Merry Easter! Happy Purim! Good solstice! Whatever! Mazel tov!
…Someone else post now. ^,^

Title: Kowai Kare Da
Author: Nightfall
Pairing: One-way Mi/X, past X/R
Rating: Worksafe
Genre: m/m
Type: Spackle-fic, NEXT episodes 7-8

Part 1: Wearied of pale tea,
Part 2: Release duty, fall silent--
Part 3: Let in the free air.
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The passage felt longer than it should have, even with
two of them.

"Is it here?" Lina asked eagerly, looking eagerly around
as soon as they'd emerged from the Sparkly Floating Corridor
of Slo-Mo.

He looked back at her, just out of the corner of his eye,
since he was almost positive that something had come through
with them. He caught a glimpse, under her enormous cloak,
of a lot of pale flesh topped in green. Gaav's minions had
already made an appearance, so it might have been that short
spitfire priest of his. Even Valgaav usually wore more than
that, though, so probably not. He decided to see how she'd
handle her stalker on her own.

"The Claire Bible and this passage," he lectured as though it
were a tour, "were formed together a thousand years ago, during
the Kouma Sensou. Follow me closely, human maiden. Many
forgotten things remain, and monsters roam these corridors."

"I hear ya," she laughed nervously, walking a little faster.
"Like I'd be dumb enough to..." She paused, choked, and screamed,
"MARTINA?! What are you doing here?"

Not Valgaav, then. Good. Even Milgazia's dubious reputation
wouldn't count against the color of his scales with that one,
who had been an Ancient dragon once. He turned around, and
barely contained a wince. What was it with modern human
fashions? This Martina girl was even more badly dressed than
Xellos's Lina. Impressive, considering how much less she was
wearing. Miru was usually a big fan of skimpy clothing on people
who were much too young for him, but her hair was distracting,
and her shoulder-guards were a monstrosity. Or possibly it was
the other way around.

"You can't escape me, Lina," the tiny thing gloated, clinging
to his charge's ankle with both hands and refusing to be kicked
off. "Now I'll get the Claire Bible, and with my own hands
I'll use it to rebuilt my Kingdom of Xoanna!"

Miru didn't have to know what she was talking about to hear the
unspoken 'and then you'll be sorry' at the end of that.

"Martina," Lina groaned, drooping as though she'd heard it all
before and had lost interest years ago, "Just--stay out of this
one, okay?"

"Excuse me?" the girl sniffed haughtily, scrambling to her feet.
"You stay out!"

"What did you say?" Lina growled, balling her fists up by her breasts.
Not, in Miru's opinion, a wise choice: it made it obvious that her fists
were bigger.

"You heard me," the girl shouted back. They glared at each other for
a moment, nose-to-nose, and then fell to hair-pulling with the most
guttural battle-cries he'd ever heard from any female.

Miru hated to interrupt such a touching reunion between old friends.
Oh, wait. No, he didn't. Honestly, humans had the sorriest
attention span...

He pulled a piece of cut quartz out of his astral pocket and flicked it
through the air. Their reaction was even better than he'd hoped: they
both went for it. Their eyes went starry and they turned from
each other, just to in time to see it fall into a puddle and mourn with
disappointed noises.

They made very cute display (it would have been cuter without their
cloaks in the way), but Xellos was unlikely to give them unlimited
time. The Lina maiden would most likely prefer to find her friends
in the same condition she'd left them in.

"Be silent, both of you," he boomed repressively. "This is no ordinary
labyrinth. It is a path of stepping-stones inlaid upon the Astral Plane.
A single misstep carries a grave penalty: to be lost forever in the ether."
He bowed his head somberly. "As we are now."

The insufficiently clad girl looked impressed and worried, in a posing
kind of way, but he got the sense that her understanding of the disaster
he was describing was as incomplete as her outfit. His charge, on the
other hand, went a satisfying whey color that, while clashing with her hair,
spoke as well for her education as the determination under her unease did
for her character. She grinned up uncertainly at him. "J-just one little
mistake won't get us lost--will it?"

He looked gravely to one side, shifting only his eyes as
though in well-controlled distress, and then met her eyes.
It was a trick, looking down at someone without appearing
to look down his nose. He remembered practicing it while
Rezo modeled and a smirking and an oh-so-helpful-look-
how-helpful-I'm-being mystery priest, too short to bother, held
up mirrors for him and went into fits of gleeful, hiccuping hysteria
by way of feedback when he ended up looking mostly constipated.

He had it down, now, although he rarely got to use it on anyone
who took him seriously as an authority figure anymore. They
were buying it, though, because when he intoned, "Alas, already
it is too late," the Lina collapsed in despair and the Martina
shrieked piercing horror.

He held the moment for as long as he could justify it to himself,
which was coincidentally also as long as his sensitive ears could
take the high-pitched Ah Ah Ai Ya Alackadays. Then, without
changing his voice or expression (sometimes he thought he'd
forgotten how), turned back to their path, intoning, "I merely
jest."

Lina was gripping the back of his collar in an instant, snarling
up into his ear. "Quit fooling around and take me there!"

He shrugged minutely, just to feel the extra weight as her feet
left the ground, and inclined his head. "As you wish." Really,
she made an excellent straight man.

[At this point, the director foolishly indicated a scene-change,
leaving the author free to insert what spackle she wills. The
author, however, despite the enormous enjoyment she takes in
perverting our good librarian's character almost beyond recognition,
has no interest in actually putting words in his mouth at this point
in the arc, and will take minimal advantage.]

The path to the Bible was not a short one--a fact of which Miru
heartily approved. The length was meant to give suppliants time
to calm themselves and consider their requests in the soberness
of sore feet, but he mostly liked it for what it gave him time
to do to the fools who occasionally tried to manhandle him into
showing them the way.

Today, however, he would have preferred a shorter road: this one
just gave everyone, those with him and those left behind, time to
fight. He gathered that the buxom one considered his charge
responsible for her homeland's destruction. Lina disagreed loudly,
stating in no uncertain terms that not only had the Martina-child
brought everything on her own head in the first place, but her
subsequent behavior had more than equalized any imagined imbalance
between them. Martina tried at one point to bring Miru onto her side,
but he ignored them both which such perfect indifference that she soon
stopped.

They really were very refreshing, these girls.

He listened, amused, until they started repeating themselves and
ceased to be entertaining. "You argue at great length, human
maidens," he rumbled, "about a matter you have no means of affecting.
It is a pastime which neither creates beauty nor decreases entropy."

Abashed, they fell silent. He let them chew this over for a while,
and then tried to open a useful avenue of conversation. "Still," he
addressed Lina, "I well can see your worth, that Xellos should put
such faith in you."

Odd. The curvy one's aura vibrated violently at that.

"Oh?" Lina asked with sly sweetness, and he braced himself for some
kind of explosion. "But where Xellos is concerned, I could never
compete with an old acquaintance of his like yourself, Milgazia-san,
right?"

Clearly she was trying to make him blush or splutter, with all that
innuendo sunbathing itself in the open like that. He'd forgotten how
to blush before turning three hundred, though, and it was so dismally
untrue that he just got depressed. Not only had Xellos (although you
never could tell, with Xellos) shown very little sign of looking back
at him, but he'd been almost sure that he wasn't being obvious. So
much for his poker-face.

"The old acquaintance of a monster?" Martina bit off sharply. "Don't
make fun of me; you'll just end up crying."

"I wasn't trying to," she said, adding with a wry little chuckle,
"although I take your point."

Miru smiled at himself, since his back was to them. Even if he did
wear his heart on his sleeve, at least his dignity had survived
intact. Still, this was as good a time as any to make his point,
and it might save him some teasing.

"An old acquaintance?" he demanded quietly, stopping in his tracks
right before the inner chamber and clenching his shoulders into clean
lines of tension. "That, then, is why you believe I have led you thus
far? Why I so meekly hasten to fulfill his requests?"

"Huh?" Lina asked, in a voice of natural befuddlement. "Well, clearly
you two aren't exactly best buddies, but--"

"He is terrifying," he said flatly, quietly. They nearly stopped
breathing. "A thousand years ago, during the War of Fallen Evil,
we faced one who wiped out an entire dragon clan in a
moment--single-handedly. That is the kind of opponent Xellos is."

And the frightening part was, that was what he did to mere opponents,
out of duty, without spite or personal enmity. He would have liked
to tell them the really important thing--that Xel had been a thousand
times scarier when he was just a hyperactive, imaginative human priest
with a burning desire to teach people manners. Since Xellos seemed to
be on their side, though, it wasn't the lesson they were most in need
of learning. Not now, and not from him.

"You should never force a monster to see you as a challenge," he
said, so softly they had to strain to hear him. "There is nothing
more foolhardy than trying to get the better of their like." Point
made, he moved his foot fractionally, opening the last 'door' he
could help them through.

"Foolhardy?" Lina demanded at once, stung. "If you don't take a
few risks--"

You end up chained to a rock for a thousand years with the jeers
of children muddying your scales, he finished for her silently.
It wasn't true, though. He'd gambled on integrity in the midst
of a holocaust, which was a stupid enough risk to last anyone a
lifetime, and he hadn't even entirely lost.

He had no intention of explaining this to her, though. He wasn't
going to have to, either, because the next voice that spoke wasn't
his.

Strictly speaking, it laughed. It usually did laugh, and the way
it laughed was one of the reasons he and Rezo had taken Xel's fall
so hard.

When it did speak, it spoke to Lina. "Just as I'd expect of my
sweet little Lina," Ceiphied's echo burbled.

He turned without surprise to see what form the dreaming ghost of
his god had taken today. He had to look quite a long way down to
see a tiny, wrinkled, green-skinned old lady with a huge, gnarled
stick. The stick, he expected, was to rap him over the head with
if he talked back to her in front of this major player in the cold
war crystallizing around them.

The major player, who was speechless and dewy-eyed with joy, finally
wrenched an, "Auntie Aqua!" out of a full heart.

Auntie? He looked at it blankly, thinking, Politics, Bright Lord,
or sentiment? as loud as he could, and or senility rather more
quietly.

He was almost sure he saw the staff quiver.

"So you finally made it, sweet Lina," the echo crooned in an childish
old-lady voice like bright rock candy.

I only hope, Bright Father, he thought at it gravely, that you
will give your servant sufficient warning before the ceremony to copy
out an adoption form. May I suggest that a set of dark-blue robes
would best set off the lovely hair of both such charming ladies?

"And the Golden Dragon, too," it said, emphasizing his ranking color
in as clear a 'shove off and let your Lord Grandmother deal with you,
there's a love' as he'd ever heard. Miru didn't quite stick out his tongue,
but he didn't have any better retorts, either. "It's been a long
time," it went on to say. Which must have been in response to the
lack of filial backtalk, since he'd come in the week before and Lina
was looking at it as though it were a miracle, not a ghost.

"I just came back here like you told me to, Auntie Aqua," she said
softly, tearfully, getting down to the echo's eye level. Then her
eyes went bright and sparkly. "Now, give me my reward!"

"Please, please," the echo chuckled, sounding pained. "You've come
all this way. Why don't we relax first and have some tea?"

Oh, of course, Miru snickered silently from behind his stoneface.
Unlimited knowledge... tea... no contest. Bright Lord, don't you know
who brought her?

His god's voice hit him, then, enveloping him in a delicious, shivering
warmth and sounding a little plaintive. My Daughter Her Sister Is More
Restful.

It was looking at the girls, who were clamoring for Bible Right Now.
How nice, Miru thought, to see such a love of learning in the youth of
the day. He personally could have used the tea.

He managed not to react to any of this, beyond looking at Lina. This
was the Knight's sister? But the Knight was dark-haired and demure.
And stacked. Still, surprise wasn't going to stop him making a perfectly
good point.

Dear my Lord, he said gently, 'Restful' hasn't woken you yet.

[end]
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Title: Practicing (Milgazia before the war)
Rating: Worksafe
Genre: Humor, Miru-style.
Type: fanart