1547: Heroes and Villains – Chapter Seven, Part Two

Title: Heroes and Villains
Author: Horrible’s Igor
Media: Television / Movies
Topic: Buffy: The Vampire Slayer / Kitchen Sink
Genre: Supernatural/Drama
URL: Heroes and Villains
Critiqued by TacoMagic and Eliza

Heyo, patrons!  Welcome back to Heroes and Villains.  As luck would have it, last week something actually happened!  Somewhat.  It was stupidly executed and mired in lots of unnecessary dialogue, but I’ll take it.  I’ll hand it off to Eliza to elucidate.

“Elsa poisoned Buffy and Jimmy with a PCC chocolate cake!”

See!  It was a thing!  And it totally happened!

Otherwise, the first half of the chapter was relatively devoid of anything interesting.

“Other than Olaf secretly being Solid Snake and Sam Fischer rolled into one, bubbly package.”

Or maybe the villains are just every bit as incompetent as we think they are and Olaf is just bumbling around without them noticing.

“I like my version better.”

In any case, now that Buffy and Jimmy are in prison, and Olaf is ‘sneaking’ around the castle, we jump over to Willow who is, true to form, not really doing anything.

As she walked back to the CRoE, she began concocting numerous ways to keep Buffy and the professor out of her hair.

“I wouldn’t call that nothing.  She’s thinking.”

Given what we’ve seen of her planning, I’m not willing to accept that she can think.  I bet the narrator is lying to us again.

Perhaps invest in security cameras, maybe have Elsa stop by Buffy’s every so often to make sure she wasn’t getting any ideas? Hmm.

“So you buy every member of your organization a $300,000 car, but couldn’t be bothered with a basic security system?  I think we’ve found a new home for Wesker.”

And it never occurs to her to post one of her henchmen as a guard.

“To be fair, posting an unnamed guard outside the hero’s cell generally doesn’t end well.”

True enough.

Her train of thought was brought to a screeching halt when she bumped into something in the hall.

I would have used the metaphor of a hamster falling off a wheel.

“That’s not very fair to the  hamster.”

That thing promptly screamed.

“AHHHHH!”

*ALARM BLARES*

*Ike bursts into the room, cackling madly*

The heck are you doing here?

“He picked up a part time job as an enforcer.  Poor little guy was getting bored.”

Oh, great.  Does he actually do anything, or is he just going to keep messing up the formatting?

“Definitely just the formatting.”

I see.  Ike, here’s twenty dollars.  Go play with Markus or something.

*Ike takes the twenty dollars and runs cackling from the room*

“AH!” she reacted, taking a step back. She looked down to see just what she’d run into, and was surprised to see Olaf standing before her, looking like she’d just scared the living daylights out of him.

Which would be why he screamed.

*ALARM BLAR-*

Alarm, here, take twenty dollars and go play with Ike and Marcus.

“Is that your answer to everything?”

Never underestimate the power of handing somebody a twenty.

“Y–yeah, that’s me!” he stuttered.

Olaf doesn’t stutter.  Period.  He doesn’t stutter for two reasons.  First, he doesn’t have a speech disorder, and second, he’s impossible to frighten.  He’s not even remotely afraid of his own death.

She smiled friendlily. “Well, what are ya doing over up here, Olaf? Elsa told me you were way down in Sunnydale, or so her new friends told her.”

“You have two people in your dungeon who you know are friends of Olaf.  You should be able to connect the dots, sweetie.”

“Well, I was,” Olaf nodded, “and then we all came up to Yo-sem-aight-e to find her, but the others told me to wait ’cause she might still be sad about Anna… Is she?”

“Yeah…” Willow admitted sadly, “I brewed up a spell so they could talk, but… It ended badly. She’s not herself.”

“No kidding!” Olaf exclaimed. “I saw her take the others out and bring them here! I waited by the door until you two went in and then I tried to follow her, but I couldn’t find her.”

“Didn’t he beat them into the castle?”

Probably?  He snuck into somewhere while they were talking.  The fic was a little vague on the particulars.  Well, a lot vague.

“Did you hear anything we said?” Willow asked, praying he said no. It wouldn’t do for him to come in and screw things up.

Smoooooooooth.

“He hasn’t done anything yet and you’ve just found  him.  If he messes things up now, you’re even worse at being a villain than we didn’t give you credit for.”

“Uh… no,” he replied, but his face looked troubled. “Why?”

On the one hand, he has every right to be suspicious after a line like that.  On the other, he’s still freaking OLAF!  He doesn’t get suspicious!

“It’s just- she was saying some… nasty things,” Willow finished lamely.

“Smooooooooooooooooooooooth.”

“Like what?” Olaf inquired.

“You don’t know want to know,” Willow avoided.

“No, I do!” Olaf insisted.

“No, you really don’t,” Willow repeated.

If we’re going to do this again, I might run and make a sandwich while they argue.

“She would be heartbroken, and she’s doing bad enough as it is.”

“I’d say that last part could be re-arranged to: ‘she’s doing enough bad as it is,’ but we both know that would be a lie.”

Credit where it’s due, Elsa has done significantly more than Willow has.

“Okay…” Olaf acquiesced. “Do you know where she is?”

Author, your ‘said’ dodges are physically painful for how obvious and awkward they are.

“Um…” she pretended to ponder, looking around a little. “Actually, I don’t. Huh.” She pretended to get a brilliant idea.

*Eliza looks over at the empty spot on the wall*

“I hope they’re all having fun.”

As much fun as forty bucks is likely to buy them, I’d wager.

“Oh! I know what we can do! I can go and look for her this way-” she pointed behind her- towards the holding cell- “and you can go the other way, and we can meet back here with Elsa!”

Igor, it was almost sorta cute when you had Olaf suggest this the first time, but now you’re really pressing your luck with this schtick.

Olaf grinned excitedly. “That’s awesome! Let’s do it!” He promptly turned and began walking, cupping his hands and calling out, “El-saaa!… El-saaaa!…”

“I thought he didn’t actually want to alert Elsa to his presence.”

The plot has decided that he no longer cares about alerting Elsa.

She watched him vanish around a corner, a small smile tugging at her lips, and she pulled out a walkie-talkie. “Security, this is Miss Rosenberg. If a snowman attempts to open any doors, give it Level 3 clearance- we’re playing a little game. That will be all.”

First, Willow, you have a cell phone.  Leave the walkie-talkie in your anal pouch of holding, you don’t need it.  Second, granting Olaf security clearance is NOT the way you prevent him from screwing things up.  Third, and this is for the author, when you have Olaf use that security clearance later to thrwart some kind of evil plan or some-such, it will not be clever since the entire setup requires Willow to be an absolute moron.

“Why didn’t she just take Olaf captive instead of cooking up this whole ‘finding Elsa’ ruse?”

I did mention that this Willow is an absolute moron.

“Sorry, when you start listing things I generally tune you out and think about unicorns until you’re done.”

Ah.  Anyway, with Willow’s new plan in place, we head over to Jim.

“Elsa,” Marlowe acknowledged as the door shut.

“How does he know that the door is named Elsa?”

Most doors are named Elsa.

“Good evening, Marlowe,” Elsa smiled with false pleasantness. “I hope you’re feeling well?”

He’s your prisoner and you already admitted to him that you’re villaining it up now.  Why the false pretense?

“Oh, aside from the fact that we’re locked in a cell in our nemesis’s lair, I’m just dandy, how about you?” he snapped.

Wait, is this going to be a scene where all that happens is that the characters make snide comments at each other pointlessly?  Is this what we’re doing?  Tension through bitching?  It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to riff a fic with that particular story mechanic in it.

“I’m sorry that’s how it has to be,” Elsa replied evenly.

Marlowe shook his head, a sardonic smirk appearing. “No you’re not.”

“I thought we could’ve been friends,” Elsa said. “You’re a nice man.”

“Yes, but I don’t associate with those who side with killers,” he shot back.

Tension through bitching it is.  Welp, strap in fo-

BAAAAAAAAA!

*GONG*

Dude, what did that tapestry ever do to you?

“And there’s the rub,” she sighed.

“Oh Igor, this fic is good enough on it’s own.  You don’t need to steal from Shakespeare.”

Was that… was that sarcasm!?

“Maaaaaaybe.  A girl has to have a few secrets.”

“Are you aware how evil she is?” Marlowe asked. “She once flayed a man alive.”

“I know,” Elsa nodded, a little uneasy. “She wasn’t herself, though… She was angry.”

Watch yourself, Igor, this is wandering into domestic abuse territory all of a sudden.

“Then what’s to say she won’t do it again?” Marlowe questioned the girl, his gaze burning into her.

“Nothing,” she answered, her voice trembling the slightest little bit. “I don’t mind it when it’s not so… unnecessary. That was torture.”

“She’s fine with flaying the skin off people so long as it’s not quite so unnecessary?”

Apparently it’s also not considered torture if it meets that ‘not so unnecessary’ criteria.  I’m honestly trying to come up with a way to have more horrifically butchered Elsa’s character than this, and I’m not coming up with anything.

“Oh, and all that other stuff’s just peachy,” Buffy remarked snidely.

All the other stuff?

“Maybe Buffy means the laziness, lack of planning, inability to execute simple plans, lack of intelligence, and trespassing on national park lands.”

Buffy doesn’t have much of a point.  Those things all fall pretty short of aggravated murder.

“The other stuff wasn’t so… messy,” Elsa eventually came up with.

“That’s your only problem with it?” Buffy asked incredulously. “That it was messy? You must be insane!”

Buffy isn’t getting this whole ‘she’s evil’ thing.  Maybe it’s time to break out the pupp-

*A sudden flurry of activity later and Eliza standing behind a puppet theater with a marionette in each hand*

I was being facetious.

“Like you’re any better!” Elsa shot back. “What about when the First was going to destroy Sunnydale? You certainly weren’t so pristine either!”

Uhh, sorry, gotta take Buffy’s side on this.  Buffy was a bit of a controlling jerk, but she didn’t torture anyone to death.

“But she did get rather dirty at times.”

Okay, well yes, Buffy did get covered in dirt and blood several times.

“So Elsa does have a point. Buffy was rather messy.”

Fine, using the whacked-out priority of being messy, Buffy was no better than Willow.

“That’s different!” Buffy evaded. “You try handling 30-some scared little girls and make an army out of them! You have to be tough.”

“Which isn’t her complaint.  She’s arguing that you weren’t very clean, not whether you were too tough on the girls.”

“There’s a fine line between being tough and being ruthless,” Elsa replied. “You drove one girl to suicide!”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with being clean.”

Nor is it really the same as actively killing somebody.  Buffy working the girls hard was only part of the reason that girl killed herself.  The other two big factors was the hopeless despair at knowing that they were facing an opponent they had no chance of defeating.  Also having that entity whispering in their minds that they should end their lives to spare themselves a gruesome death didn’t help things.

“If she hadn’t let the First get to her, she would’ve been fine!” Buffy hissed.

Not necessarily true since many of the slayers died in the battle against the first, but true enough.

“If you hadn’t given the First such goos stuff to work with in the first place, it wouldn’t have happened!” Elsa pointed out.

Oh please. The First was a master manipulator who had eons to practice his craft.  He’d have convinced that girl to kill herself no matter how much goo Buffy gave him.

Buffy was quiet a moment, her face still in that angry scowl, then eventually said, “Nobody’s perfect, Elsa. Not me, not you, not your sister, and definitely not her.”

Her?

“GIRLWOMAN!”

It’s strange that this ‘nobody’s perfect’ message keeps getting kicked up in the audience’s face.  All the more odd because it doesn’t seem to be a moral or a specific message, just the randomly mentioned mantra of the fic.

“I know,” Elsa agreed, “The bad guys can suck, but the good guys can suck too- and right now, I’m pretty sick of the good guys.”

“Because she had a tiff with her sister.”

Yeah, Igor doesn’t really have a consistent idea of how good and evil work in this mess of canon, so neither do his characters.

The door swung open, and Willow came in again, her expression agitated.

Smooooooooooooooooth.

“We should invite Willow to poker night.”

“I trust everyone’s being nice to each other?” she said.

“More or less,” Elsa replied.

“Good. Elsa- a word outside?” She exited, and Elsa followed, making sure to close the door behind her.

May as well just talk in front of the prisoners.  They already know something’s wrong.

“We have a little problem,” Willow informed her. “Olaf followed you here.”

“He did?” Elsa repeated, raising her eyebrows.

“Did you do anything about it?”

Pfft. No, who do you take me for?

“Yeah, and he heard us talking at the door outside- he’s onto us; probably looking for those two-” she jabbed her thumb at the door, “and we can’t let that happen. Once they get out, they’re gonna start coming for us, and we are not ready to let that happen.”

“So we should probably come up with a more permanent solution to this problem, right?”

Pfft. No!  Have you even been paying attention to what we do here?

“What do we do, then?” Elsa asked.

“We need to get Olaf out of here,” Willow answered. “He’s looking around for you- presumably- so we need him to find you, and you get him to leave. Sound good?”

“That sounds like a horrible plan, so let’s go for it!”

And best of all, it doesn’t require Willow to do anything.

“Done deal,” Elsa affirmed.

“Okay. Go,” Willow nodded, waving her towards the hall, and Elsa began to search. As she walked further away, she heard Willow mutter, “Aaa, shit…” before hearing the door click shut again.

Willow forgot to take into account that somebody needs to watch the prisoners, and she’s the closest one to the cell.

“Don’t worry, Willow, I’m sure you’ll come up with a good way to rationalize why the prisoners don’t actually need to be watched!”

Where was she, where was she, where was she?

*Eliza looks at the empty spot on the wall* “I hope they’re playing nice.”

We haven’t heard an explosion in well over seven minutes, so they’re probably fine.

It felt like he had been searching for hours.

But was actually only about twelve seconds.

This place was huge! All sorts of different rooms and halls to look through, some filled with people, some not, and some that were blocked off or locked shut.  It could take forever to find her here!

So description.

“Very setting.”

On the bright side, even something seemingly infinite was not.

“So take heart, this fic cannot last forever.”

He was bound to find her soon. So he forged ahead, looking for any open door he could to search. Top floor- nothing. 3rd floor- nothing. 2nd- nothing. As he made for the stairs, he heard someone call out from the ground floor, “Olaf… Ol-af…”

It was Elsa!

Thank you, fic, we couldn’t have possibly worked that out on our own.

“Elsa?” he called out, just to be sure.

“Olaf!” he heard her cry. “Where are you?”

“I’m upstairs, hang on a moment!” he yelled, sprinting for them. In his haste, though, he slipped, tumbling down the stairs until he hit a wall, squishing him a little. “Elsa!” he crowed jubilantly as he saw her, standing and fixing himself up before throwing his arms around her legs.

“Igor remembered that Olaf falls apart now and then!”

Shame that he forgot that bit for the whole ‘clinging to the bottom of the car’ bit.

“Hi, Olaf!” she replied, picking him up and hugging him tight. “What are you doing here I thought you were with Kristoff and Anna.”

“Well, I was-” began Olaf as she set him back down, “but- I got lonely without you. I thought I could come back and bring you back with us.

Please stop summarizing the plot.  I swear this fic is like 10% plot, and 20% summarization of that plot.

“And the other 70% is filler, right?”

I like to call it literary sawdust.

“You came all this way just to ask me back?” she repeated softly.

“Totally!” he nodded. “You’re my best friend.”

“Mother.  BFF.  Same diff.”

“Oh, Olaf, I wish I could,” she said, her expression saddening, “but…”

“But what?” asked Olaf, slightly oblivious.

“Anna and I… we had a fight,” Elsa said reluctantly.

Olaf’s grin froze a moment, then slowly melted into a very deep, uncomprehending frown. “What?”

I feel really bad for Olaf.

“Because his mother and aunt are feuding?”

No, because he’s about to get exposed to how idiotic their argument is.

“She won’t let me come back,” she continued morosely. “I doubt we’re even on speaking terms anymore.”

“What?” he repeated disbelievingly.

That was our reaction.

“I’m sorry, Olaf,” Elsa sighed. “We just can’t be together.”

“But why?” he asked.

Please, fic, I’m begging you not to try to explain it again.  I can’t take that much stupid again.

“It’s complicated,” Elsa replied, trying to dodge the question.

“Yay!”

Not so fast, there’s still a lot of dialogue coming.

“Boo!”

“But- but you said it would be better here, and it is!” he said.

“In this blank hallway.”

Located in the middle of the void palace.

“She doesn’t see it like that,” she shrugged.

“GIRLWOMAN!?”

Anna, I’m afraid.

“That doesn’t mean you can’t be together, though!” Olaf replied, the conflict so easily resolved in his innocent eyes.

It’s sad when the character that the fic is trying to portray as cluelessly naive is the one with the best point.

“Yes it does,” Elsa confirmed sadly. “the only thing that could please her is going back, and I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” Olaf inquired.

“Because we would be driven out eventually- by fear,” Elsa told him.

“We’ll just have to trust her on that one.”

Well, it was fear that drove them out.  Hers.

“Fear?” he repeated, confused.

“The people would become too afraid of me to keep me as queen. Then, we would be cast out.”

“Really?” Olaf asked.

“Yes,” Elsa nodded. “Anna thinks we could talk them down, but I know better.”

“And if Elsa can be lauded on anything it’s how well she understands people.”

“That’s such a stupid detail to be fighting about, though!” Olaf stated indignantly.

“Why is Olaf the only character who can see this!?”

Because the author wasn’t aware how juvenile the whole setup was.

“So Elsa wouldn’t have made a good queen after all?  She seems a horrible judge of character and can’t get over a very simple fight with her sister.”

Yeah, the story was right, but for the wrong reasons.

“It isn’t, really,” Elsa denied. “We would have a hard time finding somewhere to go. Given the situation there, I doubt we’d be taken in elsewhere.”

Seriously, my basement is still open.  You can even bring Sven.

“You really hate shoveling snow, don’t you?”

You have no idea.

“So you were right! Problem solved!” Olaf said with an air of finality.

“Olaf, Anna won’t admit defeat in a thousand years,” Elsa reminded him. “We can’t be together.”

Yes, we must drag out this nonsensical fight until the plot demands we resolve it!

“This makes no sense, though…” he said, his brow furrowed with confusion and hurt.

“We’re right there with you, Olaf.”

“You should probably go, Olaf,” Elsa said softly. “I bet they’re worried.”

“No!” he refused. “I’ll only go if you go!”

“Olaf, I can’t,” Elsa repeated, her voice tight.

“We could persuade her!” Olaf countered.

 

 

“How long does it go on like this?”

*Looks down*  Oh gods, it’s most of the rest of the scene.  We’re just going to skip it all because it’s basically 30 lines of this:

And really, the whole exchange boils down to that Anna and Elsa can’t make amends because the plot demands they don’t.  Thankfully, Elsa eventually puts the pointlessness to an end.

“You mean the fic ends!?”

“OLAF!” Elsa shouted, cutting him off. The snowman jumped a little, his eyes wide with surprise. “It’s over. We’re through, and you can’t fix that! If you can’t get that yourself, I will make you get it, okay? GO.”

“How can anyone be this mean to Olaf!?”

The plot is a terrible master, sometimes.

It felt like someone had impaled Olaf through the heart.

What heart?

“But, he gets impaled all the time. He actually seems to like it.”

If snowmen could cry, he would be just about to cry a river. “Elsa…”

She pointed her finger towards the giant double-doors. “GO!”

“Can we go with him!?”

Carlos is guarding the door and we aren’t on the list.

“Boo!”

And he did, but with every step a sharp pain struck at his heart, and the world was once again a dark and unhappy place to be.  Everything had come crashing down around him in the span of one month, and he would never be able to fix it up just right again. As he reached the door, he looked back one last time at Elsa- his friend, his creator, his mother- and she jabbed her finger at the door again, a frightening scowl marring her beautiful face. He turned around, and with the heaviest heart he’d ever had the misfortune to carry, left.

Do I need to dredge up that quote where Igor thought he’d messed up the characterization but was comforted by his reviews?  There is something very depressing about it.

“It’s a one-line short story about an author’s common sense squashed under the weight of unearned, mindless praise.”

That’d be it, yeah.

Anyway, we head back to the cell where:

The door to the cell swung open, and Elsa entered with a deep scowl.

“Olaf?” asked Willow.

“Gone,” Elsa replied curtly.

“Good,” Willow nodded.

“Olaf?” Buffy asked, surprised.

“Olaf,” Willow confirmed.

“Olaf?” Marlowe repeated, looking less surprised.

“Olaf,” Willow repeated again.

Igor!  Your dialogue is bad enough without it diving to preschool levels!

“Hmm,” Marlowe hummed.

“Why was he here?” Buffy inquired curiously.

He was looking for directions to the railway.  WHY DO YOU THINK HE WAS HERE!?

Willow looked to Elsa for permission, to which the woman shrugged. “Olaf was here to see Elsa,” Willow answered. “Apparently he followed her here. Looks like their conversation didn’t end well for him.”

“What did you do to him?” Buffy asked worriedly.

“Impaled him!”

“I sent him to go back to Anna and Kristoff,” Elsa stated bluntly. “He’ll live.”

“Where are they?” Buffy asked.

“Somewhere called Toronto,” Elsa replied. “He could find them anywhere, though, so it doesn’t matter.”

Whoa now, back up there.  He can find them anywhere?  What kind of selective ability is this that he can just find Anna and Kristof at will, but not Elsa?

“One that is very situational.”

“He had trouble finding you,” Buffy pointed out. “What makes you think he’ll find them any easier?”

“Don’t point out the plot holes!”

Yeah, that’s our job.

Elsa thought for a moment, then responded, “Nothing, really- besides, it’ll give him time to get it into his head that I’m not coming back.”

Ah, so she’s just bullshitting them.  That’s fair.  If we can’t trust the narrator, we certainly shouldn’t trust any of the characters.

“That’s- that is cold,” Buffy shuddered.

I’m the Snow Queen,” Elsa reminded her with a cold smirk. “What did you expect?”

Fewer ice puns?

BAAA-

Here’s twenty bucks, you’ll find Ike, the Alarm, and Markus by Lina’s coffee hutch trying to figure out what to do with forty dollars.

Ba!

*Cerbersheep rushes out of the room in a poof of wool*

“You’ve spent sixty bucks on that gag today.”

I think of it as imaginary money well spent.

“You really are now,” agreed Buffy, “to the point where you abandon your family for good.”

“I tried it before,” Elsa reminded her. “Maybe this time it’ll take.”

Well, if you’re going to steal plot from the movie, you may as well acknowledge it, I guess.

For a moment the room was quiet. Then Willow’s phone rang, set to some sort of dissonantly cheery jingle that vaguely reminded Buffy of something she’d heard before.

“Whew, almost built up some tension.  That was close!”

“Excuse me a moment,” Willow muttered, standing and going to the door. “Hello?… Yes, it’s me.” The door shut with a small *click*.

“So-” Marlowe began after a pause, “what happens now?”

Wait, Jim is on the phone!?

“If Jimmy is calling Willow, who’s in the cell with Buffy!?”

“You;ll stay here until she says you can go,” Elsa replied.

Ooooh, the scene stayed in the cell instead of following the character of interest.  Strange choice.

“Probably helps add in a little padding since now he has to build in some kind of transition.”

Why would he start using transitions now?

“Which’ll be never,” Buffy sighed.

“Oh, no, she’ll let you go,” Elsa shook her head. “She just wants to be on level ground first- she wants it to be fair.”

Villainy, you’re doing it wrong.

“At the rate Willow is going, getting to equal footing will take forever anyway.”

Good point.

“She outmatches me and Marlowe combined,” Buffy said. “How is that fair?”

She’s got a point; in a one-on-one fight, a powerful witch is going to beat a slayer most days of the week.

“A slayer with a literature professor beside her isn’t going to pose much more challenge.”

“You underestimate your strength,” Elsa responded.

In this case, no.  The first time Buffy and Dark Willow tangled, Buffy got beat down pretty hard.  Dark Willow would have ended the world if Xander wouldn’t have turned up to talk her down.

“Besides, this isn’t about just beating you. It’s sort of like a game for her- she likes to make the people dance before she puts them out of their misery, but she still needs to start it up. Ergo, until she says, you’re not going anywhere.”

“This is what Crunchy calls ‘a newb mistake.'”

He doesn’t use the word ‘newb’ does he?

“No, he uses a much longer word that means exactly the same thing, so I shortened it.”

“What if I… disagree?” Buffy replied.

There are a couple of things there that you can disagree with.  Mind narrowing it down a bit?

Elsa looked at her palm, conjuring a tiny flurry in her hand. “I wouldn’t try that if I were you,” she said. “You might get cold feet.”

Icee what you did there, author.

“All these puns are just chilling.”

Suddenly there was a loud BANG outside the door. Everybody started a little, and they began to hear shouting. Willow, specifically.

“Swenia wasn’t supposed to take the shot until I gave the signal!”

Wait, what?

“Nothing.  Everything’s fine.”

“You have no right to do that!” they heard. “We had a DEAL! I get you what you want, I get what I want in return! A DEAL!… If you back out on me now, I’ll see to it that your stuffed head goes on my MANTLE. You don’t simply “end the deal”! No, I SAY WHEN IT’S OVER, NOT YOU!… You have ten minutes to rethink this. Think very hard, and if you value your life, you’ll uphold your end.”

Dude, you’re a villain dealing with villains.  You gotta expect some of this.

“You don’t threaten Bad Horse.  Ever.   He’ll have an army of sheep bleeting down your door before you know what’s happening to you.”

So we’re moving into sheep puns now?

“With all the ice puns looming around, I thought I’d give it a spin.”

…

We finally cut over to Willow.

There was that migraine again.

Where?

“Around.”

Willow paced on the opposite side of the door, muttering curses unfit for the writer to disclose in full.  The narrator has taken the liberty of changing the words to avoid getting into moral trouble.

“Bad author!  No treats!”

“Backstabbing, conniving, pompous ass,” she fumed. “Cut off a deal with me, oh, he has nerve. He has a lotta nerve challenging me.”

“He’s not an ass, he’s a horse.  They’re a different subgenus.”

I never pegged Willow for a racist.

“Speciesist.”

Whatever.

The door opened, and Elsa stepped out. “What?” Willow snarled.

“We heard shouting,” Elsa said quietly, looking rather terrified.

Willow tried to rein herself in a little. “I am having a very bad day,” she replied.

All this… stuff getting in the way of my perfectly good day filled with nothing!

“What’s wrong?” Elsa asked.

“That little deal I’ve been mentioning? Well, the other guy thought he could call it off. Not gonna happen,” Willow answered.

“Why would he do that?” Elsa inquired.

“They really aren’t processing the whole ‘evil’ thing are they?”

Maybe we will need to the puppets after all.

Because a-pparent-ly,” Willow said, “we aren’t getting his supplies fast enough. He doesn’t know how good he’s getting it already, an order his size normally takes two months and I’m getting them for him in two weeks. He should be thanking me. Besides- his end involves something I really need- it’s why he’s getting rush delivery.”

It take a long time to gather so much nothing.  Willow has had her entire empty base not working around the clock to keep nothing flowing out by the truckload.

“What’s that?” Elsa asked.

“Our transfer,” Willow revealed.

“Oh…” Elsa realized.

“Is it weird that Dr. Horrible is getting treated like a commodity in this fic?”

It’s getting there, yes.

“I’m not gonna lose him,” Willow swore. “Not a chance.”

“Is he good?” Elsa asked.

“Better,” Willow grinned. “He’s got a PhD.”

Oh for crap’s sake.  Please don’t tell me that you’re going to steal his line.

“In what?” asked Elsa.

Well, fuck, here it comes.

…

Wha?

“There’s a scene break.”

Oh, well at least Igor didn’t steal the-

“Now the nightmare’s reeeeeal-

Now Doc-tor Horr-i-ble is heeeeere-

To make you quake with feeeeear-

To make the whole world kneeeeel…

And I won’t feeeeeeeeel

A thing.”

End Episode One.

Fuck this, I’m out.

*Taco gets up and leaves*

“I’m sure he’ll be back.”

…

“Probably.”

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