Tales of the Parodyverse

Zebography


Post By

Visionary
Sat Jun 21, 2003 at 02:19:08 pm EDT
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Visionary stood and stared at the stack of paperwork that flooded his desk. He found it was vaguely offensive. One, because he wasn't really the leader of anything anymore, at least not in any official capacity, and two... Well, he wasn't really sure what number two might be, but he was sure it existed. Anything that offensive worked on a variety of levels. As long as he was at it, he decided he was mildly put out at the mere fact he even still had a desk.

"A den is supposed to be a refuge from the hassles of the world" he proclaimed loudly, in case anyone was within earshot and cared. No one was or did. He did, however, hear a clatter in response as Rabito careened into the cleaning closet. After much rattling and assorted thuds and thunks, Yo's lopsided purple bunny apparently worked its way free, as it hopped unevenly across the entrance to the den leaving a trail of rabbit tracks in bright blue "Tidy Bowl" across the carpet. Visionary prudently shut the door and pretended he never saw that.

With a sigh he dug under the papers to find the intercom button. The intercom didn't bother him so much... In fact, he had enjoyed using it so much while leader of the Lair Legion he had requested if he could take it with him. As no one in the Regulars was particularly interested in having the other half of the system around to talk to Vizh, it was now hooked up as a direct line to Hallie.

"Hallie?" he asked, pressing the button.

"Hey Vizh" she answered almost instantly. She was quite patient, even for a machine... she rarely threatened him with bodily harm for use of the intercom, unlike his prior administrative assistant. "What's up?"

"Do you know what all this... stuff... on my desk is?"

"Hey, when Lisa and her date were using your office and accidentally hit the call button, they said they'd clean up after themselves and I didn't ask too many questions. How big of a desk do you have, anyway? It sounded like they needed a lot of room, what with the restraints..."

Visionary froze midway from sitting in his office chair and quickly decided he'd be more comfortable standing. "Um... actually, I was referring to a large stack of paperwork" he replied carefully. "And, uh... did they happen to say, exactly, what it was they pressed the call button with that night?"

"Oh! The paperwork!" Hallie said. "Aheh... let's just forget I mentioned the other thing. Anyway, that's Zebulon's Unauthorized Autobiography. He was hoping you'd authorize it..."

"Really?" he asked, so surprised he sat down before thinking about it. Thankfully, he noticed no odd stains or stickiness. Still, after watching 'CSI', he never wanted to look at anything in his condo under ultraviolet light. Ever. "Zebulon wrote his autobiography?"

"Yeah. That's pretty much how they work, Vizh."

He graciously ignored that. "How long is it?" he asked, looking at the mountain of documentation. It was quite possibly taller than the elfin handyman himself.

"Well, I'm not entirely sure how long he's been around... but it's quite like reliving his life with him. In real time."

Visionary picked up a handful of pages dubiously "You've read it then?"

"I was his word processor" she acknowledged. "He has a harder time with punctuation than you do."

"Hey, I told you the shift key was sticking!" Visionary retorted.

"Anyway, look it over. Zeb's really excited about it. True, he's really excited about most anything, but this especially so."

"I, ah... don't suppose you could give me the Cliffs Notes version?" he asked hopefully. "Um... Hallie? Hallie... you still there?"



"I've got good news and bad news boss" the little elf said, sticking his head into Visionary's den. "It turns out that our experimental carpet scrubber still needs a bit more testing..."'

"You weren't able to get the Tidy Bowl stains out?" Visionary asked, wincing.

"Well, you know how you always said that Cheryl wanted polished hardwood floors?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think highly polished particle board floors with flecks of carpet padding embedded in them would be close enough?" Judging by the look on the Regular's face, Zebulon guessed not. "You see, I really think we're close on this one... It's just a matter of downgrading the torque on the scrubbers a bit... and maybe installing a manual override for the clutch... and I suppose an emergency shut-off valve wouldn't hurt in a pinch..."

"Is there any carpeting left?" Visionary asked pathetically.

"Hmmmm?" The elf looked up from his mental calculations. "Oh, yeah... plenty! We were very careful to spot test in an out of the way location... well, out of the way for the living room. People rarely walk around to the other side of that chair anyway. For the rest of the stains we hit upon another solution... High yield particle sprayer! It worked like a charm!"

"So the stains are out?"

"Well... not so much out as... You see, they were really tough stains... and have you ever heard the phrase 'If you can't beat them'..."

Visionary blinked. "You stained all of the carpets Tidy Bowl blue?

"Uniform Tidy Bowl blue" Zebulon correctly proudly. "Although, we took a vote and decided you should probably call it 'azure' when you explain it to Cheryl." Had he not been raised at the North Pole and as such slightly lacking in the subtler social skills, the elf might have thought twice before gamely pursuing the topic most pressing on his mind. "So..." he asked casually, "Did you read it yet?"

Visionary tore his mind away from trying to find an explanation of the new color scheme and how it would compliment the decor. "Uh... I've... looked it over" he answered carefully. "It's certainly... something."

"Isn't it though?" the little man beamed with pride. "I can't take all of the credit, a lot of people gave me input while I was writing it."

"Yes... I kind of guessed." Visionary started paging through the stacks of papers until he found the chapter he was looking for. "Like here... where you explain how you were sent to earth from a dying planet and crash landed in Uganda..."

"Yeah, CrazySugarFreakBoy made a few suggestions" Zebulon admitted. "He said that secret origins needed to involve radioactivity, space flights, or dead parents. I did crash land in Uganda, though..." he hastened to add. "Of course, that was when I was 17 and me and my best buddy Gumpkinwinks went for a joy ride in the 'Little Saint Nick' the day after Christmas..."

"So why didn't you just tell that story? I mean, instead of the one where you left Santa's workshop because you wanted to become a dentist, only to wind up fighting the abominable snow man and saving misfit toys... which, I must say, sounded kind of familiar. Not quite so familiar as the time you apparently tried to steal Chanukah, though."

"I did write about it!" he protested. "It's in chapter 73!"

Visionary once more paged through the pile of autobiographical details. "This seems to be an account of the quest of a fellowship to throw a cursed ring into a volcano" he noted.

"They have volcanoes in Uganda" the elf noted defensively. "And besides, those high elves get all the respect... Oooh, look at us! We're so tall! We're so pretty! We make magic do-dads and commune with nature! We get to live in temperate forests and not the godforsaken frozen tundra! We don't sully ourselves by making toys and cookies!" Zebulon crossed his arms stubbornly. "Somebody ought to throw their pampered, precious, tight asses into a volcano, that's what somebody ought to do..."

"Uh-huh" Visionary said warily. "Okay then. Was there anything else?"

"Hmmmm? Oh, yeah!" He reached into his back pocket. "I just need you to sign this release authorizing the book for publication!"

"You do?" Visionary asked, confused. "Why?"

"Because of the chapters on the Lair Legion and the League of Regulars, and the confidential work Enty and I did! Apparently, for legal reasons, we have to get the all clear before it can go to press."

"Wait... did you say legal reasons?" Visionary asked, suddenly interested. "Have you run this by Lisa yet?"

"Well, no... the publisher thought your signature would be enough..."

Suddenly, Visionary grinned. An evil grin. A wonderfully evil grin. "No, no... this is definitely a legal matter, and Lisa is definitely our legal lawyer." He began to gather up all of the papers and hand them to the tiny man, until only the tip of his hat poked out from behind the load. "Don't worry, I know she'll see how important it is to you and do everything she can to help. Be sure to have her read all of it very carefully, though... maybe twice. Can't have some classified information from our Lair days sneaking through accidentally, now... can we?"

"No, I guess not... Thanks Vizh!"

"Good! Oh, and tell she can go ahead and have my old desk to work on... " he added magnanimously as he cheerfully got up to leave, "I'm thinking of getting a new one."

The cheer evaporated as he looked out at the rest of the condo headquarters and sighed. "...Preferably one that goes with blue."












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