The Library: Episode 4: Reea Holds Down the Fort
The Library, early afternoon
"Pyla! What happened to all the food?" Reea was poking through the twins’ refrigerator, trying to find some food. So far, all she’d found was a dirty sock, an apple that had sprouted legs, and some unidentifiable sludge in a Tupperware container. None of it looked edible, or at the very least, safe. "Didn’t we just go shopping last year?" Reea hated nothing more than going to the grocery store.
"What do you mean, "what happened to all the food?" You ate all the food."
"I did not eat ALL the food! You helped!"
"Ah, yes, now I remember, I ate one cheesy poof last week..." Reea glared at her sister as she came out of the bathroom, dressed in a purple kimono with a black towel wrapped around her hair. "Oh, and incidentally, next time you get towels, would you mind getting something other than black?"
Reea’s glare intensified. "And what, pray tell, is wrong with black? Its a perfectly good color."
"If you like living in a mortuary" Pyla muttered under her breath.
"What was that?" Reea’s voice was unusually sharp.
Pyla looked at her twin. "Oh, I was just commenting that it gets depressing, old, and generally boring after awhile. That’s all." Reea growled and went back to poking through the fridge. Pyla twisted the towel into a semblance of Amidala’s headdress for addressing the Senate. She pulled on her purple boots.
"Umm... Pyla? What are you doing?"
"I’m getting ready to go grocery shopping. What does it look like I’m doing?"
Reea’s eyes snapped wide open. "You’re not going to make me come... are you?"
Pyla grinned maliciously. "Of course not, sister dear. One of us has to stay here and keep the Librarian off our backs." With that parting shot, Pyla went out the door, headed for the closest Food Wookie, "We think its funny to waste time, money, and body parts."
Reea finally gave up on the fridge, instead collapsing on the sofa, playing with her indigo hair. She heard Pyla's Mack truck roar away.
Finally, an afternoon all to herself... Reea scampered into the bathroom, preparing to luxuriate in a nice, piping hot bubble bath.
In the Food Wookie
"What do you mean you don’t sell cheesy poofs? You call this a supermarket?"
Pyla had been yelling at the manager for quite some time. First no bologna, then no apple juice, now no cheesy poofs. This store didn’t have anything!
"I’m sorry, ma’am, but we do not carry that sort of food. It’s not exactly in demand in this quadrant."
"Not in demand eh? I'LL SHOW YOU DEMAND!" Pyla grabbed the poor manager by the front of his shirt and shook him violently. "I DEMAND THAT YOU GET ME SOME CHEESY POOFS!" The manager’s teeth clattered together and his toupee flew across the snack aisle. Snarling, Pyla threw him into some shelving and stalked off to find some chocolate covered peanuts.
Back in the Library
Reea sighed. Now this was heaven. A box of cherry cordials on one side, a really good book on the other, and in between, a steaming tub full of suds. Could life get any better? As she sank deeper into the water, she told herself no, life couldn’t get any better than this...
Unfortunately, it could get much worse. Outside the door, a large school bus pulled up, Jeffrey at the wheel. Behind the bus was a dump truck. The dump truck pulled to a stop right in front of the door, dumping its contents into Pyla and Reea’s apartment.
A million retired beanie babies poured into the apartment. A mass squeal went up from the bus, as a million beanie babies collectors poured out the door. Hearing the commotion even through the foam in her ears, Reea pulled on a black kimono with a large red dragon embroidered on the back. Her hair still full of shampoo, she opened the door to the bathroom to a scene of absolute cacophony.
"It’s mine! Give it to me! I saw it first!" One little girl, her hair in two pigtails, pulled on one side of a beanie, and on the other a little girl with her hair in a French braid yelled back.
"No! I need this beanie to complete my collection! Hand him over!"
Reea groaned. This was not going the way she wanted it to.
Pyla was storming up and down aisle 478 in the Food Wookie when she stormed right into a fellow shopper who was staring at a wall of spices marked "Haggis Blends." Pyla ricocheted off the man, who was wearing a full-length dark brown overcoat, and fell to the floor. The man didn’t look at her but continued to study the wall of spices. Suddenly, a strange gray haired man’s head popped over the top of the shelf.
"Still staring at haggis, Connor?"
"Yes, Haggis, I’m staring at you." The first man’s voice had an accent that Pyla couldn’t quite place, definitely earth type, but no indication of geographic locale. The second, Connor, was also earth type, probably Scottish. The strange gray haired man dropped from the top of the shelf, a drop of about 15 feet, landing neatly in front of the still staring Connor. He suddenly noticed Pyla, sitting on the floor, flat on her butt, dressed only in a purple kimono, purple sparkly combat boots, and a black towel wrapped around her head.
"Hello, ma’am. Please allow me to introduce myself-."
"I’m a man of wealth and fame..." Connor muttered under his breath.
"My name is Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez, chief metallurgist to King (whatever) the fifth of Spain, and I am at your service." Ramirez bent over to help up Pyla, who was looking at him like he was from one of the moons of Jupiter. Connor was finding the entire situation amusing, in a drunken, haggis crazed sort of way. Pyla glanced at him, wondering what he found so amusing, then caught sight of the sign.
"Haggis Blends? What in the name of all that’s holy is haggis?"
Connor sighed as if this were something he’d gone through far too many times for several lifetimes. "Haggis is a traditionally Scottish dish that consists of the heart, liver, and lungs of a sheep or a calf minced with suet, onions, oatmeal, and seasonings boiled in the stomach of the animal."
"What do you do with it?" Pyla’s face was twisted with a look of mixed revulsion and fascination.
Connor shrugged matter of factly. "You eat it."
Ramirez and Pyla chorused, "How revolting!" Ramirez continued on alone. "No matter how many times I hear you say that, I still find it... Revolting!" He shuddered from head to toe at the thought. Pyla, still sitting on the floor, rubbed at her temples and muttered something about Tylenol.
"Ooo... Tylenol... Large amounts of Tylenol... EXTREME amounts of Tylenol...
which coming from me means there isn’t enough in the entire galaxy..." Ramirez looked down at her in a classically concerned gentlemanly way.
"Are you all right, m’dear?"
She glanced up at him. "Deer? I don’t see any deer around here... There are deer in the grocery store? I would have thought the wookies had eaten them..." Ramirez shot a concerned glance at Connor, as if to ask "What the hell do we do now??" Pyla shrugged spasmodically, yelling, "HA!" repeatedly. It sounded as if she were imitating Connor’s staccato laughter. Which, truth be told, she probably was. The two immortals looked at each other worriedly and scattered in opposite directions to go find some Tylenol in the incredibly large, obscenely priced, sprawling Food Wookie.
Back in the Batcave... I mean, umm, Library
Reea had locked herself in the bathroom. The TYs, pronounced Twaies, as in TY Beanie Babies (Copyright BS inserted here, we surely don’t want to take the blame, er, credit for that!!) had taken over the Library. They seemed to have reverted to their most basic instincts and declared that the security guard, Giles, was a god and that his desk was a holy relic. His office was holy ground, the burial place of the dead (translate to: retired) beanies. Giles had taken up residence in the occult section to avoid them. They called their heaven Sunnydale, a word they’d heard Giles use often and assumed meant something truly wonderful and godly. His murmuring about a slayer were taken as references to a prophecy about the end of the world and the destruction of all evil. Foremost among these evils were the removal of TY tags from the ears of beanies, and mothballs.
In the bathroom, Reea was trying to distract herself from the bangs, crashes, crunches, and chants from the other side of the door by attempting to shave her legs with her lightsaber. Never the most brilliant of her ideas, with all these distractions it was positively life threatening... But somehow, no matter how many times she nearly half hacked off her lower leg, it always healed within moments. She just chalked it up to her very close attunement with the Living Fork, er, Force.
Suddenly, a very loud CRASH BANG SMASH sort of noise came from the other side of the door, causing Reea to nearly hack off her foot at the ankle and whack her head into the underside of the sink, knocking herself out. Little bits of blue lightning flickered from one half of her ankle to the other, as it knit itself back together.
On the other side of the bathroom door, the TYs had completed the construction of their ceremonial burial grounds and were erecting a shrine to Giles. The CRASH BANG SMASH that had caused Reea to mutilate her lower leg was the sound of Giles stumbling into the shrine while his nose was stuffed into a book about vampires and monsters from the abyss, a comprehensive study of their weaknesses. The TYs took his inadvertent destruction of their shrine as an act of godly disapproval. Giles thought he’d taken a wrong turn in getting back to his desk, until he realized that this was his desk. Or rather, had been his desk.
His desk had been the standard, institutionalized gray metal sort with several drawers perfectly positioned to hit the person sitting behind the desk’s knees. Of course, these self-same drawers had been unopenable since long before Giles was born and the twins were found in the 1750-G section of nonfiction. Above the desk, recently constructed by the TYs, had been a large scaffold composed of book spines removed using a sharpened shard off of a bookshelf. The book spines were held together using those wonderful triangular paperclips. Somehow, the TYs had managed to assemble the monstrosity in the shape of a grossly enlarged shoe. Giles’ shoe, to be precise.
When Giles had attempted to return to his desk, he inadvertently rammed into the heel of this mammoth shoe, sending the whole constuct to the floor. The TYs, upon seeing their god, began their customary chant. “Rooo-payert! Rooo-payert! Toe-bass-co!” The sounds of their chanting echoed around the Library. Giles shuddered and decided that maybe he could use them for something.
“Ahem... Umm, excuse me. Yes, yes, this is all very nice. Oh! Stop that! Leave my toes alone! AHEM! Would you please be QUIET!” The TYs fell silence in awe of their angry god. Giles continued in a more subdued tone of voice. “Perhaps you would all do me a very large favor and retrieve the books on this list?” He pulled a mammoth scroll out of his coat pocket and the TYs leaped for it, hurrying to appease their god. Giles leapt back out of reach, clutching his list to his chest.
“No! You’ll tear it! ACK! Stop that, you horrible little people!” He attempted to swat them away with the rolled up list. They fell back, once again cowed buy their god’s anger. They began to chant, and Giles clutched his temples in a sudden paroxysm of pain. This was NOT a good day.
The Food Wookie
The floor around Pyla was littered with a combination of Tylenol bottles and empty containers of Dr. Pepper. Connor and Ramirez were staring at the semi-conscious, semi-delirious Pyla Tigla. Pyla, who had stopped trying to shred their eyebrows about half an hour after taking the first five hundred pills, was still shrugging spasmodically and yelling “HA!” at the top of her lungs. Connor and Ramirez were now gulping the remaining Tylenol in the hopes that it might have some effect on their immortal body chemistry. Fat chance... The two immortals picked up the spasming Pyla and carried her out the front door of the Food Wookie, bags of groceries hanging from their elbows, wrists, necks, knees, and every other part of their bodies that could support the weight.
As they left the parking lot, they noticed a strangely painted Mack truck following them. Apparently, Pyla’s vehicle didn’t like to be left alone...
When they got back to the Library, Connor instantly tensed up and nearly dropped his end of the spasming Pyla. Actually, he did drop her, in his hurry to draw his sword. Ramirez raised one eyebrow, then got a funny look on his face.
“Here? How is that possible?”
“I don’t know, but I intend to find out...” Connor’s voice was little more than a growl as he waded through the throngs of TYs, busily carrying out Giles’ request. The retrieval of reference materials had become something of a coming-of-age rite of passage.
Connor kicked open the bathroom door to the sight of Reea, sprawled on the floor, a large bump on her head, a chunk of porcelain from the sink missing, and her lightsaber humming quietly in the bathtub, where it had landed when she jumped and hit her head. Reea woke up to the sensation of a razor sharp, ivory handled, dragon kitana being pressed to her throat.
“Ooo... Tylenol...”