Caution: Do Not Feed the Excel

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Disclaimer: All characters used herein belong not to me, but to someone a lot more creative than me.

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When I was a kid, I used to go to the zoo with my Mom and my older brother all the time.

I guess some stupid, goofy psychologist would tell me that seeing all those caged animals in early childhood are why I'm the way I am today: the memory of innocent creatures imprisoned like that instilled me with the unexplainable urge to free my mind and not be confined by any societal expectations.

Hah! Yeah, right. Nothing could make me the way I am except pure, genuine Grade-A nuttiness. The zoo? Uh-uh. Excel did it all herself.

But that's not what I'm talking about. I guess it kind of is, but…shut up!

I loved those trips to the zoo. It never crossed my mind to feel sad for all the innocent animals taken away from their natural habitat and shut up behind bars for tourists to gawk at.

Maybe I knew somehow that they were probably better off than they would be on their own in the cruel world that had to make animals extinct somehow.

Or maybe kids just don't dwell on the kind of crap adults always think they do. They'd probably be horrified and sickened and just plain annoyed to find out that kids aren't really the delicate flowers they think they are, and are actually pretty callous most of the time.

I think it's the second one.

Either way, the sad plight of the animals could never make me think twice about being overjoyed every time Mom would call my brother – sometimes I wish I could remember his name, or his face, or his voice, or Mom's for that matter – and me to the door on a Sunday and tell us that we were taking the bus and going to the zoo.

Something always confused me, though, and after a while, I finally asked Mom about it.

Why do they have those signs that say "Please Do Not Feed the Animals"?

My mother had a lot of explanations, like how certain kinds of foods aren't good for all animals, and it could make them sick, but one explanation stuck out in my mind, just because it seemed so stupid to me.

"If you give them some, they always want more."

Yeah?

So?

The way I saw it, and still sorta do, there are always going to be more people – mostly kids, probably – wanting to throw food at the animals.

So if the animals want more food, and the kids want to give them more food, what's the problem?

Hell, even if the kids don't want to give them more food, what's the problem?

If they get a little of what they want, isn't it better than if they get absolute and total nothing of what they want?

If they get a little of what they want every once in so often (or so not-often), it gives them something to look forward to.

I know I'd rather have a little than nothing. None of this all-or-nothing crap for Excel!

Hey, I'm a realist when I have to be.

A kind word, a smile free of malice or sarcasm, hell, I'll even take hands-on discipline instead of a gun or a simple tug of a rope to inflict an effortless punishment.

I sure as hell wouldn't be dumb enough to want more.

Okay, so I'd be dumb enough to want more.

I'm already dumb enough to want more.

I just wouldn't be dumb enough to expect more.

And I definitely wouldn't be dumb enough to risk the comfort of simply being allowed to be near him by insisting on more.

I know that things like that don't happen to girls like me. Fairy-tales just aren't for us. We're supposed to get by on the scraps of tolerance and the occasional hints of something that might be kindness if you look at it long enough that get tossed our way. We can get by on that because we have to because there's no one around to care if we can't. And if that special man (or woman – Excel is an open-minded gal) ever gets desperate enough to reach for the first available female, well, hallelujah! Don't fight it! It's time to get lucky!

Romance, complete with cheesy dialogue and sugar-sweet kisses and time wasted hugging and love-making instead of just screwing that doesn't involve alcohol if you're lucky, is for sweet, quiet, beautiful girls like Hyatt. She's the picture-perfect romance novel heroine, right down to the bad health. Remember, girls, guys don't like if you don't spend at least half your day each day unconscious! You can also be a romance novel heroine with simply a tragic past or a dark, depressed, pissy demeanor. On all counts, Excel is outta luck. Dark past? Eheh...I'm not sure, but I don't think so. I think there are other reasons that I can only remember tiny bits of it sometimes, like glimpses of a world in a dream that fade the longer you're awake. Or like looking at the world through the wrong end of a spy-glass, if you're sick of the dream comparison. As for a dark, moody demeanor…the thought of Excel being considered dark and moody is hilarious. Excel is about as overall serious as a sad-clown juggling chickens.

I think Ilpalazzo must have gone to the zoo a lot as a kid, too. I'll bet he was the creepy, yet oddly alluring little boy who poked the animals with sharp things through the bars or threw rocks at the plastic windows when the cages didn't have bars and then went home to fry ants under a magnifying glass and dump the contents of his chemistry set on the neighborhood cats and disembowel mice with his scalpel and things. Somehow, I don't see him as a great fan of cute, fluffy things. Or the other kids in the neighborhood, for that matter.

Yeah, I think he definitely spent a lot of time at the zoo.

But the sign made sense to him.

Maybe that's why Excel gets punishment heaped up on her so high she periodically punches holes in the ceiling with it.

He thinks I'd be dissatisfied with scraps of kindness if I ever got more than a taste.

Or maybe it's because he really does think I'm that obnoxious and that expendable and that much of a setback.

Or maybe I'm like the creature at the zoo, going nuts from the things poking me and the rocks thumping against the windows all the time, or the ant under the magnifying glass, or the feline chemistry project, or the rodent dissection project.

I think it's the first, but I'm prepared for it if I ever find out it's the second. (Or the third. Yeesh.)

At least, that's what I'd like to believe. I always like to think I'd be prepared for the worst, even though I know that if the worst happened, I'd probably stop ambling down the path to totally losing it and run at top speed into the poetic and metaphorical deep, murky ocean waters of insanity.

I'm lucky that he cares enough to let me stay with ACROSS now that I've proven and re-proven and re-re-proven that I'm not really that good at anything besides surviving things that no normal person should.

But I'm not greedy. I don't need what other people have.

While I've got something to live for, I'm happy.

If it gets better, I'll be happier.

For now, it's not a bad life.

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A/N: Hail Ilpalazzo!