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[Laufey]

If ye try ta fight us...
...you will get a nasty whackin´!
If ya disrespect our singing´...
...we will feed ya to a kraken!

A pirate I was meant to be!
Trim the sails and roam the sea!"

The singing was very, very loud, and only partially in tune. Dekaras shook his head briefly, and headed towards the sound. He'd been spending quite some time hiding the *rest* of his clothes away from Sendai's efforts, a task that was made somewhat more difficult by having two curious elves constantly trailing after him. Eventually he'd had to swear them both to silence, and though he thought they would keep their word, he wondered if they would remember it.

"You know," Aribeth said, "I still think you should consider it." She cursed briefly as her hair once again got tangled in the spikes on the shoulder of her armor.

"No. No. Absolutely not. Under no circumstances."

"But you'd make a fine paladin, I'm sure of it! And I know about these things."

"Exactly what part of 'I don't want to be a paladin' is it you have trouble understanding? Or, to rephrase myself, I would rather poke my eyes out with a sharpened pencil."

Vierna chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. "How about a ranger? Being a ranger is nice. You get to spend a lot of time outdoors, and you get to have an animal companion. Now, some rangers don't wash all that often, which is a shame really, because I don't see why we should have to be smelly and dirty with hair hanging in matted clumps. But that's mostly human rangers really."

"I don't want to be a ranger," Dekaras said, his voice extremely even. "I have all the companionship I could ever wish for, and then some. And now, please excuse me, ladies. I have something to attend to, so you must entertain yourselves for a while."

"Oh. Right. Hey, Aribeth, time for...a KITCHEN RAID!"

The two elves sprinted off in the direction of the kitchen, hollering something about making cookies. Dekaras, meanwhile, sighed with relief about getting rid of the unwanted career counsellors.

*I *will* kill her for telling me to 'mind the house'. Or possibly Weyoun, for causing this in the first place.* The singing was getting louder, and more and more out of tune, boring mercilessly into his brain. The assassin headed towards the sound, trying not to wince as a particularly shrill note headed his way.

In the bedroom, Phaere was lounging on the bed, looking rather sulky. "How am I supposed to expand my Soy Empire if you won't let me onto the PC?" she complained. "And I was just about to make a hostile takeover too!"

"Oh, shush!" Zaerini was sitting in front of the computer, grinning broadly. The bunch of tulips had migrated into *her* red hair now, and definitely didn't look better there than it had in Vierna's. Dekaras also couldn't help noticing that there was a fake tattoo of a black cat plastered onto her left cheek. At least he *hoped* it was fake, or he would have to deal with a serious temper tantrum whenever Edwin got home. "I'm giving musical lessons here!"

"What d'you mean?" Laska protested. "I'm an elf, we're *all* musical geniuses! Hang on, listen to this! I AM MURRAY, THE MIGHTY DEMONIC SKULL! I AM MURRAY, THE MIGHTY DEMONIC SKULL! I AM MURRAY, THE MIGHTY DEMONIC SKULL!" This was uttered in an utterly tuneless, but very, very loud monotone that made the windows tremble and creak a little.

"Bit higher on the 'C' next time, Las," Zaerini said. "Anyway, don't you just *love* all these funky songs in here? The game tunes are great, but there are lots of others." She winked. "All perfectly legal, of course. Yep. Legal. Wouldn't dream of anything else."

"I wanna sing *my* favourite song!" a third voice piped up, one that was higher than those of the elf or the half-elf. It came from under the writing desk, and was followed by a round, cheerful-looking face, with glittering brown eyes and a merry smile. The face was surrounded by a wild mess of brown curls, decorated by a large red bow. "Oh, hi Dekkie! I'm so glad you're here, now I can sing you my favourite song!"

Dekaras held onto the doorframe, trying to gather some support from it. He knew, all too well, which song this would be, one that made his eyelid twitch just thinking about it. "Poppy," he acknowledged his Best Friend. "It is good to see you, but as for the 'singing' part..."

"Oh, it's not a problem, really it isn't!" The halfling crawled out from under the bed, stood up with her arms stretched out in front of her and let her face settle into a fake solemn expression. "WHOOOO IS THE KING OF THE JUNGLE?" This was followed by a monkey-like hooting and puffing. "Gruff, gruff! WHOOOO IS THE KING OF THE JUNGLE? Gruff, gruff! WHO IS THE..."

Dekaras was just about to haul his friend off the floor in the hopes of silencing her with a well-placed hand across her mouth before she could drive him insane, when another sound cut through the terrible song. The sound of thumping, and of growling. And it was coming from directly behind him, from the closed door leading to the wardrobe. "Oh, marvelous," he dryly said. "Well done, ladies. You've gone and woken up the Avariel. I hope you have some raw meat handy..."

---

Dekaras sighed... for certainly not the first time today. It had been another day in paradise, so to speak. Though he was certain the true paradise would not contain quite so many elves. He had woken up to a *lovely* electronic voice accompanying a very loud techno-beat. The words 'All your base are belong to us' were etched into his very mind. Hearing that scene once might be have been enjoyable on a completely banal level, but for some reason once was not enough for the elves, who all loudly sang along with that same infernal electronic voice. Right now, one of the perpetrators was sitting on the other side of the table in the living room.

"I'm telling you it was a masterpiece," Laska raved. "That 'All your bases are belong to us' bit was simply brilliant! Pretty bad grammar, though, but you can't have everything."

Dekaras did not respond. Instead, he used one of his tactics to deal with people he wasn't interested in speaking to. Most notably, this tactic worked fine on one Artemis Entreri back in Icewind Dale, by putting a bit of salt in the drink while the person wasn't looking so that the person would realize the next step might be poison. Sadly, the whole linchpin of this plan was that the target would eventually catch on... Which was a bit of a problem for Laska.

"What's wrong with this coffee?" Laska grimaced and fished a pocketflask from her person. Dekaras briefly wondered where she would actually hide an object that size on her scantilly clad form, but then watched with fascination as she, once again, turned her coffee even more irish than it already was. Then, she took another sip. "Okay, it's fine again," Laska smiled. "Now, as I was saying."

Time for the heavy guns, Dekaras decided and looked over Laska's shoulder. That hint, Laska caught and looked away for a brief moment, granting the assassin enough time to put a big dose of salt into Laska's coffee.

But Laska turned back, she took a big sip and...Dekaras just barely managed to jerk his head to one side quickly enough to avoid a faceful of coffee. Instead, a large brown stain spread across the white wallpaper above the sofa. And onto the sofa, seeping deeply into the leather. And onto the cushion lying on the sofa - but that, he decided, was actually a *good* thing.

*Good riddance. I never approved of that thing anyway. A shockingly pink cushion shaped like a huge mouth, and she says she 'just has to have it'. Let's face it, my so-called creator is a madwoman.*

"THIS COFFEE IS SHIT!" Laska shouted, and there went the cup : crashing against the wall. The coffee kept spreading, forming a stain shaped very much like...the head of an elf. Dekaras winced a little when he noticed that.

With a huff, Laska stood up and headed into the kitchen. Soon enough, the coffee maker went the same way as the cup : crashing against the same wall after a powerful throw from the kitchen. Then, the elf stormed in again : "SERENITY NOW!" the elf snarled and started to jump up and down onto the coffee-maker, mashing it to pieces under her merciless boots. "SERENITY NOW!" she yelled after kicking it one more time.

Laska slowly started to calm down. "Sorry Dek. Bad coffee isn't good for my temper. Excuse me while I fish the shards of glass and plastic from my feet."

"Amazing," Dekaras uttered while he watched the elf hobble into the bedroom leaving bloody footprints on the floor. But as least she left him in peace. Enough peace to look through the stack of reports lying there for a while. He had to admit curiosity had gotten the best of him when these were delivered this morning by courier. So far, they all looked very official. Among the many conclusions in the reports, a few stood out : "Burger King Caught Processing Ratmeat", "McNuggets Are Made From People", "Dairy Queen's Dabbles With Flesh Eating Bacteria".

"Ah, there they are," Phaere purred as she quickly collected the reports from the table and moved back towards the bedroom. "Just taking care of the competition. SoyDiner is set for launch soon, after all, and there's nothing like a good rumor-mongoring to get off to a good launch."

Dekaras shook his head and just wondered when this endeavor would end... only to be confronted with the shaking of the entire apartment and the sound of bricks landing on the ground with a dull thud.

"What in the name of all the Gods and their various avatars are you doing?" he asked after he ran into the hallway and found Aribeth holding a sledgehammer.

"Making some more space," Aribeth said, landing her sledgehammer into the wall between the hallway and the bedroom again. "The bedroom's not big enough for our dance-act, so we've decided to remove the wall to make it bigger."

"Might I suggest it would make more sense to move to the living room, where there's a bit more breathing space?"

"Nah, too much hassle to move the furniture," Aribeth said. "Besides, Phaere's already sold the bricks to the neighbors for gravel. Sendai'll put the bricks in the washing machine to make them smaller later," Aribeth said.

"Amazing," Dekaras said, then turned to the figure sitting at the back of the wall of the hallway. With relief he noticed she was still secured to the rack. There, on the rack, in a strait-jacket, stood Evil Aerie, complete with a leather mask strapped around her face, staring holes in the back of his skull. And the front of his skull.

"Laska!" Dekaras warned. "You will cease poking her with a stick at once."

"Awww," Laska pouted, the grimaced when Vierna continued to bandage her feet. "Just having a little fun. Hey, how about some Avariel-tipping later?"

"And you," Dekaras pointed to Rini, who was standing in the bedroom watching Aribeth tearing the place up. "I'd expect you to have more sense than this. Aribeth just tore down a load-bearing wall!"

"They let me join their dance-group," Rini spoke, and thus gave her answer.

"Very well," Dekaras replied and decided to take Evil Aerie's rack and roll it towards the window to give the demented Avariel her weekly dose of sunshine. After that, he quickly withdrew himself from the lot and instead concentrated on the daily newspaper. Soon enough, though, the sounds shot from the bathroom into his ears. For a moment, he wondered how long it would take before the blood would seep out of his shells.

"We are elves, we are elves!
Not Kobold, Orc or Human,
We are elves, we are elves!
Not Dragon, Demon, Ox or Gorgon.

Elves are great, elves are great!
Pointed ears and super-sight,
Elves are great, elves are great!
Love of nature, love is free!

Elves 4ever! Elves 4ever!
Elves 4ever! Elves 4ever!"

Now, all elves had melodic voices, and they could carry a tune... separately. But together, the four of them, Laska, Aribeth, Vierna and Rini managed to utterly butcher any quality there was to that song by not carrying the tune at the same time. Though admittedly, Rini had stopped after the first stance, apparently the only one to notice the song went wrong.

"Last chance! I'm doing another wash!" Sendai called. "Anyone who has something for me to wash just tell me!"

Dekaras moved towards the washing machine to see if any of his clothes were part of the hamper, but then he noticed something spinning around in the washing machine, the metal buckles ticking against the metal trunk : a strait-jacket. Turning towards the window, he found it open... and one demented Avariel missing from the rack.