Three Wishes
Chapter 5 - Pixie Stix
Clickity-click-click. The click-clacking of endless rows of keyboards filled the air as a female figure, tall and dressed completely in grey, walked down the pixie halls, only one destination in mind. If not for her size (substantially taller than each and every one of the small, grey-suited figures lined up to their desks), the tiny shimmering wings on her back, and the vibrant blue hair she held down with a fitting grey cap, she might have almost fit in. But besides all this, the working pixies paid her no mind, and the instant her knuckles tapped the CEO office door titled ‘HP’, it opened in admittance, and Josie Von Strangle stepped inside.
For a moment, she went unnoticed, but she made no move to announce herself, simply waiting as the man at the desk tapped a last few things into his computer, shuffled some papers, then closed everything up. Once completely through, he looked up for the first time, gaze dull and grey as ever.
“Welcome once again, Madam Strangle…is there anything I can help you with?”
She had gotten used to the characteristic monotone, and paid it no mind, giving only a curt nod before speaking. “You promised me Timmy Turner.”
“You have one human.”
“I had Skylark before all this…and Timmy was part of the deal. As soon as you didn’t need him, I get him. And surely you don’t need him anymore now? The godparents are disappearing at a great rate without children who can wish…without minds of their own for that matter. With all of them dumber than Cozzy-“
“Cosmo.” The pixie corrected dully.
She continued without pause. “-not a one of them has brains worth sixpence…they’re all floating in elevator music!”
“Have you held up your end of the deal?”
“I’ll take care of Jorgen tonight.”
“Then you will have Turner tonight.”
“But-!” She began in outrage, but the HP continued in monotone.
“Goodbye, Madam Strangle.” And the next instant, a flush-faced and duly frustrated blue fairy appeared outside his closed office door. Huffing in indignation, she folded her arms tight, raising her nose primly before storming from the darkened grey halls in silence to keep whatever feminine dignity she had left. Not much.
Moments later, she appeared, grumbling and agitated, in the middle of her empty living room. “Jorgen!” She snapped, wings moving at a hummingbird’s pace in her frustration; Jorgen usually arrived home by this time and she expected him to answer nearly immediately. When she received no reply, she frowned. “JORGEN!!” In seconds, she had popped up in every room in the house only to find them all mysteriously empty. Unfortunately, this did nothing to sooth her mood, and she seethed visibly. “Oh, by the dentist, you will pay for this… CHIP!”
Chip’s name on her lips sounded like a peep from a very frantic baby bird, but when she snapped, the raven-haired singing sensation appeared anyway, blinking rather dully with the usual ‘hypnotized sparkle’ surrounding him in an odd glow. When his dazed eyes landed on the tooth-fairy however, he grinned widely, shiny teeth gleaming bright as ever. “Yo, pretty chick in the blue…what’s up?”
“Ah, my beautiful masterpiece…” Josie fanned herself dramatically, suddenly feeling a great deal more upbeat at the sight of those lovely teeth; her one true pride and joy. “You worship me, Skylark. Don’t worry about your concert; it’s taken care of. I’m everything in the world and you’ll never have to worry about any other pathetic mortal again.” Her words became a mesmerizing bout of magic, and the next moment, his dazed eyes glazed over, looking more out of it by the moment.
“Mistress…”
“That is exactly right. Now, we’ve already had our morning fun…how about a tour of the human world on the one way route to eternal destruction?” Despite the grim nature of the words themselves, the fairy spoke with peppy enthusiasm, and the next instant, she appeared, smirking and altogether very smug looking, at a low hover about fifty feet above a smoldering Dimmsdale, Chip right beside her, staring wide-eyed with silent fascination as he prodded the air around him, as if trying to discover how he was managing to float without falling.
“This, my young tooth prodigy, is what the human world is good for…nothing.” Josie stated calmly, an unnervingly flashy smile in place as she watched dark pillars of smoke rise from the Dimmsdale DimmaDome, a lighted sign advertising the next game of Dimmsdale Ballhogs flickering with sparks, then going dull as it fell down with a booming crash.
Swarming streams of grey pixies massed in the streets, colorless magic destroying the havoc created by human stupidity, but replacing it with nothing but mainstream grey, their masses like plagues of locusts as they implanted the business outlook. The once-green Dimmsdale Ballpark became a huge grey plaza, and the Cake ‘n’ Bacon restaurant (known for its cake and bacon), became nothing more than one more office in a long line of same-shade work ways.
In the short time it had taken for Timmy’s wish to obliterate all knowledge in every man woman, and child on Earth at the time, it had taken only a short few more hours to make a devastating effect on the fairy godparents all around the world. Without fairies, pixies had moved in unchallenged, and now, to keep their new world order in check, those humans who hadn’t managed to foolishly kill themselves off one way or another, ended up hypnotized, much like the young pop-star at the tooth fairy’s side.
Brainless but obedient humans worked the offices in business-like fashion, the dominant species on Earth, controlled by the pixies. From a rapidly deteriorating Fairy World, Jorgen Von Strangle watched in emblazoned fury, hands in a death grip on his bazooka wand as he stormed.
“PIXIES! Dirty, multiplying little insects… They will PAY for this tyranny! BINKY!!” The force of the command shook the walls around him, the dust of shaken plaster falling in a slightly grayish rain as Norm frowned slightly from his safe distance in a far corner of the room and created a small parasol for protection from the shower. As called for, a very pale-faced and distraught-looking Binky appeared seconds later, wringing his hands fittingly as he’d already been smoldered five times that day.
“Y-yes, sir? What seems to be the problem, sir, I-“
“THE PROBLEM?!? LOOK!”
Hesitantly, the exceedingly smaller fairy flitted over in the direction indicated, coming to the small window Jorgen stood by and glancing out with an audible swallow; he’d already done this twice before, and both of those times, the search had ended in pungently painful punishment. Unfortunately, he feared (quite accurately, in fact), that if he didn’t do as instructed, the results would turn out far worse. As it happened, that thought did little to lessen his dread.
Out the window, the clouds magically cleared to reveal a very uncharacteristically colorless world below, the usual blues, whites, and greens of the only slightly-tainted earth now awash with nothing but shadow. Even Binky, in his scared-silent state, had the gall to look displeased at the bleak picture this created, and after a moment, he spoke up, however quietly, in a nervous tone.
“Well, sir, it doesn’t…it doesn’t look good…”
“Not GOOD?! It looks TERRIBLE!” The general boomed, his tone once again shaking the house, and Norm took the time to idly twirl his parasol, not even looking up from his nails, which he had currently splayed out before him, his eyes running over them dully in a rather bored manner. “HORRIFIC! UGLY! TER-….eh…I’m running out of-“
“Ghastly?” The genie offered nonchalantly, keeping his eyes down as he continued without effort. “Grotesque, despondent, wretched, forlorn, repulsive, unsightly, uninhabitable, meek, meager, re-“
“I GET IT!”
For the first time in several minutes, violet eyes glanced up, locking on blue as the general dressed in camouflage cap-a-pie loomed over him menacingly; he didn’t so much as blink once, though his sunglasses did slide just a tad lower on his nose. “Just tryin’ to help out, sugar cup, you seemed a bit flustered.”
“FLUSTERED?!” Off in a corner, Binky looked like he might have died of relief if that sort of thing were possible as he watched the general’s attention focus in solely on the placid genie. “The very meaning…of fairy EXISTENCE…is teetering on the edge of a thin knife blade…and all you can come up with is FLUS-“
“Most all knife blades are thin, sweetheart, that’s why they cut through things…unless of course they haven’t been sharpened recently, in which case they would-“ A tight, army green gag sufficiently muffled the remainder of his speech, and Norm took a moment to scowl before dissipating the dark cloth. For the record, he didn’t continue, leaving Jorgen to scowl in silence at his mythic one-time lover.
“You…talk…too much.” The larger fairy panted eventually, his scowl ebbing off into a mere frown as he straightened up, tanker’s arms folding across his chest as he kept his gaze firmly planted on the violet-eyed mystic.
“You may have mentioned it.” Norm agreed, turning his attention back to his hands. “Gonna do something about it?” At that, he lifted his eyes again, and though his expression barely changed, the fairy, now better tuned to even the slighter elements of his companion’s mood, noticed something flicker through that usually solid poker-face blankness.
“I could.” Jorgen eventually answered gruffly, his even tone betraying nothing.
“I know.”
“I won’t.” For a fleeting instant, Jorgen thought he caught an honest smile on the man’s lips, but then it disappeared, hidden behind a parasol; he barely heard the genie’s muffled reply.
“Thanks.”
Through all this, Binky had hung in the background, saying nothing as he fidgeted nervously. But now, as they came to a decent close, his voice edged in through the silence, a hesitant toe in cold water as he tested the new territory. “Jorgen, sir?” When the fairy general showed no signs of hearing him, he spoke up louder. “General Jorgen, sir!” At that, the man did turn, rounding his eyes on the pipsqueak of his subordinate and making the smaller fairy quiver ever so slightly.
“Yes…Binky…?” Jorgen ground out slowly, his tone teetering between his usual explosive rage and a strange calm in a way that made Binky highly regret speaking in the first place. Still, he couldn’t take back the words he’d already spoken, and had to swallow down his fear instead.
“If the pixies are taking over, sir…shouldn’t we…do something?”
“DO-…” Jorgen paused in the middle of his shout, taking a moment to consider the suggestion before frowning slightly. Maybe, just this once, Binky’s words actually had merit. Eventually, he eyed the tiny fairy, his subordinate’s eyes already tightly shut in preparation for the nuclear blast that never came. “What do you suggest?”
After gaining his bearings (nearly fainting and struggling to get a grip on himself after he realized he hadn’t, in fact, received a blast aimed to blowing him into smithereens), Binky stuttered in indecision. Very rarely had Jorgen actually addressed him with a question, and even then, it usually went something along the lines of ‘YOU DID THIS?!?’, hardly a worthwhile question anyway, seeing as how the general never gave him time to answer. To his most humble relief, Norm, once again, came to his rescue, speaking up from the corner in another bored drawl. Unfortunately, being the genie that he was, Norm just couldn’t leave it at a rescue; it had to insult him.
“Why are you asking him that, Jorgy? You’ve fried his brains out so many times I doubt he has the IQ of a dying chicken in a thunderstorm. If any of us should have a plan, it’s you Mr. Toughest-Fairy-in-the-Universe. What’s the point of having all those muscles if you don’t have gall and brains to back it up? Well…I suppose it’s a little late to get you brains, but the least you can do is come up with a plan to save humanity and Fairy World al-“
“SPRITE!” The general exploded, and Norm raised his parasol for the third time as chipped dust and paint came down from the shaking ceiling. “Shut your mouth, come up with a plan, then OPEN your mouth, and tell it to ME!”
The genie blinked, each command drilling into his mind as his lips clamped shut, and, not for the first time, he cursed one of Jorgen’s first few wishes. ‘I wish you were OBEDIENT!’ Still, he couldn’t do much about it now, so, with a scowl, he crossed his arms and got to work. In about three seconds, he opened his mouth again.
“First, you’ll need to get a hold of Fruit Cake down there. What’s his name? Smartest guy on the planet? Yeah. Then, you need ‘T’ Cubed, the Bucktoothed Wonder, maker of this wish. If the pixies have any brains at all, they likely already have him hostage, so that’s a rescue mission, but the important thing is getting CHEWbacca and his godparent together in the same room to ‘unwish this wish’ as kid-with-the-inhuman-sized-teeth would say. The pixies have endless numbers in their ranks, a literal army of grey-suited businessmen, determination, accuracy, speed, a cold cut plan, and a leader that has this new world order set up and thought through to the last detail. Then again, we have foot long, hypersensitive pipsqueak with magic-lightning-shock resistance training courtesy of the toughest fairy in the universe, a general who can’t tell a beautiful woman from flying chimpanzees…and me! A genie…with rule-free magic bound to the commands of ten-ton imbecile with mental problems. HP and Sanderson will never know what hit 'em, I’m tellin’ ya.”
After a momentary pause, the genie caught sight of Jorgen watching him, and a second later, the tanker fairy shook his head. “Sometimes…I think should make that ‘Shut-up’ command permanent…”
“You got a better plan, lovey buns?” The genie challenged calmly, a single dark eyebrow raised as his violet gaze eyed the fairy over the rim of his glasses in a very Norm-typical glance.
Jorgen grit his teeth, oh-so-tempted to crush those damn shades in his fist before paused slightly, an idea hitting him as he smirked and stood back again. “I think…we should use rope.”
“Rope.” For a moment, Norm couldn’t get out more than that, either too awestruck by the idea’s brilliance, or, more than likely, too dumbfounded for the time being to come up with more than a blank, incredulous stare. “You want to use rope.”
“I like rope!” Jorgen defended, so enamored with his idea that he barely had time to look put out at the genie’s disapproval. “It’s like string…only MANLIER!” Norm promptly dropped his face in his hands.
If magical beings could have committed suicide…
But they couldn’t. “You’ve got to be kidding me…” The genie muttered beneath his breath, the tone so close to pleading, it caught the general off-guard.
“You don’t like string?” Jorgen questioned, and Norm blinked, dully trying (for the most part unsuccessfully) to wrap his mind around the insanity.
“This is just a guess, mind you, but have you forgotten to take any medications today…? Or maybe, it just so happened, you were ON the planet when everyone lost their brains to the stupidity level of the most moronic being on the face of the-“ At Jorgen’s look, he shut his mouth before ordered, and folded his arms with a dissatisfied scowl. “You know, just once…it’d be nice if I could enjoy the company of someone who actually understood what they were saying…as they said it! And maybe, you know, appreciated my brilliance every now and then…”
It was Jorgen’s turn to drop his head in his hands, and Binky’s to simply look confused as his eyes darted from muttering fairy general to grumbling irascible genie. Eventually, he gave an awkward cough, gaining him the attention of both men in the room.
“Plan?” He offered meekly, and Jorgen gave an exaggerated sigh, then a thundering statement.
“I WISH COSMO WERE HERE!”
Wincing, Norm rubbed a finger in his ear as he put his magic to work. “Couldn’t you do the magic yourself? Or at least tone it down a little, I mean come on…I know volume is essential but aren’t the aspects of all-out shouting a little overrated these days? Really, I like my eardrums…” As he spoke, a very distracted Cosmo, appeared in the center of the room, on his knees in mid-air and shedding tears of joy.
“They speak my language!!” He exclaimed, tone so desperately overcome with dramatized emotion that Norm had to grimace all over again.
“Alright, alright, enough with the water-works. Showtime’s over, Fruit Cup, we have enough drama queens on this stage…”
“N-norm?” Cosmo’s wails died to a mere sniffle as his shimmering, tear-filled green eyes landed on the genie. As recognition settled in, his features brightened up in an instant, like light on a sunflower, lifting his expression until one might never have known he’d been providing waterfalls only moments before. “Norm! I know you! And Jorgen!” His eyes turned to the tanker fairy, emerald gaze wide as he took in the sight. “You remember Norm. Norm? The genie? And the wish, and the lamp? Were you there? Ah…good times, gooood times…”
Norm glanced up to Jorgen, their eyes locking for one brief instant and the genie’s eyes desperate as if to say ‘This is the smartest person on the planet?’. After a moment, the mystic sighed, snapping his fingers for Cosmo’s attention. “Hey! Cheese for brains…”
“Cheese?” The green-haired fairy turned and Norm smirked at Jorgen’s look of disbelief.
“Dry cleaning. Ring a bell?”
Cosmo grinned like a madman (which may well have been quite accurate) and disappeared in an instant, coming back a moment later with a freshly primed and prepped suit the color of ripe summer oranges. Apparently, the fact that he’d known what to do pleased him so much, he felt the need to continue beaming from ear to ear, the proudest, most gullible little green fairy the world had ever seen.
“Thanks again, puddin’ pop.” With a snap, the turquoise tuxedo vanished and orange fell in its place leaving Norm to smirk ever so slightly as he ran his hands fondly over the smooth new material. “Now where were we…world domination? Or was this a save the world type of hero gig?”
“I forget.” Jorgen commented dully, his thick accent rolling into the words. “The bright colors are making me nauseous…”
For a moment, Norm could only stare, momentarily stunned, at the Arnold-Schwarzenegger persona from across the room. “Sweet mother of Barbra Eden, did you just make a joke? And about my style nonetheless…” The sarcastic genie gave a befitting smirk, nestling back into his chair with a look of utmost satisfaction. “You know, my dearest fairy master…we may just have a chance in hell yet…”
Chapter 4 ~~~~~~~~ Back to Fairly Odd Parents ~~~~~~~~ Chapter 6
