Sorry for the late update. Life sucks. But I haven't abandoned this story!
Cedric burst in through the chamber door quickly and without knocking. The heavy wooden door swung back and hit the wall with a clunk.
"PRINCE PHOBOS!"
His urgent message was about a second from coming out of his mouth but he stopped dead in his tracks.
"Cedric!" Nerissa shouted from the four poster bed.
"CEDRIC" Phobos shouted, tangled with Nerissa.
Cedric wheeled around and ran out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him without comment. He needed to find a hot poker. Immediately.
"The nerve of some henchmen!" Phobos scoffed at the now closed door. He smiled evilly at his fiancé. Surprisingly, Nerissa found it charming. "Are you in need of some snake-skin lingerie, my love?"
"What I am in need of is a best man" Nerissa reprimanded.
Phobos mumbled something along the lines of you never let my have any fun to which Nerissa smirked.
"You wouldn't call what we're doing 'fun'?"
Phobos matched her tone and her expression. "Well, isn't it kind of uncomfortable for you?"
She gave him a peck on the lips. "If we keep this going, I'm sure it'll get better"
She blew a little bit.
"Left foot red," she told him once the arrow had stopped spinning.
Phobos snuck his foot underneath Nerissa's and managed to touch the red Twister dot. He almost lost his balance at the last minute but supported himself with his powers. Villains were supposed to cheat, weren't they?
"Yan Lin was right," Nerissa commented smugly at Phobos' strained expression, "it is more fun on non-flat surfaces!"
"Dude! This place is awesome!" Nigel exclaimed looking around. "How on Earth did you get this gig?"
"It wasn't on Earth…" Matt muttered to himself. He wasn't sure what Nerissa was making his band mates see but he was quite sure it wasn't a huge dark and eerie ballroom with an ancient chandelier having tables and chairs set up by creepy and apparently stupid Lurdens. One of them was eating part of a table.
"What was that, man?" Joel asked from his drum set.
"Nothing!" Matt called back. He sighed. "Let's get to practicing…"
Matt started stumming the beginning chords to Evil Angel and was about to get to the verse when he was interrupted by Nigel.
"Hey, that chick is hot isn't she?" Nigel asked Matt, pointing with the end of his guitar. Matt stopped abruptly when he noticed Nigel was pointing at a pair of Lurdens beginning to waltz around the room.
"Can my life get any worse?" Matt asked the creaking ancient chandelier above him.
As if in answer to his question, it gave its loudest creak yet and with a snap started to fall. Matt dove out of the way just in time and it crashed just feet from his band mates who didn't notice a thing.
"IT WAS RHETORICAL!" he shouted up at the ceiling where Jeek hung, snickering.
"Again, why are we agreeing to help out our psycho ex-friend on her wedding day?" Kadma asked in annoyance as she and Halinor reluctantly went through a bridal shop on Earth looking for a wedding dress with Nerissa's specifications. Which were quite a couple of pages long.
"Because she's got the current Guardians of the Veil and the Queen of Meridian imprisoned and holding them for blackmail" Cassidy explained, looking at some maid-of-honor dresses. "Do you like this one?" she asked, holding up a blue strap-less dress with a high cut to her knee.
"Nerissa's colors are black and purple Cassidy" Guardian Yan Lin sighed from the other side of the rack where there were more dresses. "And you don't seem too upset about this whole wedding thing. You think maybe Nerissa still has some mind-control thing on you? Since your maid of honor?"
"Of course not! I am upset!" Cassidy responded. "It's just that I really think Nerissa will… oh! Purple!" she squealed and ran to the other side of the store where she'd seen a purple dress. She turned around to her friends who were all looking at her with bemused smiles.
"OK" Cassidy admitted, "Maybe a little mind control…"
"So you're saying you can glamour the throne room to make it look exactly like the sketch I drew for you?" Nerissa asked Phobos skeptically as she surveyed the throne room.
"Anything your black heart desires," Phobos swore. Behind his back, Matt made a gagging gesture. Cedric, standing nearby, smacked Matt upside the head
Satisfied, Nerissa said, "Great! I'll leave you to it!" and she began heading off in another direction.
"Um, where are you going?" Phobos asked, worried at her mischievous expression.
"Well, someone has to walk me down the isle" she said matter-of-factly before she disappeared behind the doors. Phobos stood in place for a moment before it dawned on him what she was going to attempt to do. He ran after her.
"OH NO YOU DON'T! I AM PERFECTLY HAPPY WITH DEAD IN-LAWS, YOU HEAR ME? RISSA!"
"This sucks" Taranee mumbled. "Two pair"
Will smiled sympathetically as her friend laid down her hand of cards. The five Guardians and one Queen of Meridian were sitting around in one big united bubble playing with a deck of cards Cornelia had bribed one of the guards for. They did ask any questions but heard the words "Toby Keith" and "bikini" exchanged.
"Woot!" Irma whooped as she laid down her full house. "Pay up, suckers!"
"For the umpteenth time" groaned Elyon, "We're trapped in a large magical bubble and have nothing on us except the clothes on our backs and the hair on our heads"
Irma pondered that for a moment. "I'll take the hair if it's not too much trouble"
Hay Lin smacked her upside the head. Lovingly in a way only Hay Lin could do it.
"Guys, we need to think of an escape plan," Cornelia broke in, picking up the cards to shuffle them. She shuffled like an expert and was dealing again in seconds. Irma joked that she might have a career in Vegas if saving the world didn't work out.
"Cornelia's right," Will chimed. "We can't let them get married"
Taranee tapped her chin as she received her second card from Cornelia which was her universal signal for I'm preparing to show off my brain and probably prove myself insane in the process.
"Maybe we should let them get married"
Everyone froze and stared at Taranee. Cornelia stopped mid-deal with the card on the tip of her fingers. Elyon's jaw went slack.
"What?" she asked in disbelief.
"Think about it," Tara rationalized, "Maybe if they get married, they'll be too involved with each other to do anything successfully evil"
"But-but-but they don't even like each other!" Irma cried out. "They only got together because of my bonehead suggestion! They'll kill us all if they got into an argument or divorced or whatever!"
"But what if they do like each other?" Hay Lin suggested. "What if they've always liked each other and were just too shy to express their real feelings? What if Irma just helped push fate along? That would be sooo adorable!"
Hay Lin, the incurable romantic, sighed dreamily. When she noticed the looks she was getting which flashed 'INSTITUTIONALIZE IMMEDIATELY', she added hastily, "Well, you know, it would be if it wasn't Nerissa and Phobos…"
"Maybe Taranee's on to something, though," Will said after a moment in which Hay Lin turned pink. "But Candracar's not going to like it one bit"
"We don't have to tell them, do we?" Irma asked hopefully.
Expecting a snapping remark from Cornelia, the girls turned to look at her. She was lost in thought, scratching her neck with the card she still hadn't dealt.
"I have a really bad idea," Cornelia confessed with a smile so bold it was bordering on mischievous.
I apologize to all of you who were traumatized by the images your minds created for the first part of this chapter. I do hope you laughed at yourselves afterwards though :)
Next Chapter: The Wedding of the Millennium! That is, if Candracar doesn't have anything to say about it…