Baron Zemo's Lair. - Yo, more on Xander (Narrative from the Hooded Hood)

Baron Zemo's Lair

Yo, more on Xander (Narrative from the Hooded Hood) - Only an acquaintance, you understand.
Thursday, 15-Jul-1999 13:01:28
195.11.50.209 writes:

Xander the Improbable and the Curse of spiffy

The sign over the door was in faded red and gold lettering, and it read: Xander the Improbable, Master of the Mystic Crafts. The card hanging in the window said, "The magician is in."
"After you," Banjooooo, king of the Sea Monkeys said politely to spiffy.
"Uh uh! You dragged me here," the wielder of the fern-symbiote argued. "You go in first."
"I'm only here to support you, spiffster. After all, I wasn't the one bitten by the werewolf."
"I'm not saying I was bitten by a werewolf. It might have been anything that bit me."
"We were hired to detect a werewolf. We battled a big hairy guy. The big hairy guy decided to try some prime fern-boy. Now you're up to having to shave twice a week. I say he bit you."
spiffy sighed. It was true that he was using rather more toothpaste these last few days, and he had bought a calendar that marked the days off until the next full moon. He pushed open the shop door. The bell went clank as it fell off and rolled under the counter.
Banjooooo and spiffy looked around. "This is a plumber's shop," the fern-wielder objected.
"Or a watch repairer's" frowned Banjooooo.
"Or a bomb site," reconsidered spiffy.
"It is a working example of dynamic chaos theory," came a voice from the back room. "A mage's work is all about stopping leaks in one sense, and fixing clockwork in another. And the salary scales for wizards aren't very good, so sorting out a dripping tap or an ailing cuckoo helps to keep the bailiffs at bay. Well, that and garlic."
"Erm, are you Xander the Improbable?" Banjooooo asked cautiously, peering into the gloom.
"That seems unlikely," came the reply.
spiffy and Banjooooo took a moment to work this out. "We need a magician," the Sea monkey started again. "You were recommended to us. By Con Johnstantine. The annoying English guy who knows too much."
"He said you were cheap," spiffy added hopefully.
There was a sigh from the back room and a youngish man strode into the room pulling on a faded red robe. He had a pair of round spectacles perched on his forehead, which in the time honoured convention of such things he was going to spend ten minutes looking for later on in the conversation. "What's the problem?" he asked, completely failing to react to either the symbiotic fern attached to spiffy or the fact that his other visitor was a giant artificial aquatic lifeform.
"My friend thinks he might be a werewolf," Banjoooo explained.
"Hair sprouting in unusual places?" Xander checked. "Urge to chase women and rip their clothes off? Yes? I thought so."
"I am a werewolf?" gulped spiffy.
"Well, you're a teenager," Xander admitted. "You have all the symptoms." He gestured for the fern-wielder to unbutton his shirt and then plucked a handful of chest hairs out.
"Ouch! Was that really necessary?" spiffy complained.
"Not at all," confessed Xander. "It was just to get you back for that 'cheap' crack earlier. You'd better take me to this werewolf that bit you."

The almost-full moon peeked above the horizon, only obscured by scudding clouds provided to add to the atmosphere of the blasted heath. Spiffy and Banjooooo watched as Xander laid out a range of improbable paraphernalia. "I can understand the wand and the tuning forks and even the theodolite," Banjoooooo admitted, "but what about the lead piping?"
"Better than magic for taking down werewolves at close range," Xander confided.
"I thought you needed silver to harm them?" the Sea monkey King remembered.
"You need silver to kill them," Xander clarified. "You need lead to stun them like hell so you can kick them while they're down and run like buggery. Basic alchemy."
Spiffy watched Xander unpack an odd-shaped rock roughly the size of his fist and place it carefully on a red handkerchief. "What's that?" asked the possible-werewolf.
"It's my familiar," grumped Xander .
"I see," spiffy nodded. "And would I be correct if I assumed your familiar was, in fact, how can I put this, a rock?"
"It's a rock now," scowled the magician. "It used to be a hamster until a bit of a c--- up on the Medusa front. Still, old Harry's still very useful."
"I'm going to kill Johnstantine," spiffy muttered to Banjoooooo.
A terrible howl curdled his blood before he could finish planning what to do to the Englishman who had referred him to this madman. Banjooooo shifted to his full-size form, on the grounds that a mere werewolf was going to think twice before taking on a seventy-foot sea-monkey.
Xander kicked him on the cilia. "Stop that," he chided. "The whole point is to lure the beastie. If we can't catch him I can't get a sample of his blood. And without that I can't do your friend an antidote. And without an antidote he's going to become…"
And the monster leapt out of the trees at the now human-sized Banjooooo.
"…a ferocious weresquirrel," Xander concluded, watching the ravening nut-gatherer leaping forward to savage the sea-monkey.
"Ouch!" Banjooooo shouted. "Little bugger nipped me! I'm going to…. Grrrrrrrrrr!"
"He's changing!" spiffy warned. "He's growing fur and a really cute bushy tail. Aaaaww!"
"Grrrrrrrrrr!" Banjooooooo growled, changing back to be a seventy-foot tall hairy tailed sea monkey weresquirrel.
"Well, the good news is you weren't bitten," Xander told spiffy, leading the retreat across the heath. "Must have been a scratch of a love bite or something. Now would you like the bad news?"
spiffy had a horrible feeling that the bad news involved fighting a lycanthropic Banjooooo. "Can't you do something?" he demanded of Xander, racing to keep up. "You're the master of the mystic crafts."
"Ye-es," qualified the magician. "And you get the title by challenging and beating the old master, which I did. But unfortunately when I faced him and cast my first spell at him he laughed so hard that he fell over dead with a coronary. Since then people tend to avoid fighting me because all they know is I beat the last guy."
"But not weresquirrels," observed spiffy. "Dammit, I'm going to have to take on Banjooooo!" The fern wielder ordered his fronds to reach out and encompass the sea-monkey's huge chubby leg. Banjooooo drew back his foot and punted.
The original weresquirrel leaped at Xander. Xander hit it hard on the head with Harry, his stone familiar. "I told you he was still useful," the magician declared to the world at large as the rodent want down.
From there it was a simple matter to use a few droplets of squirrel's blood to undo the lycanthropy on Banjooooo. Xander didn't bother telling the two combatants that he'd done it for ten minutes or so, though. It wasn't every day one got to watch a fern vs giant prawn battle royal, after all. And Xander had brought sandwiches.

Xander