53A/N: CAUTION: If you are allergic to any of the following in high doses, do not read this fic!: Stupidity, cheap humor, run-on sentences, hyperactive apprentice Rangers, extreme OOC-ness, singing/dancing/drunken-type activities that do not actually involve drunkenness. You have been warned.
Alrighty, here we go. This is the fourth non-collaboration chapter fic I've started. Let's hope I actually finish this one =/ To tell you the truth, this was supposed to be a oneshot. But then I thought "Hey! I could toss this in, end it at this point, and turn it into a chapter fic!" So I did. XD Enjoy!
Disclaimer: *checks birth certificate* Nope...*checks passport* I need to renew that, but no...*checks signature* Nu-uh...hm. Well, it looks like I'm not John Flanagan or the owner of Ranger's Apprentice. Though my passport really is expired...
Chapter 1: The Beginning of the End...of Sanity
After a long, hard day, Halt was looking forward to getting home. He could light a fire, throw some soup on the stove, take his boots off, maybe even read a book. Yes, that sounded nice. He would put Abelard in the barn, go inside, toss some wood on the fire-
Except he wouldn't have to do that, because the fire was already lit.
He stopped, frowned. Yes, there was definitely a fire burning in his cabin. "That's not quite right," he whispered to Abelard.
The horse snorted softly and bobbed his head, seeming to agree with his master.
Halt led Abelard to the side of the road and approached his cabin on silent feet. He thought heard something...he frowned. Was that...singing?
He peered through the window, utterly confused. Who would be in his cabin in the middle of the night, with a fire burning, and singing, of all things? Realization dawned when he spied Will – dancing, singing, and just plain bouncing off the walls. Literally.
Halt smirked and called Abelard over to him. He put the horse away and entered the cabin as silently as he could with the squeaky hinges. Not that it would have mattered if he had come charging in with a full contingent of heavy cavalry – the boy was so wrapped up in what he was doing that he wouldn't have batted an eye.
The elder Ranger leaned against a wall and eyed his apprentice with a single raised eyebrow of amusement.
Finally, the boy spotted him. "HALT!" he exclaimed, falling from the back of a chair in his joy. "I didn't know you were back!"
Halt blinked – the sentence was run together into a single word. "Yes," he said when he had decoded it, "so it would seem."
Will grinned up at his master, vibrating like an excited puppy. "How-long-have-you-been-standing-there?"
"About an hour."
The boy gasped dramatically, his eyes going as big as his mouth. "NO WAY!"
"Way."
"NO WAY!"
He might actually enjoy this if he wasn't careful. "Way."
"NO WAY!"
"Way."
"NO WAY!"
Okay, now it was just getting annoying. "Okay, fine!" Halt snapped. "Five minutes, if that."
Will squealed – it was the only word to describe the sound that emanated from his mouth – and said, "I KNEW IT! I KNEW YOU WERE LYING!" He began dancing in a circle around Halt, singing something about being right and cookie-shaped bunny rabbits.
Halt just stood there.
After thirty (very long) seconds or so of this, Will stopped mid-word and gasped again. "I JUST THOUGHT OF SOMETHING!" he yelled – right in Halt's ear.
The older man rubbed the offended body part, but before he could make the waspish comment that sprang to his lips, Will gasped again. "ARE THOSE HONEY CAKES?"
Halt glanced past Will's trembling finger at the honey cakes he had set on the table. "No."
Will lowered his hand. "Oh."
Halt had just taken a breath to ask what, exactly, had gotten into his apprentice, when said apprentice suddenly grinned and shot to the front door of the cabin faster than an arrow from Halt's bow. "THE CHICKENS ARE ATTACKING!" he shouted, wide-eyed. "RUN, HALT! I'LL HOLD THEM OFF!" He grabbed for the nearest weapon – a stray leaf on the floor – which prompted a truly epic giggle fit.
As Will rolled around on the floor, laughing his little brain-damaged head off, Halt shook his head. "Will?" he said after two or three minutes.
The boy's head snapped up. "Yeah?"
"Are you...drunk?"
Will gasped again – if he didn't stop that, he was going to hyperventilate, Halt reflected – and said "NO!" with all the indignation a fifteen-or-so-year-old apprentice Ranger can muster.
Then Will frowned. "Well..."
Oh, boy.
"See, when you were out, an' I was here alone, y'know, by myself, there was this girl, see, and she came to the door, see, and she had candy, see, only it wasn't candy like I'm used to, see, it's SO MUCH BETTER! And, see, I know I'm not supposed to take candy from strangers, but she knew my name, see, and she knew lotsa stuff about me, see, an' she looked kinda familiar, see, an' so I didn't really think about her as a stranger, see, an' I was hungry, an' she had candy, an' I tried a piece, an' it was GOOOOOOD candy! An' so she let me have ALL the candy, an' I was gonna just eat some of it, but then the next thing I know I ate all of it! An' right after that I started feeling funny, like my brain was fuzzy-"
"You have a brain?"
"-an' everything started shaking, an' I thought it was an earthquake, an' that'd be BAD! But it wasn't an earthquake, cause nothing fell, an' so I was like 'Whatever' cause I think I was getting hyper, an' then the creepy girl came back – did I mention she was creepy? She was creepy – an' was all like 'Mwahahahahahahaaaaaaaaa!' an' I was like 'What?' an' she was like 'Nothing!' an' I was like 'Something' an' she was all 'No way! I'm innocent here! You're in no way conforming precisely to my evile'- I swear she said it with an e on the end- 'plan at all!' An' then she cackled again an' disappeared, like literally disappeared, like poof."
Halt heaved a deep, longsuffering sigh that was both deep and full of longsuffering. "Great," he muttered. "Yet more proof this author hates me."
A creepy, disembodied voice echoed from the shadows, laughing evilly. "Oh, my dear Halt," it said fondly. "I don't hate you. I torture you so because I love you!"
"You have a twisted definition of love," he retorted as Will began tearing at the air like a demented dog.
The voice seemed to consider this for a moment. "True," it said happily. "I do. Now, I'll leave you boys to it..." The voice withdrew, cackling madly.
"WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY?" Halt screamed at the ceiling.
Will blinked owlishly at him. "You shouldn't be so loud," he said. "Some people are trying to sleep."
"Grr..."
A/N: O_O I think I've been hanging around TheLunyOne (go check her out, she RAWKS, people! *shameless plug*) too much...
So anyway, whaddaya think? Please review! Reviews mean:
1. More Halt-torturing.
2. More hyper!Will.
3. More creepy disembodied voices.
4. More mindless/cheap/stupid humor.
5. More chapters! 8D
So review! Por favor! Per favore! C'il vous plait (I probably totally butchered that)! PLEEEEASE! :)