Toy Fable
by Eponymous


Once upon a time in a land neither near nor far from our own, there was
a young boy. His name was very long and loud and made up entirely of
vowels, as were most of the names in his land at the time.  It would
sound more like a howl of pain than a name to anybody who heard it
today, which is why we won't mention it here.

He was a wealthy boy, as his father was a very rich person.  In those
days there was only one way to be a rich person and that was to kill a
lot of people with great efficiency.  In those days rich people were
called warlords.

The boy's father, being busy with all the efficient murder he was in
charge of, didn't have much time for the boy, so he made up for it by
giving him a toy.  Not just any toy, either, but the greatest toy
anyone could possibly have in that day and age.  A toy so wonderful
most of the rich people in the world had at least one, and played with
it every day.  This rich person had several, as he was one of the ones
who'd paid for their creation, and so he gave one to his son.

It was a marvelous toy.  It could do anything the owner wanted, and
did. It couldn't be broken.  It ran for years without recharging, and
when it needed to be recharged the act took only a few moments.  It was
the most magnificent toy the world had ever seen.

It was a doll.  A very large doll, as dolls go.  As big as a person, in
fact.  It looked very nice, and came with its own clothes and a single
accessory.  But the best part about the doll, the part that everyone
loved the most, was that it learned as time went on.  It absorbed all
that it was exposed to and learned to do it itself.  It was a fantastic
toy.

Now, it should be noted that this was a rather naughty boy, and he had
a habit of breaking his toys.  Which was the reason his father gave him
this doll.  Because, as I have said, it was unbreakable.  The boy could
not break this doll.  No matter how hard he tried.

You might think that this would have angered the boy.  That he might
toss the doll aside and move on to play with other, more breakable
toys.  But the boy was no quitter.  In fact his name, which as I
mentioned before was something very long and loud and all vowels,
meant, in his native tongue, "One who does the impossible".  So he
continued to play with the toy.

Being the naughty boy that he was, he didn't really have any friends.
But, being the rich naughty boy that he was, he had plenty of people
who pretended to be his friends.  Not that he liked them very much, but
he did like playing with them.  Then he had to get some new friends.  He
played with them as well.  Pretty soon nobody pretended to be the boy's
friend anymore.  Being alone made the boy a little upset, so he played
with his toy some more, and he felt better.

There was another reason the boy's father gave him this toy.  The doll
was made to defend its owner against bad people.  Or whatever kind of
people tried to hurt its owner.  Or whatever people its owner told it
to.  The doll didn't listen to the people, even when they claimed to be
its owner's friends.  The boy was very happy with that.  Yet he played
with the doll some more.

And one day, in all the playing and defending and playing and ordering
and playing and trying to break this doll, the boy managed to do
something that made him worthy of his name.  He managed to break
something inside the unbreakable doll.  He would have been very proud of
this, except the part he broke was the part that made it do what its
owner said.

This doll was a marvelous toy.  It leaned as time went on.  It absorbed
whatever it was exposed to and it learned to do it itself. It was the
most magnificent toy the world had ever seen.

That night, the doll did what it had learned.  It did what it had been
exposed to.  That night the doll played with the boy.  It played with
him on and on through the night.

And the boy did the only thing he could.  He said his name.

Not too long after that, the boy's father stopped being rich, while a
rich person who lived near him became much richer.  And not too long
after that they all stopped being rich, when somebody invented a toy
even better than the one all the rich people were playing with, and all
the rich people, including the ones that made the better toy, went
away.

And when that better toy was used for the first and last time in a
very, very long time, the little boy's doll got caught up in it.  And
the magnificent doll that no longer worked properly, that no longer did
what its owner said, that no longer had an owner and that enjoyed
playing with people the way it had learned to play, went far, far away.

And when it arrived in a faraway land, the doll forgot it was a doll.
It forgot where it came from, it forgot the boy, it forgot all the
things that it had absorbed, forgot everything it had learned except
for one thing.

It still remembered how to play.

*****

"She's from France?  She doesn't look French."

"Her file said she was an orphan adopted by the state.  She received
top-level athletic training from the government."

"Do you think we have a chance at beating her, guys?"

The first girl turned to her brown-eyed companion, noticing that her
hair, always the window into her emotions, was drooping, and deduced
that she was worried.  Of course, it didn't hurt that her head was
hanging nearly parallel to the floor.

"Don't worry, Akari," the first girl said, taking her by the arm, "I'm
not.  Why, with you at my side, I feel I have the power to do
anything."

Akari blushed.  She was about to say that somebody might get the wrong
idea if they came across them just then, when somebody just then came
across them.

"eep," was what Akari said.

"Excuse me," said the young man.  At least, Akari was fairly sure he
was a man.  He had a slightly androgynous face and he was wearing a
long robe that hid his figure from the neck down.  In fact, if his hair
had been longer Akari was sure she would have pegged him for a woman at
first glance.

"Itsnotwhatyouthink!" Akari said, jumping back, causing Kris to jump
back with her, as she hadn't let go of Akari's arm.  The two of them
hit the corridor wall fairly hard.

While the two of them were shaking the stars free of their heads, Anna
stepped forward.  "Um, yes?  Can I help you?"

"I hope so," he said in a very honest, concerned voice.  Akari was
amazed.  He seemed to exude sincerity.

The young man reached into his robe and removed a photograph.  "Have
you seen this woman?" he asked.

Anna's eyes widened in surprise.  She'd seen this picture before.  It
was the same one in the file she'd researched last night.  The same
file she'd been briefing Akari and Kris on just a minute ago.

Before Anna could overcome the initial shock, Akari and Kris stepped
forward to get a look at the picture.  "Well, yeah, we've seen her,"
Akari said, a bit puzzled that he wouldn't know she was here.

"In fact we're on our way to battle her right now," Kris finished her
partner's sentence.

The young man's eyes went wide with an expression that asked "Do you
have a DEATH WISH?" in giant neon letters.  The concern in his eyes
kicked into overdrive as he grabbed Kris by the shoulders.  "Listen to
me.  Do not, DO NOT, under any circumstances try to fight this woman!"

"But it's a match.  We're supposed to face her, she's our opponent,"
Kris tried to explain to the overly excited young man.

"I don't care!  You don't know what she's capable of!"

"Do you know her?" Akari asked.

"By reputation, mostly.  I met her once when I was... travelling.  I
got to know her very well.  I saw her..." he tried to say "heart", but
found it too impossible to apply that word to what he'd seen.  "Do you
know where she is now?"

"Court Seven, probably," Anna offered. "She usually gets there early to
practice."

"Thank you," the young man said.  Even though it was rushed, Akari
sensed he was being sincere.  He turned back to them.  "Listen to me,
you have to avoid this woman at all costs.  You don't know what she's
capable of.  Our only hope is that she doesn't either."

And with those words, he took off down the corridor, sprinting towards
Court Seven, desperate to stop a weapon from going off before it
realized it could.

*****

On Court Seven a lone figure hovered in the anti-gravity room, waiting.
She held her lacrosse stick in one hand, like a staff.  It felt...
*right* there, for reasons she could never explain.  She brushed aside
a lock of blue hair from before her cold red eyes and stared across
the court to where her victims would soon emerge.

The Ifurita-class demon god that called itself Mylandah Walder smiled
slightly.

It was almost time to play.


END



El-Hazard was created by Hiroki Hayashi and Ryoe Tsurimura and is the
property of AIC and Pioneer Entertainment.  Battle Athletes was created
by Hiroki Hayashi and is the property of AIC and Pioneer Entertainment.