Chapter 15: Curtain Call ------------------------ "Get ready to drop the sandbags!" Seb watched carefully as the crewman climbed the ladder, pulling his rather bulky mass up, rung by painful rung. The man was puffing heavily by the time he reached the catwalk above, and had his eyes downcast when Seb finally decided to make his presence known. "Hi there. Lovely night, isn't it?" The crewman lifted his thick head dully, and before long his beady eyes were focussed on the young man before him. Sweat began to bead on his forehead; this happened to him quite often. "Who are you? What are you doing here, boy? This area is off-limits to non-crew members!" he yelped, drawing a penetrating gaze from Seb. The younger man's hair concealed one eye, and obscured the other, but somehow the crewman *knew* that he was being stared at. He pulled back instinctively. "Who, me?" Seb called back innocently. He then had to wait a moment as the crewman took a moment to ensure that the two of them were indeed alone. He turned back to Seb, wagging his thick finger menacingly. "Of course you! Now why are you up here? There's a performance on, and I've got to drop some sandbags, if you don't mind." Seb turned casually to the ropes attached just overhead, on an upper skeletal catwalk. They streched down, between the gaps in the various layers of stage, and each held a rather large, heavy sandbag at the end. He looked up and down the rope nearest him, then glanced over to the crewman. "Dropping sandbags? How many? Why?" "It's none of your business." "Can I make it my business?" "NO! Now get out of the way!" The crewman's face had flushed a furious red now, and sweat covered every pore of his face. He showed his rather unwashed teeth to Seb in a toothy grimace. The younger man just winced at the sight, and then smiled slightly at a private joke, despite his revulsion. "How bad would it be if, say, five sandbags fell at one time?" "Well, it would probably collapse the sta - oh my lord. SECURITY!" the crewman bellowed, having finally put two and two together, even without using his fingers. Seb grinned even wider. "Well, I guess I'd best get out of your way, then." A streak of gray flashed down the catwalk, and every single rope twitched slightly, as though blown by an ethereal wind. The streak skidded to a halt at the other end, right next to a rather large, rather heavy-looking five-ton weight. Seb leaned against it, hands strangely holding a pair of glittering shortswords. "Oops." ******************************* "Please, Emperor Arf-kick! Spare my life! I've done nothing wrong!" Arf-kick whirled upon his opponent, his wooden sword wavering dangerously in the air. His lips curled into a rather distinct sneer. "Silence! You never learn, do you, General Lago? You're always to prim and proper, you've that iron-clad mowhawk, and you even come back to life sometimes! But never again! If my dear brother-in-law, Kick-Arf, must die, then you will follow him into the great Abyss!" Arf-kick roared, spittle fountaining from his mouth as he exposited, splattering into the orchestra pit, to a certain cellist's dismay. "I'm sorry about your brother, but there was nothing else to be done! He simply couldn't bring himself to accept that men were simply not meant to wear mascara!" The audience, mostly composed of conspicuously well-dressed Zozoans, roared in laughter at this. Arf-kick then forgot his next line, and decided to improvise a bit, staring angrily into the audience, spurring even greater laughter and scattered applause. he thought to himself, It was just as well. Lago chanced a glance upwards, and, promptly, his eyes widened sharply - "OH SHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIII--" Poor Lago never quite finished his (rather rude) statement, as he was then silenced by a rather large, rather heavy sandbag falling on his prone form, crushing him to the wooden stage below. The rest of the sandbags followed suit, smashing into the stage with a resounding rumble, and, predictably, the entire middle strip was caved cleanly in. Timbers split as uncut toenails do, splinters showered through the air, and half the entire stage fell to the basement below. The janitor chose that exact moment to decide to sweep the area beneath the stage. When he opened the door, he was confronted with a huge mass of balsa, pine, flesh and iron nails. He glanced from the fallen stage to his pail and mop, and promptly threw the latter two into the pile. "Well, to hell with this," he muttered to himself, and wandered off to become a carpenter. Something sane. Just like Mom told him. ******************************* "Now guys, don't you think you're overreacting just a tad?" Seb ducked beneath the head-level arc of the battle axe. However, even as he did, he still felt a tiny tinge of pain, somewhere near his head... "Hah!" yelled the axe-wielding security guard, a twisted, yet satisfied smile settling onto his rough face. "Winged ya, ya little freak!" Seb, rather concerned that he had been "winged" without his knowledge, looked up, and was immediately struck in the eye with something small and feathery. He began pulling the dry mess away immediately. His thoughts, however, were interrupted as he finally managed a good look at what the guard had, apparently, cut. It was his hair. Seb stared incredulously at the guard, holding out his hair. "You killed my hair," the young man gasped, still unbelieving. "Uh-huh," the guard grunted, and slashed downward. He sliced into a blurry after-image of his target. Whipping around, he found Seb leaning against a catwalk railing, still marvelling at the brown lock in his hand. The young man looked to the guard again, eyes quivering. "You killed it. My hair," he said. Another attack from the guard ensued, once again meeting with a ferocious, seething pile of nothing. He whipped about, and met Seb's icy glare. The young man was now on top of the five-ton weight, swords drawn. Unlike what Seb had done to the crewman earlier, both eyes were now unobscured by his hair. The guard wished that they were. He withered inside at the coldness of the look the young man was giving him. "YOU KILLED MY HAIR!" "Shut up about your hair already!" yelled the guard, and he promptly charged at Seb, who sidestepped easily, and then threw himself at the guard. Seb was now fully on the guard's back, trying to slit his throat, and the guard was so busy fighting his attacker off that he forgot one important fact... The edge. His booted foots skittered at its edge one last time, and then, in a flurry of steel, arms, legs, and hair, the guard and Seb tumbled from the catwalk and down, down to the stage below. Seb had, some time ago, heard of a rather obscure adventure of the Heroes of Balance. Apparently, a huge octopus named Ultros had attempted to drop a five-ton weight on Maria, the opera diva. However, the heroes, led by one Locke Cole, managed to stop Ultros. At any rate, the story went that the heroes and Ultros all fell from atop the catwalk above the stage, and battled onstage, after the fall, apparently no worse for wear. And as Seb looked below him, wind whistling in his ears, and seeing the ground rushing on so fast, he dearly wished that legends really were true... At which point he saw something nearby; a near-constant in his falling world. A rope. He reached his arm out, grabbing hard onto the lifeline he had barely caught sight of, and yelped as he felt his body lurch into stasis. His fingers wrapped tighter around the hemp, and slowly, surely, he felt himself being lowered down again by that rope, but much more slowly than before. He breathed a sigh of relief as he calmly rode the rope downwards to the collapsed stage, which was now slightly slick from the arrival of the axe-wielding, hair-killing guard. "Hey! Actor boy!" Seb yelled out, feeling giddily confident all of a sudden. The actor he had questioned before looked up, annoyed that his speech, as Arf-Kick, had been cut off. However, his eyes widened in shock as he saw Seb being lowered down to the stage on that certain, unmistakable rope. "TAKE COVER!" Arf-Kick screamed, and dived, head-first, into the orchestra pit. Seb, for his part, glanced upward, finding a rather large, incoming five-ton weight slipping off the catwalk. It had a rope attached to it, interestingly enough. Seb's rope. The young, rather foolish man leaped off the rope, down to the orchestra pit below. Behind him, he heard a brief whistling sound as the five-ton weight finally fell, smashing easily through the stage, and embedded itself in the foundations of the Opera House itself. Things went black.... ******************************* The world was a foggy, mystical blur. Shapes, sounds, sensations... Seb was so sure he could smell something burning... "You just cost me my job, you know." Seb's eyes flickered open, gummy flaps covered his unfocussed pupils. When finally his vision cleared, he found himself looking up at a woman, no older than he, staring down at him. Her face was smudged with soot, her hair was greasy enough to make soap with, and it looked as though she'd just seen someone Ultima her pet goldfish, she was so pale. And yet, Seb felt strangely comforted by the half-smile etched on her face. "I what?" he asked, still quite confused. "C'mon, c'mon. Get up already." Seb felt a pressure from below, and he was thrown onto his feet. He staggered around, tripping over broken instruments and music stands, until he found a patch of wall to lean against. He rubbed his head wearily with one hand, and winced as he pulled it back, seeing red on it. "Great. This I need," he muttered, then glanced at the woman who'd been tending to him. She sat in a strangely untouched seat among the shattered remains of what he assumed used to be the orchestra pit. She was staring wistfully at the remains of a cello, scattered across the ground nearby. Seb felt quite sheepish as he saw the expression on her face as her eyes crept over the form of the broken instrument. "Ummm... let me take a wild guess here. I kinda messed up, right?" "I believe... I believe that you have just made the single greatest understatement in the history of humankind," the woman said. Seb swallowed hard. "I... I'm sorry," "Well..." the woman began, then looked up at him, the half-smile having returned to her lips. "I was a lousy cello player anyhow." The two began to laugh, in spite of all the burning, broken wreckage about them. The sound of it echoed throughout the evacuated opera, bouncing among timbers, dancing among the flames. Somehow, for the two, there was something cosmically hilarious going on. Seb began to scratch the back of his neck, still chuckling. "So what's your name, Mr. Imperial Soldier Sir?" asked the woman suddenly. "Or shall I just call you Chaos?" "The name's Alltaire. Seb Alltaire." "Dara Weighlan. Ex-cello player. Pleased to meet you, regardless of the circumstances." "I really am sorry about the mess. I was just following orders." "Sure, sure. Hell, if this is what the New Empire does when they've run out of cities to take over, then maybe I should join." She smiled. Seb smiled back. ******************************* As the Impresario approached his beloved, shattered Opera House, his eyes streaming with tears, he heard a slight murmur beside him. He kept on walking, mouth quivering, feeling as though he wanted to huggle his Opera all better. He could see the plume of gray smoke rising from its core... "Excuse me? Mr. Impresario?" The Impresario turned to the source of the voice, finding himself with a rather haggard-looking young man. His hair seemed cut badly at the front. "What do you want, boy? Don't you see that we have an emergency here?" "Yes, regarding that: where were you while this latest play was playing?" "What play?" "The one with Arf-kick, General Lago, and assorted other parodies?" "I have no idea what you're talking about. I've been vacationing for the past two weeks, and look what I come home to! Now, would someone please tell me what the hell happened to my opera?" shouted the Impresario, more infuriated than ever. Seb merely smiled to himself, turned, and left the scene. "Mission accomplished."