Post by Skyfire on Feb 24, 2009 14:44:12 GMT -5
An AU: The Evil Emperor Zurg believed that he was invincible… until a mute child crossed his path.
All right, my first decent-sized Zurg fic! I'll try to update soon. Meantime, I know you Zurg girls out there are reading this - that's right, I see you! XD Please review! Please, please, please, please, please!
Oh, how the Evil Emperor Zurg loved to cause trouble! It didn’t bother him that he didn’t have henchmen aside from his hornets to do his dirty work – if you want something done EVIL, do it yourself. A variation of one of Nana Zurg’s sayings – and as always, she was right.
So the young Evil Emperor was currently on Tradeworld, having just finished a little business. To be precise, he was currently at Tradeworld’s only museum, an archive for galactic artwork. The pieces were all copies, of course – it would be crazy to publicly display anything of real value in the galaxy’s biggest cesspool of a planet. Zurg briefly entertained the idea of snatching some of the more purple paintings, but quickly dismissed the notion. The only piece of art worth stealing was the real McCoy – anything less just wasn’t evil enough.
As he browsed the galleries, he came across a woman in her late forties and a little boy, but gave them no thought, becoming engrossed in one painting in particular: a red sky over a red plain. Huh, looked like home. The plaque said something about Mars, but that definitely looked like Planet Z. Slowly, he became aware of someone beside him. He looked around, then down. Waaay down.
Standing there, studying the painting as Zurg himself had been doing a few seconds ago, was the little boy. He was five at the most, probably not even that. He was human, but he must have had a trace of alien in him somewhere because his woefully unruly hair was cobalt blue. His most striking feature, though, was not his hair color but his eyes – big, bright, a beautiful shade of azure. A keen intelligence lurked there, and an indefinable something that made him look far older than his years.
Zurg pulled himself together enough to snarl, “Go on! Shoo!”
The child finally tore his attention from the painting and turned to the Evil Emperor. His black eyebrows drew together in a frown, and his lower lip jutted out slightly. Instead of leaving, though, he firmly stuck out his little legs and crossed his arms over his chest, his whole stance radiating obstinacy.
Zurg noticed the woman standing nearby, watching them… with an amused smile? Oh, that does it! “Lady, will you take your son and go?” he whined.
The woman smirked slightly and came over, reaching for the boy’s hand. “He’s my grandson.” She knelt down till she was at the boy’s eye-level, which wasn’t hard to do since she was pretty petite herself. “Come on, honey, let’s leave the Evil Emperor alone.”
The boy’s frown grew deeper.
“What, he doesn’t talk?” Zurg asked.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” the grandmother said pointedly, “but no, he doesn’t. He’s perfectly able to talk – he just won’t do it.”
“Sounds like somebody needs help,” Zurg muttered under his breath.
The grandmother frowned. “Not nearly as much as some psychopathic hotshots do.” She squeezed her grandson’s hand and said firmly, “Come on – let’s go.”
The boy looked down at his feet with an air of defeat and nodded. He looked back up at the Evil Emperor one last time… and gave him a brilliant smile. Zurg was thoroughly confused – what was with this kid?
As the woman led her grandson away, the azure eyes never left Zurg. Once the odd pair was gone, the Evil Emperor shook his head to clear it. “Wow,” he muttered. “That was random…”
On the docking pad, Zurg stretched his arms out and arched his back. “Ohhh yes, it’s good to be home!”
A grub rushed over to his side. “Is there anything you require, O Evil One?”
“Just a light supper before I go to bed,” Zurg airily informed the servant. “Evil can be so tiring sometimes, but well worth the effort!”
He made his way to his room and proceeded to change out of his undercover spacesuit (which really wasn’t that undercover with the same color scheme and monogram, besides which his face was unmistakable) into lavender pajamas – complete with monogramming, of course. Another grub (or was it the same one? they all looked alike) delivered his supper, and it wasn’t long before the Evil Emperor was ready to pass out.
Which was why, when he saw the small human figure in the room, he first chalked it up to a lethargy-induced illusion. But, rubbing his red eyes a few times, he realized that the little human really was there, and was actually…
“Sweet mother of Venus, what are YOU doing here??” Zurg demanded.
It was the boy from the museum! He grinned mischievously at Zurg.
“How did you get here… oh, never mind! Just – just go back to wherever you came from! Go back to your nana!”
The boy responded with the same stubborn stance he had used earlier. Ohhh, what to do? Zurg had never had any experience with kids of any age, much less four or five-year-olds.
“Look, I don’t know WHAT you’re up to, but whatever it is had better stop right NOW!!” Now THAT 5-star bellow would scare the wits out of any grub or brainpod, ha-ha!
But – oh, sweet mother of Venus! – the boy was actually standing his ground! No one had ever… Well, no – one person had, but… well, that was in the past, and the past was best left forgotten, right? No matter – this next scream would send the kid running all the way to Capital Planet at hyperspeed! “GET OUUUUUUUT!!”
The boy cringed, but otherwise showed no signs of fear. Oh man, it was like having your bluff called! This would not do, not for the galaxy’s EVILEST Emperor! Think, Zurgie boy, think!
Maybe a bribe?
“If you go home,” Zurg said in a rather sickeningly-sweet voice, “I’ll give you a month’s worth of candy.”
The boy’s eyes brightened, but not in the way that Zurg had hoped. Instead, his eyes fairly danced as he sucked in his lips, like he was trying not to laugh at Zurg! Oooo, this is the LAST STRAW!
Zurg growled and lifted the boy by the shirt collar, eliciting silent squirming as the boy tried his best to wriggle out of or pry open the iron grip. “Okay, I tried to be nice, but I’m not going to take any more of this.” He stomped to the door and tossed the boy out into the hallway, quickly shutting his door and locking it. “There! He’ll get the hint now!” Zurg said smugly. Then he yawned and stretched. “Definitely bedtime – early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, evil, and wise! At least, that’s what Nana Zurg used to say.”
In two minutes, he was out.
Sometimes, you can be asleep, and you will still have some sense that someone else is in the room with you. Slowly, that same sense brought Zurg back to consciousness. He flexed his right hand, prepared to morph it into his dual-barrel ion cannon if the intruder proved to be hostile. He jerked up straight in bed and whipped around…
…To see the boy curled up in his desk chair, asleep!
“Ohhh, craters!” Zurg moaned, too tired be properly enraged. He fell back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling in thought. I’ll just try to find his nana tomorrow, he decided, then moaned softly. Ohh, this is ridiculous.
The next morning, the boy found himself being shaken awake by one rather flustered Evil Emperor. “Okay, kid, look – I don’t know who you are, I don’t know where you’re from, but this is silly. This is no place for kids, and your nana’s probably worried sick about you.”
The boy’s sleepy face frowned for a moment before straightening out in what seemed to be remembrance – remembrance of what exactly, Zurg had no idea.
“Yes, well, anyway –” Zurg cleared his throat – “I’m going to try to find your nana and get you home. In the meantime, you might as well have breakfast for me.”
He was rewarded with a dazzling grin. “Hooo no, you are no puppy-dog, and just because I’m feeding you doesn’t mean you can stick around.”
The boy shrugged happily and settled back into the chair, shifting to get comfortable. Zurg frowned. “Hey, that’s my chair; where am I gonna sit?”
The boy seemed to ponder this for a moment, then his face brightened and he pointed to the bed. “Breakfast in bed?” Zurg asked. Rather than nod “yes,” the boy simply smiled. Zurg shrugged. “Far be it from an Evil Emperor to refuse breakfast in bed… Don’t think that it’s gonna earn you any points, though…”
The child gave a slight smirk of satisfaction as Zurg settled back into bed. His little body slouched back comfortably into the huge office chair.
Zurg grabbed the remote on the nightstand and turned on the ZV, flipping through the channels to find something decently evil to watch while he ate. Two grubs came in, delivered the pancake breakfast, and left in silence, having been instructed beforehand not to say a word to or about Planet Z’s latest inhab… visitor. While channel-surfing, Zurg came across one ancient children’s show, Dragon-something-or-other. Oooo, that one is just plain annoying. He continued on, until a little human hand took the remote from him and started switching back. “Hey!” Zurg protested, annoyed. “I was trying to find something EVIL to watch for breakfast!”
The little boy gave him a slightly annoyed look that seemed to say, Oh, grow up. He then stopped pressing the “channel-back” button and returned the remote to its owner, grabbing his tray of food and happily settling down beside the Evil Emperor to watch. Zurg frowned at the boy, both for settling right next to him like he was family and for returning right to Dragon-something-or-other! “Ho-ho no, kiddo, nothing doing! We are not watching that dragon show!”
The child looked up at Zurg with his big blue eyes, his lower lip out and his little chin trembling. Zurg recognized the play for what it was – he might not know much about kids, but hey, he wasn’t stupid, thank you very much. “Oh no, no, no! You are sooo not giving me puppy eyes! No! No, don’t you dare look at me like that! N-no, ohhh… Oh, fine! Just this once! It’s not like you’ll be around much longer to torment me like this, right?”
The boy gave him a sly grin – a look that, for a four-year-old, was almost terrifying. It wasn’t evil or anything – it was just… scary.
Then the child snuggled his small body up against Zurg’s big body. Oh really, how was an Evil Emperor supposed to react to all this – this cuteness? There was nothing in the Class-Z textbooks about this kind of situation, because it wasn’t supposed to happen!
Eventually, Zurg relaxed his tense body and tried to ignore the annoying show and the warm body beside him while he ate his breakfast.
All right, my first decent-sized Zurg fic! I'll try to update soon. Meantime, I know you Zurg girls out there are reading this - that's right, I see you! XD Please review! Please, please, please, please, please!
==Beyond Silence==
Chapter One
Oh, how the Evil Emperor Zurg loved to cause trouble! It didn’t bother him that he didn’t have henchmen aside from his hornets to do his dirty work – if you want something done EVIL, do it yourself. A variation of one of Nana Zurg’s sayings – and as always, she was right.
So the young Evil Emperor was currently on Tradeworld, having just finished a little business. To be precise, he was currently at Tradeworld’s only museum, an archive for galactic artwork. The pieces were all copies, of course – it would be crazy to publicly display anything of real value in the galaxy’s biggest cesspool of a planet. Zurg briefly entertained the idea of snatching some of the more purple paintings, but quickly dismissed the notion. The only piece of art worth stealing was the real McCoy – anything less just wasn’t evil enough.
As he browsed the galleries, he came across a woman in her late forties and a little boy, but gave them no thought, becoming engrossed in one painting in particular: a red sky over a red plain. Huh, looked like home. The plaque said something about Mars, but that definitely looked like Planet Z. Slowly, he became aware of someone beside him. He looked around, then down. Waaay down.
Standing there, studying the painting as Zurg himself had been doing a few seconds ago, was the little boy. He was five at the most, probably not even that. He was human, but he must have had a trace of alien in him somewhere because his woefully unruly hair was cobalt blue. His most striking feature, though, was not his hair color but his eyes – big, bright, a beautiful shade of azure. A keen intelligence lurked there, and an indefinable something that made him look far older than his years.
Zurg pulled himself together enough to snarl, “Go on! Shoo!”
The child finally tore his attention from the painting and turned to the Evil Emperor. His black eyebrows drew together in a frown, and his lower lip jutted out slightly. Instead of leaving, though, he firmly stuck out his little legs and crossed his arms over his chest, his whole stance radiating obstinacy.
Zurg noticed the woman standing nearby, watching them… with an amused smile? Oh, that does it! “Lady, will you take your son and go?” he whined.
The woman smirked slightly and came over, reaching for the boy’s hand. “He’s my grandson.” She knelt down till she was at the boy’s eye-level, which wasn’t hard to do since she was pretty petite herself. “Come on, honey, let’s leave the Evil Emperor alone.”
The boy’s frown grew deeper.
“What, he doesn’t talk?” Zurg asked.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” the grandmother said pointedly, “but no, he doesn’t. He’s perfectly able to talk – he just won’t do it.”
“Sounds like somebody needs help,” Zurg muttered under his breath.
The grandmother frowned. “Not nearly as much as some psychopathic hotshots do.” She squeezed her grandson’s hand and said firmly, “Come on – let’s go.”
The boy looked down at his feet with an air of defeat and nodded. He looked back up at the Evil Emperor one last time… and gave him a brilliant smile. Zurg was thoroughly confused – what was with this kid?
As the woman led her grandson away, the azure eyes never left Zurg. Once the odd pair was gone, the Evil Emperor shook his head to clear it. “Wow,” he muttered. “That was random…”
~*~
On the docking pad, Zurg stretched his arms out and arched his back. “Ohhh yes, it’s good to be home!”
A grub rushed over to his side. “Is there anything you require, O Evil One?”
“Just a light supper before I go to bed,” Zurg airily informed the servant. “Evil can be so tiring sometimes, but well worth the effort!”
He made his way to his room and proceeded to change out of his undercover spacesuit (which really wasn’t that undercover with the same color scheme and monogram, besides which his face was unmistakable) into lavender pajamas – complete with monogramming, of course. Another grub (or was it the same one? they all looked alike) delivered his supper, and it wasn’t long before the Evil Emperor was ready to pass out.
Which was why, when he saw the small human figure in the room, he first chalked it up to a lethargy-induced illusion. But, rubbing his red eyes a few times, he realized that the little human really was there, and was actually…
“Sweet mother of Venus, what are YOU doing here??” Zurg demanded.
It was the boy from the museum! He grinned mischievously at Zurg.
“How did you get here… oh, never mind! Just – just go back to wherever you came from! Go back to your nana!”
The boy responded with the same stubborn stance he had used earlier. Ohhh, what to do? Zurg had never had any experience with kids of any age, much less four or five-year-olds.
“Look, I don’t know WHAT you’re up to, but whatever it is had better stop right NOW!!” Now THAT 5-star bellow would scare the wits out of any grub or brainpod, ha-ha!
But – oh, sweet mother of Venus! – the boy was actually standing his ground! No one had ever… Well, no – one person had, but… well, that was in the past, and the past was best left forgotten, right? No matter – this next scream would send the kid running all the way to Capital Planet at hyperspeed! “GET OUUUUUUUT!!”
The boy cringed, but otherwise showed no signs of fear. Oh man, it was like having your bluff called! This would not do, not for the galaxy’s EVILEST Emperor! Think, Zurgie boy, think!
Maybe a bribe?
“If you go home,” Zurg said in a rather sickeningly-sweet voice, “I’ll give you a month’s worth of candy.”
The boy’s eyes brightened, but not in the way that Zurg had hoped. Instead, his eyes fairly danced as he sucked in his lips, like he was trying not to laugh at Zurg! Oooo, this is the LAST STRAW!
Zurg growled and lifted the boy by the shirt collar, eliciting silent squirming as the boy tried his best to wriggle out of or pry open the iron grip. “Okay, I tried to be nice, but I’m not going to take any more of this.” He stomped to the door and tossed the boy out into the hallway, quickly shutting his door and locking it. “There! He’ll get the hint now!” Zurg said smugly. Then he yawned and stretched. “Definitely bedtime – early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, evil, and wise! At least, that’s what Nana Zurg used to say.”
In two minutes, he was out.
~*~
Sometimes, you can be asleep, and you will still have some sense that someone else is in the room with you. Slowly, that same sense brought Zurg back to consciousness. He flexed his right hand, prepared to morph it into his dual-barrel ion cannon if the intruder proved to be hostile. He jerked up straight in bed and whipped around…
…To see the boy curled up in his desk chair, asleep!
“Ohhh, craters!” Zurg moaned, too tired be properly enraged. He fell back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling in thought. I’ll just try to find his nana tomorrow, he decided, then moaned softly. Ohh, this is ridiculous.
~*~
The next morning, the boy found himself being shaken awake by one rather flustered Evil Emperor. “Okay, kid, look – I don’t know who you are, I don’t know where you’re from, but this is silly. This is no place for kids, and your nana’s probably worried sick about you.”
The boy’s sleepy face frowned for a moment before straightening out in what seemed to be remembrance – remembrance of what exactly, Zurg had no idea.
“Yes, well, anyway –” Zurg cleared his throat – “I’m going to try to find your nana and get you home. In the meantime, you might as well have breakfast for me.”
He was rewarded with a dazzling grin. “Hooo no, you are no puppy-dog, and just because I’m feeding you doesn’t mean you can stick around.”
The boy shrugged happily and settled back into the chair, shifting to get comfortable. Zurg frowned. “Hey, that’s my chair; where am I gonna sit?”
The boy seemed to ponder this for a moment, then his face brightened and he pointed to the bed. “Breakfast in bed?” Zurg asked. Rather than nod “yes,” the boy simply smiled. Zurg shrugged. “Far be it from an Evil Emperor to refuse breakfast in bed… Don’t think that it’s gonna earn you any points, though…”
The child gave a slight smirk of satisfaction as Zurg settled back into bed. His little body slouched back comfortably into the huge office chair.
Zurg grabbed the remote on the nightstand and turned on the ZV, flipping through the channels to find something decently evil to watch while he ate. Two grubs came in, delivered the pancake breakfast, and left in silence, having been instructed beforehand not to say a word to or about Planet Z’s latest inhab… visitor. While channel-surfing, Zurg came across one ancient children’s show, Dragon-something-or-other. Oooo, that one is just plain annoying. He continued on, until a little human hand took the remote from him and started switching back. “Hey!” Zurg protested, annoyed. “I was trying to find something EVIL to watch for breakfast!”
The little boy gave him a slightly annoyed look that seemed to say, Oh, grow up. He then stopped pressing the “channel-back” button and returned the remote to its owner, grabbing his tray of food and happily settling down beside the Evil Emperor to watch. Zurg frowned at the boy, both for settling right next to him like he was family and for returning right to Dragon-something-or-other! “Ho-ho no, kiddo, nothing doing! We are not watching that dragon show!”
The child looked up at Zurg with his big blue eyes, his lower lip out and his little chin trembling. Zurg recognized the play for what it was – he might not know much about kids, but hey, he wasn’t stupid, thank you very much. “Oh no, no, no! You are sooo not giving me puppy eyes! No! No, don’t you dare look at me like that! N-no, ohhh… Oh, fine! Just this once! It’s not like you’ll be around much longer to torment me like this, right?”
The boy gave him a sly grin – a look that, for a four-year-old, was almost terrifying. It wasn’t evil or anything – it was just… scary.
Then the child snuggled his small body up against Zurg’s big body. Oh really, how was an Evil Emperor supposed to react to all this – this cuteness? There was nothing in the Class-Z textbooks about this kind of situation, because it wasn’t supposed to happen!
Eventually, Zurg relaxed his tense body and tried to ignore the annoying show and the warm body beside him while he ate his breakfast.
~*~
