Hungry (1x04)
by Azar Suerte
Original Air Date: 15 September 2000
(SOMEWHERE IN HARSH REALM)
(SOMETIME AFTER "GUARD")
There was a flash of blue light, some electronic flickering, and a few supersonic squeals of digital protest, then a form appeared in the middle of the empty clearing. A blonde-haired woman dressed casually and carrying a sword looked around her.
"What the--?" she exclaimed, deciding to leave off the curse at the end of the sentence just in case it might exceed the story's requisite rating.
Her eyes searched the unfamiliar space between the trees, then she crisscrossed it, peering through the woods in each direction, looking for the familiar campsite. It was nowhere to be seen.
Muttering under her breath about Harsh Realm in general, and those unmentionably-cursed glitches in particular, she chose a direction and started hiking off through the trees, hoping it would lead her back to her companions.
Coming back from the dead sure was a lot more complicated here!
(MEANWHILE...)
(OUR HEROES' CAMP)
Things had been relatively quiet for our intrepid team since the battle. (The) Pinocchio had led a small team consisting of Pooh_Bah, Anthony and Jules off to scavenge through the possessions of the defeated Republican Guard, while the rest of the group sat around waiting patiently for the next episode to start.
And waiting.
And waiting.
"So, who's writing this episode?" Hunter finally piped up, lifting a curious eyebrow in the direction of The Chaos Factor.
"It's Azar's turn." He frowned. "At least, it will be if she ever stops making suggestions for the episode and starts writing it."
"Speaking of whom, where is Azar?" Fred asked. Surprised, the rest of the group began looking around. Azar and Chance Harper were no where to be seen.
Alexei smirked. "That would certainly explain why no one is writing. So, who shall we send to break up their little love nest?"
"'Love nest?'" Megan echoed. She laughed. "You're kidding, right, Alexei? This is Azar we're talking about. Just as pure and chaste as Pooh_Bah, only eight years older."
The Russian looked surprised for a moment, then his eyes took on a decidedly ominous gleam. "You mean she's a virgin...even in fanfic?"
Megan blinked, realizing what she had just inadvertantly done (even though she hadn't known she knew the nature of Azar and Chance's relationship).
{Oops.}
(THE WOODS)
(A FEW MINUTES LATER)
Fred wandered through the woods, being careful not to snag any of his numerous piercings on assorted branches. "Azar? Psst! Azar!"
"What do you want, Fred?" Chance Harper's somewhat impatient voice came from behind him. The clone turned, his eyes widening at the strange sight, even for Chance! The photographer was sitting calmly on the floor of the forest, cross-legged, with a large silver-gray she-wolf resting her head in his lap.
Well, if Chance was here, surely his constant companion couldn't be too far away. "Where's Azar?"
Much to the clone's surprise, the wolf in Chance's lap let out a low growl, then shimmered and shifted into a fully-armed and fully-clothed Azar. She scowled at him. "Go away. I'm in mourning."
Fred looked awed. "Wow, I didn't know you could do that!"
"In this fandom I'm Polgara's look-alike sorceress daughter; of course I can change my form," she shot back. "Now, go away and let me grieve in peace. Maybe you aren't devastated by ama's death, but I miss Angelo, darn it!"
As if to punctuate her point, she curled her hands around a slightly fried piece of gray thermal fabric from Angelo's "Grumpy Hasn't Smiled Since 1937" shirt, and sniffed mightily.
"I do so care about amaresu being gone!" he protested in indignation. "But you can't mourn right now, you're supposed to write the next episode!"
"What??" Azar sat up suddenly straighter. "Pooh_Bah slaughters Angelo in a freak accident that I still can't remember, and then expects me to write the next episode?" She growled again, her eyes darkening to black. The white lock in her hair flared brighter for a second, as if it too were angry. "Why, if Isaac wasn't already dead--!"
"Her father's still here," Fred supplied helpfully, not feeling the need to point out that The Chaos Factor had made the list, not Pooh_Bah. "You can kill him. He took Pooh_Bah, Anthony and Jules to inspect the Republican Guards' jeeps for supplies. He said they were the ones who needed the most supervision."
"And he left, Alexei, Florence, Megan, The Chaos Factor, Gepetto, Hunter, and Markus without supervision?" her voice rose a few decibels in horror. "Alexei unsupervised and Carla Jane still missing?? All right, all right! I'll write the episode!"
Scrambling to her feet, Azar raced back to camp with Chance and Fred at her heels. She arrived just in time to see Pinocchio, Pooh_Bah, Jules and Anthony spreading their plunder out before the rest of the group. Well, okay, Pinocchio and Pooh_Bah were spreading out the plunder. Jules and Anthony had taken advantage of the momentary distraction to resume trying to plunder each other.
"That's it?" Megan exclaimed, disappointed, as she rifled through food packs. "Sixty Republican Guard and they still don't have enough provisions for us to have a decent breakfast???"
Azar turned to Chance with a smirk. "And you thought you could get into trouble before breakfast."
Markus grinned. "Too bad no one thought to write Dexter into the story. We could eat him, now that Hobbes is dead."
Looking slightly disappointed by that fact himself, Pinocchio raised a hand to silence the complaints. "We'll just have to send out a hunting party. Who's in?"
Fourteen other hands all shot up. However, since Jules and Anthony weren't exactly looking at their surroundings, Jules' hand struck the trunk of the tree they were sitting under, hard.
"Ow!" she exclaimed, breaking off a hearty kiss very suddenly.
Anthony immediately grabbed for the hand and cradled it. "Allow me to kiss it and make it better, love."
Neither noticed that the very large tree had begun to shake from the impact--even though it shouldn't have. Chance, who was also standing under it, did. He had a really bad feeling about this...
The photographer glanced up just in time to see a large, round object descending straight towards him. "Ah--"
THUNK!
Chance rubbed his forehead and glared at the object now sitting peacefully on the forest floor. Azar picked it up and began to laugh. "Well, what do you know? There are coconuts in Harsh Realm!"
Gepetto looked up into the branches from a safe distance. "That fell out of that tree? I've heard of coconut palms before, but never a coconut, um...pine."
Florence shot Pinocchio a significant glance, and he nodded. "Glitch," he voiced both their thoughts.
Grumbling under his breath about his luck in general and coconut-pine glitches in particular, Chance looked skyward once more. This time, his mouth opened even wider in horror. "DUCK!" he yelped.
HRfic denizens, characters and clones all dove to the ground, except Azar who made the mistake of looking up instead.
"Oh, my--"
THUNK!!! THUNK!!! THUNK!!! THUNK!!! THUNK!!! THUNK!!! THUNK!!!
"Azar!" As soon as the deluge had stopped, Chance bounded over to the enormous pile of coconuts that lay where Azar had been standing a moment ago. Throwing himself onto the pile, he began heaving coconuts right and left, until finally a hand appeared.
"I'm okay!" the episode's writer gasped as soon as she could breathe. "Just a little stunned!"
The photographer let out the breath he had been holding and pulled her out of the pile. Azar turned to survey what could very well have been her untimely demise. It really was getting too late for breakfast, she mused as she turned back to the group.
"Brunch, anyone?"
(BACK AT CAMP)
(LATER THAT AFTERNOON)
"Roots, berries, bark, and..." Pinocchio shot a wondering look in his daughter's direction as he reached her contribution. "Twinkies™?"
Pooh_Bah glared back. "I found them in a secret compartment in Isaac's bag, after Florence killed him. Under the stuffed Pooh bear."
After brunch, the whole group had voted unanimously to send out the hunting party anyway rather than risk everyone getting sick to death of coconuts. So, they had all split up and wandered off in different directions into the forest. Ordinarily, dividing their already depleted party would have seemed to several people to be a bad idea, but since Azar hadn't slaughtered anyone yet in this episode, they'd begun to get a little lax.
An hour had passed relatively without incident, except for a small forest fire that Chance had inadvertently started, but his cry for help had brought Markus and Fred running and the three had quickly doused the flames with leftover coconut milk.
Now they were all gathered back at the campsite with their findings, which were pretty meager. "Didn't anybody find any meat?" Pinocchio asked.
With a sly smile, Alexei crouched beside the other man and placed a hand on his knee. "That depends on what you mean by 'meat,' my lovely rogue."
Grimacing in distaste, Chance forced himself not to look away. At least Krycek was leaving him alone for the moment, he reminded himself. "Azar's still out--maybe she's found something," he suggested.
As if on cue, a dead squirrel landed in Pooh_Bah's lap. She sprang to her feet with a surprised (but not frightened) yelp and the small carcass fell to the ground. A loud avian cry sounded above their heads, and everyone looked up.
A smile spread over Pinocchio's face as he reached for his gun. "Perfect," he murmured.
His attention drawn by the quiet comment, Chance glanced back at his doppelganger, and Fred's eyes followed his.
"NO!!!" they screamed in chorus just as Pinocchio whipped out a rifle and fired a clean shot at the bird above them.
The snowy owl let out a surprised screech and promptly digitized.
"What?" the original Pinocchio exclaimed in surprise. "I've never seen an animal rezz out before."
"That wasn't a regular owl!" Chance wailed. "That was Azar!"
"She can shape-shift," Fred explained. "I found out when I went looking for her and Chance earlier."
All eyes turned accusingly to Pooh_Bah's father, who actually managed to look sheepish.
"Now who's going to finish writing the episode?" Megan scolded.
Before the mercenary could answer, another unexpected and potentially deadly rain began, this one of weapons. Two glocks, an uzi, and a derringer fell out of the sky followed by a boot knife. For some reason, all of Azar's arsenal had reverted to its original form when she was killed, but fortunately (and surprisingly), no one was hurt.
"Where's Azar's rapier?" The Chaos Factor asked suspiciously after the fall had ended.
One of Chance's "bad feelings" struck everyone in the group at that moment, and they all looked up...just in time to see the blade come down point first on Pinocchio's head, piercing his skull and skewering him from top to bottom. In a burst of blue static, he vanished.
"MIKE!" Hunter shrieked, at the same moment as Pooh_Bah reverted to childhood with a desperate and atypical, "DADDY!"
Chance just stared for a moment at the empty spot where Pinocchio had been, then he smiled a cold smile that looked especially creepy on his usually pleasant face.
"Now that's what I call poetic justice."
[ TO BE CONTINUED... ]