Magorian

Getting this row on the shoad

CH. 3: The Man on the Mountain

Magorian could handle the icy-cold and harsh winds as he climbed up the mountain. He could withstand the rocky and painful terrain. He could even endure the occasional mudslide that would take him back a few hours' progress. What he couldn't stand was the song that was stuck in his head.

Do you believe in life after love, after love, after love--Dammit! Get out of my head, Cher!

Magorian had learned the song at his stay in the Eskimo village before he had taken on the mountain. The extremely hospitable tribe had provided him food, clothes and shelter after his long and hard journey (he had to walk for three and a half days- without any mushrooms to tie him over!). Magorian was almost about to feel bad for burning down their village and defacing their sacred walrus-god ice-sculptures on a whim until the insidious tune they taught him kept replaying over and over in whatever was left of his mind. Now he couldn't care less whether all the Inuit sank into the frigid depths of the sea or not.

There were a few things Magorian was thankful for, however. The fact that he had four legs made it that much easier to ascend the steep slope of the peak. Also, he was glad he had gotten rid of those wheels he had once worn- it would've made climbing the mountain infinitely more difficult. And now he was glad that he had finally reached the summit.

Immediately, the weather became nice, sunny, and cheery. Birds could be heard chirping in the background and all the snow was replaced by lush verdure. The floor became smooth and flat. It was almost as if the author didn't want the setting to be a mountain peak anymore, but rather a green clearing on top of a plateau. Anyway, Magorian was now looking for the one person he had trekked to find. After a few minutes of searching, he found him, and he eagerly trotted to be in front of him.

It wasn't Santa Clause. It wasn't the Oracle at Delphi. It wasn't even Newt Ginrich. It was the mystical, the fabled, the all-powerful...

The Man on the Mountain™.

He was... well, you'd just have to see him to believe him. Suffice it to say that it looked like the only thing he hadn't ever inhaled was air. He looked like a California surfer dude, but inexplicably talked in a thick Japanese accent.

"What can I do for you, young Grasshopper?" said the wise old man, using a term long over-used since a certain timeless movie.

"I came to ask a question," replied Magorian, "a question that has haunted me ever since it came across my mind. A question that the greatest philosophers and scientists have tried to solve since the beginning of recorded history. The question that precedes all others. The one, singular question that has caused sentient beings to waste away their lives in an obsessive search to find the answer. I am hoping you can answer this question, o Wise Man on the Mountain."

The Man on the Mountain continually nodded as Magorian had spoken, convinced he knew what the question the centaur was so desperate to be answered was. He'd just have to tell him the same thing he'd told everyone else who had expected an answer from him...

"Speak, young one. What is the question you seek to answer?" said he, knowing full well what it was going to be.

"Do I look good in leotards?"

The Man on the Mountain was extremely taken aback. That question was obviously not the one he had been anticipating. Thus, the answer he gave was a feeble one.
"Um... yes?"

It apparently didn't appear to concern the recipient of the answer how weak it was, for Magorian seemed positively thrilled. He pulled out his pair of leotards, and, with the moderate amount of difficulty associated with being a quadruped, put them on.

"Thank you, Man on the Mountain" said Magorian gratefully. "I've always wanted to wear leotards. Well, since three and a half days ago, really, but you get the picture." After a long pause, Magorian added, "Well... I'll be off now. Bye."

He began to trot off, new leotards in tow. However, the Man on the Mountain called him back. "Wait, young Grasshopper!" Magorian turned around and listened.

"You are a strange one. I could use your services. Would you like to be my bushi?"

"Bushi?"

"Sorry, I mean 'apprentice'. I have a bad habit of using Japanese words when I could just as easily use English ones. By the way, call me Motm."

When Magorian replied in the affirmative, Motm was ecstatic. He finally had someone who could go out and get him Bayer while he meditated. And some Lipitor. (Motm had quite the encyclopedic memory for prescription drugs.) He loved that stuff. It made him high. (Erm, I mean "enlightened".) It was always a pain to go down the mountain, drive to the pharmacy
and pick up a couple of buckets of Nexium (the healing purple pill? More like the seriously psychedelic nirvana enabler!)

Unfortunately for him, he had been saying all this without realizing that he was thinking aloud and Magorian was instantly turned off. He wasn't going to be any old has-been geezer's lackey!

Unfortunately for the centaur, he had been saying that aloud too, and Motm got extremely angry. He quickly metamorphosed from a benevolent hippy avatar into an UNSTOPPABLE FORCE OF NATURE.

"RARGJPPZLCTLEFJNSFSNSFEFZRBYXOKNDEZOQNFOE!" the demonic deity roared unintelligibly as he threw bolts of lightning and fire at the helpless centaur. The serene scenario described before disappeared and a desolate wasteland took its place, dotted by brimstone and fire omens. The tidings of destruction and woe resounded through time and space, making the poor Eskimos even more doomed than they already were. Winds whipped up at razor-sharp speeds and boulders fell from the very blackened sky.

Luckily, Magorian's new leotards made such a hideous contrast with the color of his hair that it created a force field of repulsiveness, rebounding the ray of phenomenon Motm was aiming at him. The immortal djinn reverted back into the old man at once. The author conjured a stretcher into the story for him just to symbolize his weakness.

Magorian knelt down on Motm's deathbed. He could hear the faint last words of the dying man.

"Grasshopper (cough)... Forgive me... (hack)... I knew not what I was doing... (wheeze)... I let my rage consume me... please (gasp)... pass down my teachings and (another colorful expression for trying to breathe with difficulty)... bury me under the yew tree down yonder..." Then the old man heaved, convulsed, and expired.

Magorian was faced with an interesting moral dilemma. Should I do what Motm asked me to do? he thought.

After a few minutes, he reached a conclusion.

Screw that. I'm going home.

CH. 4: Female Trekkin'

Our story starts in a barn in a small Amish community.

Jebediah: Oy! Ichabod! There's a piece of paper on the floor!

[Ichabod runs over to Jebediah]

Ichabod: What's the problem, Jeb? What's paper?

Jebediah: That. [points to floor]

Ichabod: Oh...... Shall we take a look at it?

Jebediah: Careful, brother. Who knows what deviltry is afoot!

[Ichabod picks up the sheet of paper and they both start to read it]

Odium! Scandal! Outrage! This blasphemes every ideal which we uphold! No God-fearing man wrote this!

Ichabod: Indeed! We must find this... [he looks at the paper] Magorian... and burn him to the ground! And we must find this "The Savant" too!

Jebediah: No, dear brother, The Savant is the author! We cannot harm him, lest he write something horrible to happen to us! No, we must focus on his construct, this insipid horse-man. To arms!

[Ichabod cups his hands over his mouth and shouts to the village]

Ichabod: Everyone, get your torches and pitchforks! We're going fanfic hunting!

[Townspeople rally a warcry and charge out of the town exit, fully equipped with torch and pitchfork.]

Ichabod: Shan't we go as well, dear brother?

Jebediah: Right after we find out how we leaned to read.

Ichabod: Right.

Meanwhile, in a cave in Gotham...

Robin: Holy galloping jeepers, Batman, there's something new on the Bat-Computer!

Batman: What is it, Robin? What's this? What is a... fanfic... doing on the monitor?

[he reads it]

Oh my god... This is just about the dumbest thing I've ever read! We must stop this madness before every one in New York City- er, I mean, Gotham City- who reads this becomes brain-dead!

Robin: You're right, Batman! Yeah!

Batman: Come, Robin, to the Batmobile! And make sure you put on those tight spandex short shorts.

Robin: Why?

Batman: Just do it. And don't touch the Bat-Chloroform!

Robin: Okay, let me just put on the green shorts.

Batman: Quickly, we must return this fic to some semblance of Harry Potter! To the Batmobile!

[suggestive pole-sliding]

{Spinning-bat transition sequence}

-*-

Snape: Dumbledore, this staff meeting started nearly two hours ago, and yet we still haven't discussed what I think is a subject far more important than any of the others- subduing the centaur.

McGonagall: I hate to agree with him, Albus, but he's right! Don't you remember that it was us who had to pay for rebuilding the forest after he burned it down? It was us who had to pay for his rehab after that unseemly Kool-Aid addiction! And I daresay we don't need to relive the dreaded dishwasher incident!

[they all shudder]

Dumbledore: What would you have me do, Minerva? Quarantine him in the school? Drive him out of the forest? We would sustain legal persecution either way. I don't think I need to remind you that the Ministry of Magic still doesn't like us any more than they do Voldemort.

[they all shudder again]

Sprout: [tentatively] Maybe if you just appealed to Fudge...

Dumbledore: I absolutely refuse to negotiate with the man anymore, Sylvia. If he can't see we're the good guys by now, then he never will. Senile old fool...

Flitwick: Perhaps we could just, y'know... kill him? I know cheese smuggler named Bongo, and he's quite learned in Chinese water torture- he says thumbscrews just aren't cutting it anymore--

[They're all flabbergasted by Flitwick's sudden cruelty.]

Snape: ANYWAY. Here's a thought- we could frame him. Have the centaurs spot something heretical that they think Magorian did. Then we'll have done nothing against the law, and we'll finally be rid of him.

Flitwick: Then won't he be dead anyway?

[they all glower at him]

Snape: Don't you have a pillow to enchant or something, Flitwick?

Dumbledore: Enough! What say you, Professor Sinistra?

Sinistra: Hm? Sorry, wasn't listening. I'm only a filler character that has no real relevance and that readers will never get to see in the books anyway.

Hooch: Not even in Book 7, Harry Potter and the Chamber of the Stone in the Goblet of the Azkaban Phoenix Prince?

Sinistra: Not even then.

Dumbledore: Uh-huh. So here's the plan. One of my trinkets has revealed to me his desire to meet a female centaur. We'll transfigure Mrs. Sinistra into one and then lure Magorian out of the forest with her.

Sinistra: Hey! Why don't you pick Professor Vector? Or the nameless Ancient Runes and Muggle Studies professors?

[invisible teachers writhe in indignation]

Dumbledore: Because there are ALREADY too many characters in this fic. Meeting adjourned!

Outside the Teachers' Lounge

Flitwick: Wait, Headmaster! Look what I got for you!

Dumbledore: My, my! What's this? Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans! Filius, you shouldn't have!

Flitwick: [excited] Go on, eat them!

Dumbledore: Don't mind if I do! Just hope I don't get earwax... Hmm, a milky white one- white chocolate, I suppose?

[Flitwick nods enthusiastically. Dumbledore pops it in his mouth, and then sputters it out.]

Dumbledore: That was pillow, wasn't it?

Flitwick: Heehee! Nothing tastier!

[Dumbledore takes out another and examines it.]

Dumbledore: They're all pillow-flavored, aren't they?

Flitwick: Pillow-flavored?

Dumbledore: Flitwick, you sick freak!

[He storms off to his office, where he can cry the trauma away with the liquor he saved from Godric's Hollow.]

The Curtain Falls

----------------------------------------------------------------

Magorian was getting bored. There were only so many times one could have a staring contest with a geranium before it got old. His pet dancing bear, Ganglia, was starting to get on his nerves, too.

The truth was that Magorian was beginning to tire of all this adventure...

Wait a sec, that's not right-

REWIND

The truth was that Magorian wanted even more adventure. He wanted to obtain something he couldn't have, see something he had never seen. Sure enough, the perfect idea floated into Magorian's head, as they always did when the story needed to be carried along without meaningless pauses.

He wanted to court a female centaur.

Quickly, he consulted the reference book he had had the sense to pilfer in Amsterdam during that crazy weekend when he was tried by the Wizarding World Court.

Hmmm... vampires... (The preferred steed of the vampire is the giraffe, for its long neck supplies it with enough blood for long journeys. In fact, it is often said that the distance between Transylvania and giraffe feeding grounds effectively keep vampires where they are.)...

Zombies... (Their diets include daily requirements of lentils, brown rice and soy bean extract, potato salad, and, as an after-dinner snack, heaping helpings of the brains of poor, defenseless animals.)...

Aha, here it is- centaurs!

The centaur is a solemn, sylvan being, devoted to the forest in which they inhabit. They are known to be extremely well-versed in astrology and other forms of prophecy, and have a notoriously unfriendly disposition towards humankind in general. A centaur has the body of a man down to the waist- the rest of its body is that of a horse. Never mention this to a centaur, however, for they are averse to being compared to horses and are skilled in archery.

Blah blah blah, thought Magorian, get to the women. He turned the page with his pliers.

Tribes of centaurs have oficially been allotted space to live in areas of England, Greece, Italy, and France, though there have been reported sightings of the elusive female specimen in Australia.

SLAM.

That's all Magorian needed to know. Instinctively, Magorian fed Ganglia the dusty tome (he always had great feeding the bear things it shouldn't eat) and galloped away, grin readily set on his face. His id was insatiable; nothing could stop him now. After all, there couldn't possibly be three extremely powerful forces endeavoring to take him down at this very moment!...