
"Yeah, but the evil Emperor survived to make another movie."
"Have you got a better idea?"
"No."
"Then tie this to a tree as high as you can. Dilandau's lobster-mecha's sweeping this way." Sarah hurled the end of the rope at Julie, who managed to get it under control after being smacked in the face with it once or twice. Who knew rope would be so heavy? Or stubborn?
"You think Shannon's doing okay?"
Shannon was indeed doing okay. Shannon was doing just -ducky-. She tossed on more ruined Zaibach mecha on top of the ever-growing pile and her melef cheekily dusted off its hands.
Erin lumbered near and opened the outer armor enough to shout. "Geez, Shannon... how did you -do- that?"
Shannon shrugged. "Same way I play Tekken. I hit all the buttons at once and hoped for the best."
"Remind me never to challenge you to a death match."
Sarah and Julie grabbed the loose end of the nautical rope and kicked their llamas until they galloped across the clearing. Just in time, they looped the rest of the rope around the base of the biggest tree they could find and tied it as tightly as they could manage. A flash of metal came through the trees and headed straight for them.
Julie started to pray.
The tremendous foot of the mechanical monster came forth to begin another step. 'Begin' because it got halfway up, caught on the girls' rope, and stuck. The mecha teetered uncertainly for a while-- a few seconds at most, but it seemed like forever-- and then took its own bloody time falling over as Julie and Sarah galloped -clear-.
Everything was perfectly silent for about .13451123 seconds.
"YAHOO!!"
"Ding-dong the witch is dead...."
"All right!" Sarah gave Julie a high-five. "One down, three zillion to g...." Her smile faded.
"What?"
"It's opening."
"And?"
"Someone's emerging."
"What do they look like?"
"Pale. Creepy. A wee bit off their rocker."
They looked at each other. "Dilandau."
"Should we wait for Erin and Shannon?"
"He could be gone by then."
"He? Is Dilandau a boy or a girl?"
"If you're in this deep enough to ask that," said Julie, "you're in too deep for it to matter."
"Fair enough."
"Charge?"
"Charge."
Dilandau was thinking insane villainous evil thoughts when Sarah jumped out of the trees at him, like how much his dry cleaning was going to cost after climbing out of his mecha into the mud. She missed Psycho-Brat completely and sailed out onto her knees before him.
"What do you want?" demanded Dilandau. He wondered briefly if this was Evil Laugh Time, but decided to wait a bit. This was just too ludicrous to be real.
"Watching you fall off a cliff without your flying melef would be nice."
-Oh-, a hero-type. Dilandau was working up the proper psychoses for his normal inhuman, bug-eyed spree of destruction when the blonde thing began to dance in front of him. No, not dance, they looked like martial arts kata. And she'd got a stick from someplace...
...which was slamming down with alarming regularity very, very close to his very own personal body. All right, that's it. He advanced and started a wailing predatory shriek when suddenly stars showered in from nowhere and a nasty burst of pressure shattered through from the back of his skull. Dilandau blinked once and fell face first to the forest floor.
Julie cracked her knuckles. "Everything I know about fighting I learned from Tekken 2."
"Took you long enough. How much timing does it really take to sucker punch someone in the back of the head?"
"You had the stick! You could've just hit him from the front!"
"Hey, wait. You hear that?"
"No. What?"
"Exactly."
Both of them paused and stopped breathing for a moment to listen.
"Think it's over?"
"Well, they could all be dead."
"I didn't ask if you thought we won."
"Oh. Then yeah."
"Back to camp?"
Shrug. "Why not?"
Back in the glen, you'd think nothing ever happened, except this time it was Erin smacking Merle away rather than Julie, and Merle was less frightened than hacked-off. Shannon and Allen were gone completely, and Julie and Sarah sensibly assumed that one was off chasing the other for whatever reason.
Julie tapped Van on the shoulder.
"Eeyaaugh!" he eeyaaughed, then turned around.
"Sor-ry. Just wanted to ask if everything was all right and if it was all over now."
"VAN! GET YOUR DAMN CAT GIRL OFF ME -NOW-!" yelled Erin from across the camp.
"More or less," Van shrugged. "What were you two off doing?"
"Oh, we KO'd Dilandau's mecha. Then we KO'd Dilandau."
"You -what-?"
"Cleaned his clock. He's lying on the ground out there someplace," Sarah waggled her finger through a quarter arc and indicated about a thousand acres of forest.
"You just left him?"
"What else were we supposed to do with him? He's too ugly to use as a trophy."
Erin stomped over with a very peeved Merle in front of her, held tightly with her wrists crossed behind her. "If it's all over, we should celebrate. Here, take your cat-brat back," she added, giving Merle a 'helpful' push towards the boy-king. Merle glared as cats are wont to do and her tail puffed out like a pipe cleaner. "Let's break out the Pixie Stix and soda!"
"Pixie Stix?" Van asked blankly.
Erin's eyes grew wide and Julie let out a small gasp. "You don't have Pixie Stix on Gaea?"
Van shook his head incredulously. "I don't think so...."
Erin lunged forward and tackled Van, patting down every pocket he had with both hands.
"Hey! What the-- cut it out!"
"Gimme my rocks back, I'm goin' home...!"
"Erin," Sarah pointed out reasonably, "We can't go home until we've found Shannon."
"Shannon right here," piped up a small voice. Then, with a tiny, evil giggle: "Shannon like Allen...."
Erin ceased battering Van and leaned heavily on his breastbone to boost herself back to her feet. Van shot her a dirty look and followed.
"Well," she commented. "Don't you look happy."
"Why shouldn't she look happy?" retorted Sarah. "Just because Allen's carrying her around..."
"...and she's got his swordbelt in her lap..."
"...and for once he looks like he's having fun...."
"Shannon-chan -like- Allen-sama," she reiterated.
Sarah, Erin and Julie all exchanged Significant Glances, with a few smirks attached as gift cards.
"We'll come back and visit for the wedding," said Erin.
"Who's getting married?" said Shannon-chan, or possibly Twink, with a merciless grin. "I'm just going to play with his sword for a while...."
It took -so- much effort not to laugh.
~~~~ The End ~~~~