Chapter 2 - Episode Two

The steady tick-tock echoed into his brain, drawing him slowly up from his submergal deep in the oceans of sleep. A multitude of dreams, like silver fish, darted out and away as his head broke the surface.

Edi opened one sleepy eye. The unfamiliar tick-tock drummed its toes on his ears.

“A`ri`,” he muttered, sleep-drowned mind not comprehending much of anything just yet. “A`ri`. M`p.”

The tick-tock was not fooled.

“Ahrite…”

He rolled over and dug into the pillows. The tick-tock followed him. He pulled the blankets up over his head. The tick-tock made itself heard. He dropped his hands onto his ears. The tick-tock insinuated itself between his fingers.

Slight annoyance at the inexorable tick-tock made Edi open both eyes.

His sky-blue blanket was illuminated by the light from his window.

Wait a minute. Sky-blue?

Edi sat up and grabbed two handfuls of the blanket, as though the color would flake off like paint at his touch. It didn't. Slowly he looked up.

If the massive gold-and-silver sun-and-moon clock covering the ceiling hadn't been enough to tip him off that something weird was going on, the water-painted walls and the sky-blue-woven-through-with-silver-threads futon he was lying on would have.

Edi stared for a full minute at the cloth-of-gold pillows and multitude of slim windows in the walls, then let out the most vituperative curse he knew.

The sliding paper doors flew open.

In strode a beautiful young woman with a brown ponytail down to her knees, carrying a stack of puffy towels in her arms. Her open chihaya revealed a chest wrapped in bandages—a wickedly huge-looking sword swung at her waist as she threw the towels down on a chair.

“Ah, you're awake, Your Excellency,” she said briskly. “Just in time.”

A girl with black hair and eyes skipped in behind the young woman. She was dressed in a cute little black dress and palest lilac tights—a maid's headband rested frillily on her waist-length raven locks.

“C`mon, Your Excellency, time's a-wastin`!”

Before Edi quite knew what was happening, both young women had grabbed the corners of his blanket and heaved. The entire blanket flew up towards the ceiling. The first woman dumped Edi off of the futon without seeming to touch him at all, raised her hands, and caught the blanket before it could touch the floor again. A sharp flap lashed the blanket out flat over the bed, and she busied herself tucking the ends in and readjusting the pillows.

The girl grabbed Edi where he had been rather unceremoniously dumped on the floor. “Hurry up, Emperor! You've got destruction at ten, pillaging at ten-thirty, ruinous warfare at eleven-twenty, and a Disney sequel at eleven-forty-five, all before lunch at twelve-thirty! There's no time to sit around!”

“Miaki!” the first girl snapped, working fastidiously at straightening the corners of the futon. “Don't tell the Emperor to hurry up!”

The black-haired Miaki looked up at Edi with eyes gone suddenly wide and soulful. “Please forgive me, great Emperor-sama.”

“Uh…” Edi hedged.

“Okay!” Miaki cut him off without blinking an eye. “Hey, Shiori! He forgives me!”

“Like I care. Stop wasting time and get on with the bath!”

“The what?”

Miaki grabbed the towels Shiori had dropped with one hand, grabbed Edi with the other, and towed both towards a paper door across from the windows.

The room beyond looked as though somebody had sunk an entire hotspring into the floor.

“Your bath, great Emperor-sama,” Miaki proclaimed, dropping the towels onto a handy rock sprouting from the wood-panel floor and kicking the paper door closed with her foot. “Now then…”

Miaki inhaled, untied her maid's headband, and shook free her long black cascade of hair. The headband flew to another handy rock, followed by her collar and tie. The platform heels and lilac tights fell to the ground after them.

Edi yelped and went the same shade as Shiori's hakama as he tried to back away faster than was humanly possible. His feet hit two separate rocks at almost the same time, sending him sprawling to the floor. Even as he tried to get up, there was a definitive rustle that heralded the fall of Miaki's dress…

…and the revealing of a black, one-piece bathing suit.

Lord knows that Edi couldn't have gone any redder than he was and still been alive, but he tried.

Clad quite demurely in her bathing suit, Miaki shot Edi a look all innocent confusion. “Your Excellency?”

“Uh…yeah?”

“What are you doing lounging around on the floor? We're on a tight schedule here, and it's already nine-thirty-three.”

“Uh…right…sorry…”

Edi stood up.

Miaki waited approximately ten seconds, then sighed. “All right, so I'll do it for you.”

“Do what?”

Miaki snapped her fingers.

Edi shot through the air and landed facefirst into the hotspring, nearly concussed by the rock he landed against. Fighting his way to the surface, choking and spluttering water everywhere, it took him a moment to realize that his clothes had been left behind sometime between Miaki's fingersnap and his near-drowning.

“Whee!” Miaki sprang into the hot spring and caused a tsunami, nearly drowning Edi yet again. “All right, Emperor-sama, now stay still and let me—”

“What are you—whoa! Wait! Go away!”

“You're too slow, Emperor-sama!”

“What does that have to—ack! Ow!”

“I have to go fast, Emperor-sama, or we'll be late!”

“You're not going to—yow!”

“Oh, stop being such a baby.”

“That hurt!”

“You're an Overlord! You can deal with it!”

“I'm not an—owak!”

“That was an interesting noise, Emperor-sama.”

“Don't—!”

“Is the bath too hot, Emperor-sama? You look like a lobster.”

“Uwaah!!”

* * *

Anybody who had been looking into the Overlord's room while the bath was going on would have seen the supposedly dutiful Shiori pressed right up against the paper door, listening intently to every word and scream from within. Anybody who knew Shiori well would not have been surprised by this not-incredibly-subtle eavesdropping she was doing. Anybody would have. But nobody was looking.

* * *

Miaki threw open the paper door, reclad in her Mage's maid finery, having dried her long black tresses with a simple fire spell. “We're ready for action!”

Shiori looked up from the dresser she was dusting, which she had hurriedly sprinted to when she realized the bath was near its end. “Okay. Good.”

Edi crashed to the ground beside Miaki, wrapped in a black robe, feeling like a scrubbed and baked potato. Miaki had scoured off skin with her 200-kilometer-per-hour “washing” technique. Edi hurt too much to even be embarrassed anymore.

Shiori looked at Edi and did a double-take. “What did you do to him?”

“I just washed him,” Miaki said indignantly. “You know that, Shiori.”

Shiori blushed and pretended she hadn't heard the blatant reference to her spying. “You scrubbed his skin off!”

Miaki surveyed Edi critically. “Not all of it.”

“Oy,” Shiori muttered. “Go get Aki and the seventh brigade, Miaki.”

“Aki? But Aki walks like molasses!”

“Go get her and the seventh now, Miaki.”

“But—”

“Aki.”

“But—”

Shiori pulled out her sword.

Miaki got.

* * *

Minutes later, she returned, trailed by a panting woman with knee-length blonde hair, dressed in a slinky red-and-black evening gown, with large golden manacles around her wrists.

“All right, Shiori, I got Aki! Are you happy? Now can we please hurry, because that's put us another two minutes and forty-seven seconds behind schedule, and we were already seven minutes and thirty-three seconds behind!!”

Shiori ignored her. “Aki, this idiot did some minor damage to our Overlord. Could you heal him for us?”

“Of…course…your…Excel…lency,” Aki panted, leaning against the dresser, sweat rolling down her pale, triangular face and long column of bare throat. “I'll…get…right…on…it…”

“Miaki!”

Miaki made a face at Shiori. “Waaaht?”

“Where is the seventh?”

“They're coming. They couldn't take the stairs thirteen at a time, so they fell behind.”

“Of course they can't! They can barely climb steps at all! That's why we installed an elevator!”

“But that thing takes so long!!”

Shiori and Miaki squared off for battle, just as Aki finally recovered enough breath to wave one manacled hand at Edi.

Rings of softly glowing green light shimmered in and out of existence all around Edi, filling his skin with a cool, flowing softness which bathed away the pain of Miaki's scrubbery.

“WOOOOOW…”

Aki tried to blush, but was far too exhausted by trying to keep up with Miaki to succeed. “It…was nothing…your Ex…cellency…”

“Can I ask you something?” Edi asked, because Shiori had pulled her sword on Miaki and Miaki was running around the room screaming. “Why is everybody calling me your Excellency?”

“Because…you're…the Overlord…your…Excellency,” Aki gasped, looking at once pooped and worried. “Would you prefer…a different…title?”

“No, it's not that, it's fine, it's just…” Edi racked his brains for how to describe the problem, and finally settled for, “I'm not an Overlord.”

“Of course you are, your Excellency.” Shock finally overcame panting. “You conquered the last Overlord just yesterday.”

“The last Overlord?”

Aki looked even more uncomfortable than she already had. “I realize I should not mention him, your Excellency, but you did.”

“I did?” Funny…the last thing I remember is watching Shamanic Princess with Ian and Chris…I couldn't have forgotten conquering a Netherworld…could I have? I am the oblivious one out of us, after all…

Then the door banged open yet again.

And, in total disarray, beaks open, tongues lolling, peg legs shaking with the exertion of carrying their pear-shaped little bodies up seventeen flights of royal stairs, in piled a troop of completely exhausted Prinnies.

Edi forgot his memories of the previous night. He forgot his attempt to communicate that he was not an Overlord. He forgot Shiori and Miaki even as Shiori cleaved a grandfather clock in half and Miaki blew up a vase in her face.

“OMGWTFBBQ—PRINNIES!!!!”

* * *

Next Time, on Disgaea: Overlords' Dance

Etna: Apprentice geisha Etna has fallen on hard times in her training…

Edi: Oh my God, it's Etna!!

Etna: Her cruel teacher, Hatsuflonne, is jealous of her potential, and has refused to teach her further…

Edi: Is that Flonne too?!

Etna: But out of the shadows, a mysterious mentor appears to lead her to new heights of geisha glory!

Edi: Oh my God, that's Jennifer!!!

Etna: Clad in a shimmering new kimono, Etna spellbinds all with her captivating cherry blossom dance!

Edi: Wow, Etna in a kimono!

Etna: Next time, on Memoirs of an Etna, Episode Three, “The Evil Plot of Hatsuflonne!”

Edi: Yay! Banzai! Banzai!

Etna: Will somebody get that kid out of here?!

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