The Jungle Book, Revisited
Chapter 1: The Letter
Series: Yeah. That's the plan.
Author: Nsiva Llataq
Fandom: FMA zoofic
Pairings: None yet. Smut deferred.
Word count: A brief 1,350
Geography: An uneasy AU mishmash. Canada has appeared in Northern Amestris. Tibetan mountains have risen between Ishbal and Xing. What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas, but Las Vegas seems to occupy an amorphous border between Amestris and Ishbal. And it's full of tribal gaming casinos. And the tribes are Ishbalan.
Blame: It's all sky_dark's fault.
Summary: Marta Dexter receives a dubious letter.
- ~ -
"You've got to be kidding," Marta said to the piece of paper in her hand. Alexander looked up from the pile of junk mail he was assembling for Ed's amusement. She thrust the letter at him. "Can you believe this?"
At the top of the letter was a logo with the portrait of the head of a wild Elric, embossed in gold foil like an exotic coin. Under it, printed in a flourishing Italianate font, was a block of unabashed ostentation:
Impresario Extraordinaire, Ltd.
Felix Florentina, President
Representing Khaleed & Khan
& The Royal White Hydrix of the Sultan of Zubaire
The ampersands were large and curlicued, and the address was for a casino called The Mystic Temple of Shangri-La. Alex winced at the spelling of "Heiderichs" as "Hydrix". Was that supposed to be cute or cool? He was tempted to regard the letter as a singularly bad and elaborate joke, but a plain business-like document was typed underneath the gaudy heading. It was signed with the staid signature of an attorney who appeared to be a senior partner in a very serious law firm, if one judged their level of gravity by the number of names included in the title of the firm. The letter was addressed to "Dr. Marta Dexter, Director of the Dexter Center for the Rescue and Rehabilitation of Alchemistical Animals".
Dear Dr. Dexter:
I am writing to you on behalf of my client, Prince Suten Bati Khaleed. You may be familiar with the Prince as one half of the duo, Khaleed and Khan. They have been internationally acclaimed as Masters of the Arts of Prestidigitation, and the popular demonstrations of their skills have involved the participation of the rare Elric species, Elric heiderich albus-known more popularly as the White Heiderichs.
(Alexander snorted at the careful wording of "popular demonstrations of their skill have involved the participation of the rare Elric species, Elric heiderich albus". What a masterpiece of understatement and prevarication that was. The so-called "Elric heiderich albus" was not a species at all. White Heiderichs were modern hybrids that existed only in captive breeding programs, the products of the mating of truly rare Heiderichs and Edwards who carried a recessive white gene. There had been no verifiable report of a white Elric in the wild for almost a century. Khaleed and Khan's "popular demonstration" had been a six-shows-a-week circus complete with nearly-naked showgirls and fireworks-the big attraction at one of the biggest casinos in a desert town famous for excess. Last year, the show had come to a crashing halt, on center stage in front of an audience of thousands, when the "involved participation" of one of the Heiderichs became the terrifying attack of a very large, very alarmed carnivore, involving a fatal bite through the jugular vein for Khan. Against which all his acclaimed mastery of the Arts of Prestidigitation had counted as nothing.)
Prince Khaleed would like to meet with you and discuss two matters close to his heart. The first is the possibility of a sizeable endowment to your organization. Because of his close relationship with his White Heiderichs, the Prince is vitally interested in the plight of all Elric breeds, and related species such as the Mustang. He is very impressed with your work in the field and would be delighted to contribute genuinely tangible aid to your efforts.
The second matter concerns the Mustang you acquired from the Jungle Adventure Zoo in the spring of 19--. For many years, the Prince has been searching for the Mustang that was part of his family environment when he was growing up. Our investigations into this matter have turned up conclusive evidence that your Mustang is the Mustang the Prince has been seeking. He is naturally anxious to be reunited with the beloved animal he regards as a member of his royal family. We hope you will accommodate his wishes, and give you every assurance that you will be handsomely compensated for any inconvenience.
Please contact me at the phone numbers listed below.
Sincerely,
James P. Needham
Attorney, CEO
Needham, Needham, Belzer, Dunning, Zhou, Luedkneer and Smith, Inc.
Alexander was reading the letter for the third time, unaware that his mouth was agape, when Marta plucked it impatiently from his grasp.
"Well, what do you think?" she asked him.
He looked at her blankly. "I didn't know you had a doctorate," he said, brainless for a moment.
"I don't. Not yet. I wonder if that was an honest mistake, or a clever way to insult me with flattery." She frowned at the letter. "The whole letter seems vaguely insulting, don't you think? Do they expect me to believe this fairy tale? A Prince, no less. Prince of what? And what the heck do they mean by this: the Mustang was "part of his family environment when he was growing up"? What, did the royal family keep our Mustang in a gilded cage in the royal garden? Or maybe they had an entire royal menagerie?" Each enunciation of "royal" was emphasized with a splash of acid irony.
"Um... actually, Khaleed didn't grow up with the... uh... royal family." Alex shifted uncomfortably, his tone apologetic. He felt a little embarrassed revealing the extent of his knowledge about the celebrity. He had been quite the geeky fan when he was younger. "Khaleed was supposed to have died when he was a baby, with his parents on vacation in Canada. They took the baby with them when they went camping and they were all killed by an Envy. Except the Envy somehow missed the baby. But nobody knew that until years later, when an Ishbalan boy was discovered running with a Mustang pack. You remember the case, don't you? It was famous for a while. The Ishbalan wild child. He was captured with a wild Mustang in one of the Canadian national forests. Hey, do you think that Mustang was our Mustang? The kid was sent back to his native Ishbalan tribe, but I don't know what happened to the Mustang."
"Oh, this just gets more and more unbelievable." Marta crunched the letter into a ball and threw it in the general direction of her desk. It hit the chair and bounced to the floor. "Alex, the Ishbalan wild child died. I remember reading about him. He had a lot of health problems from growing up in a physically extreme and nutritionally impoverished environment. And it was impossible to re-integrate him into human society. He had to be housed in a mental hospital, and he died there when he was in his late teens." Marta sighed and rubbed a hand across her face. She hadn't slept much, and she had a headache. "This really is all bullshit, isn't it?"
Alex stooped and picked up the crumpled ball of paper. He handed it to her with a sad, commiserating smile. She cradled it in her hands like a wounded bird, like a crystal ball, and as she gazed at it, she was not thinking of the Prince or his lawyers or their pretty lies. She was thinking of a black-maned beast, graceful, lazy, and deadly. She was thinking of a dark intelligent eye, enigmatic but seemingly amused. The secretive smirk, the wolfish smile, of a creature who somehow made it clear he regarded humans as the inferior animal. But he gave me his respect, she thought. And his trust.
"I hope I kept the faith," she said to the little ball of paper in her hands. "Sorry," she said to Alex, who was watching her with care.
He waved off her apology. "You've had a bad night."
"Oh well, it doesn't really matter." She placed the crumpled letter on the desk and smoothed it out, then reached for the phone. "I'm afraid the Prince and his money are just a little too late. I doubt we'll be receiving any "genuinely tangible aid" when I tell them that his Mustang died yesterday." She double-checked the telephone number at the bottom of the page. "At least one of the numbers is toll-free-I can be thankful for tiny favors, I guess."
- ~ -
Post Script: This first chapter functions more as a bridge than a chapter, making the connection to the death of sky_dark's old Mustang (in chapter 9 of Once Somebody Loved), but don't expect to see much of the famous Marta Dexter and her crew in future chapters. In The Jungle Book, Revisted, I am borrowing Kipling's adventure of a human boy raised by wolves and adapting it to zoofic, except Mowgli is all grown up and has become... wait for it...
Scar.
And Scar has become...
Siegfried! Of Siegfried and Roy.
Well, kind of.
Series: Yeah. That's the plan.
Author: Nsiva Llataq
Fandom: FMA zoofic
Pairings: None yet. Smut deferred.
Word count: A brief 1,350
Geography: An uneasy AU mishmash. Canada has appeared in Northern Amestris. Tibetan mountains have risen between Ishbal and Xing. What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas, but Las Vegas seems to occupy an amorphous border between Amestris and Ishbal. And it's full of tribal gaming casinos. And the tribes are Ishbalan.
Blame: It's all sky_dark's fault.
Summary: Marta Dexter receives a dubious letter.
- ~ -
"You've got to be kidding," Marta said to the piece of paper in her hand. Alexander looked up from the pile of junk mail he was assembling for Ed's amusement. She thrust the letter at him. "Can you believe this?"
At the top of the letter was a logo with the portrait of the head of a wild Elric, embossed in gold foil like an exotic coin. Under it, printed in a flourishing Italianate font, was a block of unabashed ostentation:
Impresario Extraordinaire, Ltd.
Felix Florentina, President
Representing Khaleed & Khan
& The Royal White Hydrix of the Sultan of Zubaire
The ampersands were large and curlicued, and the address was for a casino called The Mystic Temple of Shangri-La. Alex winced at the spelling of "Heiderichs" as "Hydrix". Was that supposed to be cute or cool? He was tempted to regard the letter as a singularly bad and elaborate joke, but a plain business-like document was typed underneath the gaudy heading. It was signed with the staid signature of an attorney who appeared to be a senior partner in a very serious law firm, if one judged their level of gravity by the number of names included in the title of the firm. The letter was addressed to "Dr. Marta Dexter, Director of the Dexter Center for the Rescue and Rehabilitation of Alchemistical Animals".
Dear Dr. Dexter:
I am writing to you on behalf of my client, Prince Suten Bati Khaleed. You may be familiar with the Prince as one half of the duo, Khaleed and Khan. They have been internationally acclaimed as Masters of the Arts of Prestidigitation, and the popular demonstrations of their skills have involved the participation of the rare Elric species, Elric heiderich albus-known more popularly as the White Heiderichs.
(Alexander snorted at the careful wording of "popular demonstrations of their skill have involved the participation of the rare Elric species, Elric heiderich albus". What a masterpiece of understatement and prevarication that was. The so-called "Elric heiderich albus" was not a species at all. White Heiderichs were modern hybrids that existed only in captive breeding programs, the products of the mating of truly rare Heiderichs and Edwards who carried a recessive white gene. There had been no verifiable report of a white Elric in the wild for almost a century. Khaleed and Khan's "popular demonstration" had been a six-shows-a-week circus complete with nearly-naked showgirls and fireworks-the big attraction at one of the biggest casinos in a desert town famous for excess. Last year, the show had come to a crashing halt, on center stage in front of an audience of thousands, when the "involved participation" of one of the Heiderichs became the terrifying attack of a very large, very alarmed carnivore, involving a fatal bite through the jugular vein for Khan. Against which all his acclaimed mastery of the Arts of Prestidigitation had counted as nothing.)
Prince Khaleed would like to meet with you and discuss two matters close to his heart. The first is the possibility of a sizeable endowment to your organization. Because of his close relationship with his White Heiderichs, the Prince is vitally interested in the plight of all Elric breeds, and related species such as the Mustang. He is very impressed with your work in the field and would be delighted to contribute genuinely tangible aid to your efforts.
The second matter concerns the Mustang you acquired from the Jungle Adventure Zoo in the spring of 19--. For many years, the Prince has been searching for the Mustang that was part of his family environment when he was growing up. Our investigations into this matter have turned up conclusive evidence that your Mustang is the Mustang the Prince has been seeking. He is naturally anxious to be reunited with the beloved animal he regards as a member of his royal family. We hope you will accommodate his wishes, and give you every assurance that you will be handsomely compensated for any inconvenience.
Please contact me at the phone numbers listed below.
Sincerely,
James P. Needham
Attorney, CEO
Needham, Needham, Belzer, Dunning, Zhou, Luedkneer and Smith, Inc.
Alexander was reading the letter for the third time, unaware that his mouth was agape, when Marta plucked it impatiently from his grasp.
"Well, what do you think?" she asked him.
He looked at her blankly. "I didn't know you had a doctorate," he said, brainless for a moment.
"I don't. Not yet. I wonder if that was an honest mistake, or a clever way to insult me with flattery." She frowned at the letter. "The whole letter seems vaguely insulting, don't you think? Do they expect me to believe this fairy tale? A Prince, no less. Prince of what? And what the heck do they mean by this: the Mustang was "part of his family environment when he was growing up"? What, did the royal family keep our Mustang in a gilded cage in the royal garden? Or maybe they had an entire royal menagerie?" Each enunciation of "royal" was emphasized with a splash of acid irony.
"Um... actually, Khaleed didn't grow up with the... uh... royal family." Alex shifted uncomfortably, his tone apologetic. He felt a little embarrassed revealing the extent of his knowledge about the celebrity. He had been quite the geeky fan when he was younger. "Khaleed was supposed to have died when he was a baby, with his parents on vacation in Canada. They took the baby with them when they went camping and they were all killed by an Envy. Except the Envy somehow missed the baby. But nobody knew that until years later, when an Ishbalan boy was discovered running with a Mustang pack. You remember the case, don't you? It was famous for a while. The Ishbalan wild child. He was captured with a wild Mustang in one of the Canadian national forests. Hey, do you think that Mustang was our Mustang? The kid was sent back to his native Ishbalan tribe, but I don't know what happened to the Mustang."
"Oh, this just gets more and more unbelievable." Marta crunched the letter into a ball and threw it in the general direction of her desk. It hit the chair and bounced to the floor. "Alex, the Ishbalan wild child died. I remember reading about him. He had a lot of health problems from growing up in a physically extreme and nutritionally impoverished environment. And it was impossible to re-integrate him into human society. He had to be housed in a mental hospital, and he died there when he was in his late teens." Marta sighed and rubbed a hand across her face. She hadn't slept much, and she had a headache. "This really is all bullshit, isn't it?"
Alex stooped and picked up the crumpled ball of paper. He handed it to her with a sad, commiserating smile. She cradled it in her hands like a wounded bird, like a crystal ball, and as she gazed at it, she was not thinking of the Prince or his lawyers or their pretty lies. She was thinking of a black-maned beast, graceful, lazy, and deadly. She was thinking of a dark intelligent eye, enigmatic but seemingly amused. The secretive smirk, the wolfish smile, of a creature who somehow made it clear he regarded humans as the inferior animal. But he gave me his respect, she thought. And his trust.
"I hope I kept the faith," she said to the little ball of paper in her hands. "Sorry," she said to Alex, who was watching her with care.
He waved off her apology. "You've had a bad night."
"Oh well, it doesn't really matter." She placed the crumpled letter on the desk and smoothed it out, then reached for the phone. "I'm afraid the Prince and his money are just a little too late. I doubt we'll be receiving any "genuinely tangible aid" when I tell them that his Mustang died yesterday." She double-checked the telephone number at the bottom of the page. "At least one of the numbers is toll-free-I can be thankful for tiny favors, I guess."
- ~ -
Post Script: This first chapter functions more as a bridge than a chapter, making the connection to the death of sky_dark's old Mustang (in chapter 9 of Once Somebody Loved), but don't expect to see much of the famous Marta Dexter and her crew in future chapters. In The Jungle Book, Revisted, I am borrowing Kipling's adventure of a human boy raised by wolves and adapting it to zoofic, except Mowgli is all grown up and has become... wait for it...
Scar.
And Scar has become...
Siegfried! Of Siegfried and Roy.
Well, kind of.