A fucking waste of time

Frisenius laughs so hard that the cider he was drinking comes shooting out of his nose.
“You cannot possibly be serious about this!”, he says, still laughing while also trying to catch the growing booger that his laugh sent boogie-jumping from the right nostril. He grabs a napkin from the table, but the booger has already landed in his beard. Frisenius gives up and returns his attention to the ridiculous woman sitting in front of him. Her name is Malaria, she says, and that is the first thing bugging him. Who names his daughter after a disease? Especially if she is such a pretty thing. He cannot keep his eyes from her long, wavy, and most important, red hair. He has not seen such a color in nature before. Quite extraordinary.
Once he manages to draw his eyes away from her hair, he catches the way she is looking at him. “Oh gods, you ARE being serious, aren’t you?”
She nods silently. 
“Then you must be a madman, well, madgal - is that even a word? Ah, anyways, mad you are and that is that.” The audacity to come to him, richest guy in town, and ask him to forfeit all his wealth at once to save the world! The AUDACITY! Frisenius doesn’t feel like laughing anymore.
“I would very much like you, dear lady malaria,”, he stresses her name to make her conscious about how stupid it is,”, to leave me the hell alone. Now.”
Instead of standing up, she opens her mouth. Such a pretty mouth.
“ I really need you to listen-”
“I detest you. I know it, you know it, why not say it? I detest you and folks like you booge- ehm, beggars, a bunch of poor no-goods. If you want money, why don’t you go earn some? Now scurry off before I send the dogs after you. They really are hungry fellas, you know? Have a horrible rest of your life.”

The audacity of some folk. Seriously. He returns his attention to the still somewhat warm chicken in front of him. One hell of a chicken, that thing was. He was told it took up a serious fight - before getting cooked, of course. Frisenius could swear that he can still taste the strength in its wings. Now, he is going to eat the whole thing. 
A cold blade appears out of nowhere. It is pressed against his fat throat. His eyes wander to the girl holding the blade, Malaria. The audacity.
“Sir, you are going to listen rather carefully.”, she whispers in his ear. This could be rather erotic, Frisenius thinks, if it wasn’t for that blade pressed against him. Also, her name is Malaria. If he ever saw a red flag…
“Sir, I need access to your treasury so I can save the world. Don’t start to laugh again. Do you see me laughing? Didn’t think so. Listen, I am very sorry we have to do it that way, but you left me no choice, you see?” Frisenius wants to nod but decides against it. That knife is pressed against him awfully tight. He cannot even swallow the piece of chicken still in his mouth. So he just stares.
“Frisenius”, Malaria starts again, “we do not have a lot of time. Let’s get this over with.”

She stands alone on the tallest mountain in the kingdom, Mount Kophead. This mountain happens to be not so tall at all, which is why its actual name is Hill Kophead. But what can one do when living in a place that only has fields and valleys to offer? Beautiful flowers grow here, surely, but mountains not so much. This doesn’t matter to Malaria. She just does what she was asked to do. Asked by whom?, she wonders as she tries to make it seem as though her hair is flowing in the wind, which doesn’t work out - she really is just not high enough for such a heroic pose. Anyways, that makes her hopeful that the mission she is about to receive is not so heroic, either. She was not cut out to be a knight in shining armor and such. Being heroic belongs to, well, heroes. She is not one of those, gods forbid. 
Her father died when she was born. Her mother always explained that it was just too much for him, seeing that messy procedure and his wife’s body doing… well, doing that. His poor little heart just stopped working the moment Malaria was born, and that was that. Her mother had to raise her on her own, which is not to say she was raised by wolves. Contrary, Wolves actually ended the whole being-raised-thing when they mauled Malarias mother to death just about one year ago. This is not the stuff of legends, the stuff heroes emerge out of. Instead, Malaria emerged. Better than nothing, she guesses.
And then comes the dreams. The first night right after her mothers death, she dreamt grey.  Yes, she actually dreamt about the color grey. Shapes and swirls and such, all tainted with the plainest, texturelessest grey. As grey as it can get. Grey as a cat not yet fully blue. Grey as - actually, there is no proper comparison to this grey that imprinted itself in her mind. Safe to say, an awfully weird dream, and boring too. 
But from then on, every sunday she had a similar dream, each time about a different hue of grey. Over time, one really gets used to this sort of entertainment. Gives you something to look forward to each day. This is why Malaria was rather disappointed when yesterday,  the expected dream did not occur at all. Instead, a man, well, human, ah, let’s say a speaker appeared in the dream. He told her that he has something important to tell her and to meet him on the highest mountain in her realm. Which is exactly why she is standing on Hill Kophead right now. The guy really could have saved her quite some trouble and just tell her that oh-so-important thing right then in her dream, but apparently this is not how those things go about. She just really hopes it is not one of them “You-have-to-save-the-world”-scenarios.

Frisenius waves to his guards as Malaria leads him, still knife against throat, out of his dining-room. The guards turn a blind eye on what’s going on. Working for the richest guy in town ought to pay better, but it doesn’t. Saving him from a sly redhead’s knife is way above their paycheck.The odd couple now makes its way across a huge courtyard, an empty corridor, an even bigger empty corridor and finally reaches a humongous staircase leading all the way down to the basement. This is where the treasury is. This is where they go. 
“If you think this mansion is big, you should check out the outhouse.”, Frisenius proudly explains.
“Why?”
“Well, ahm, because it is really small. Sells the vastness of this place even more.” For some reason, Malaria doesn’t believe him.
“Anyways”, he continues, “what is the big plan here? Why exactly do you need my hard-earned gold?”
“None of your business.” In reality, Malaria does not know the answer. Why is she doing this? When she stood on that hill, she was just told to go to the richest guy in town and go to his treasury and then the voice of the grey shape sort of just stopped… She hopes the shape-guy will give her a heads-up about what to do when the time arises. And, of course, tell her how this relates to saving the world.
“I feel it really is my business since, well - it is my gold, after all.”
Malaria thought he was about to say that he is living in this threatened world, after all, but there you go. That’s rich guys for you. She pushes her knife tighter against his throat again. This should keep him from saying more stupid things that would discriminate him as a total asshole. They descend.

300 Stairs later, she finally sheats her weapon. Here, he cannot run away. He would have to run up this flight of stairs again, and by the sounds he is making now, she seriously doubts he would survive this.
"Tell me, where is the treasury at? There are way too many doors here.”, she asks him.
“Well, a noble-man needs his storage for food and wine.. If you don’t dine fine, you cannot possibly be wealthy. You should try it sometimes. Maybe, after this whole thing is through, you and I could…”
“No.” Her voice could not be more chilling. Frisenius stops his desperate attempt at seduction and reluctantly points to one door. It is double as big as the others and made out of dark obsidian. Malaria could have guessed that one on her own.They approach it. While Frisenius fumbles with the keys, Malaria closes her eyes for a second to hear if her shapeless tasker appears by any chance. He doesn’t. Instead, she hears Frisenius’ heavy breathing and the click of the lock. With a theatrical creaking, the door opens.
Frisenius suddenly turns around, stopping the door from opening all the way.
“Before you do your thing, I got to say something. All this talk about being a heroine -” Malaria frowns at this word, “- and having to save the world is all fine and dandy, but honestly, having long hair as red as a freshly slaughtered swine is a bit much, don’t you think?”
She crosses her arms. “It's genetics.” 
“It's a stereotype is what it is. It has been done before. Maybe we two could later take a look at my library upstairs, I could show you some stories with similar…”
“Shut up.”
He does so and gives the door a final push.Malarias eyes widen. A bright yellow mass reflects in her pupils. They step inside. Son of a…
“So much? You have SO MUCH gold stored down here? By the gods…”
Frisenius clears his throat and puffs himself up. “Well. I am not called the richest man in town for nothing. And, you know, you could be the richest woman if…”
“I WILL be the richest woman, because I am robbing you, remember?”
“Right, right. I am just saying.” 
“Me too.” 
The vault is bigger than my house, Malaria realizes. And it is stuffed to the brim with gold-coins, gold-nuggets and gold-bars. How am I supposed to take all this with me? And where am I taking it? What even is all this stuff? There is a mirror poking out of an overflowing chest. Mirror and chest are made out of gold. There is a statue of a dolphin bigger than Malaria standing on one wall. Its eyes are rubies, obviously. As Malaria strolls around in the vault, her eyes fixate on a sole painting hanging on the wall. Its frame is, of course, made of gold as well.“Who is that supposed to be?”, Malaria asks while pointing at the half-naked man riding a warhorse into battle.
“Oh, I haven’t seen this in ages!”, Frisenius exclaims. “Should come down here more often, I really should. Well, this is ME.” He pulls in his stomach. “You like what you see?”
Malaria starts to laugh. “This is a man! You are just a bloke.“
“This is me and I am a MAN!”, Frisenius protests. “This is a bloke!.” He points at the scrawny boy standing next to them. 

For a moment, they just blink at each other.

Frisenius breaks the silence first. “Wait a minute, who the hell are you?”
Malaria draws her weapon.
The scrawny boy looks terribly embarrassed. He mumbles “I’m just Pete.”
“How did you get in here!?”
“I sort of broke in.”
Frisenius inhales. “GUARDS; INTRUD- ah, nevermind. Really should have paid them more.”
“Greed is the folly of man, or so they say.”, Pete says.
Malaria interrupts him. “Seriously, Pete, who by the gods are you? What are you doing here? This is my quest.”
“Quest? I have a quest, too. That’s why I broke in here in the first place.”
“Did a foggy guy tell you so? With a lot of grey and all?”“Yes!”
Malaria finally sheats her weapon and shakes Pete’s hand. “That makes two of us. Do you know how to proceed from here on out? Because I don’t.”
He shakes his head.
“Great.”
“Yeah.”
“ So… should we just wait and see if any revelation will come?”, she asks him.
“We could, but I doubt it. I was locked in here for almost a day now, and nothing happened then, either.”
“A day? How are you not dehydrated?”
Pete smiles slyly. “Well, apparently that’s a perk of being a, what’s it called, a transstormer.”

“You are a what?”
“A transstormer, simple as. Actually, I think you are one, too.”
Malaria lets that sink in, even though she doesn’t know what that even is supposed to mean.
“By the way, what’s your name?”, Pete asks.
“Malaria.”, she mumbles deeply lost in thought.
“Malaria? Like the sickness?”“Mhm.” She turns the word around in her head. Transstormer.
“Funny thing how someone named after a sickness should be chosen to save the world and…ahm,  where is Frisenius?”

Malaria looks up. It’s just the two of them in the vault. The door is sealed from the outside. She can barely hear Frisenius’ voice. “I am terribly sorry, but I don’t want anything to do with queer folk like yourself. I cannot bear to listen about stormfolk and worldends and such no more. If you will excuse me, I am going to eat my chicken now. With any luck, it hasn’t turned completely cold yet.” Then there is silence.

Malaria stares at the closed door. “That son of a bitch.”, she says and kicks against the obsidian door. She immediately regrets it.
“So, that kind of sucks.”, Pete says. He sits down on a pile of goldbars. “Now I am trapped here again. Should have seen this coming.”
Malaria turns to take a better look at him. He sits there, inspecting the dirt under his fingernails and yawns. It is only now that she realizes how young he is. He cannot be older than herself. And yet, he has grey hair.
He notices her looks. “Ah strange thing, right? Has to do with being a transstormer and all. It used to be brownish, but over just one day, it completely lost its color. A bummer, really.”
“Okay, seriously now, tell me what a transstormer is ought to be. Like a weird mix of a human and a storm of sorts?”, Malaria jokingly guesses.
Pete doesn’t laugh. He nods.“That’s actually the gist of it, as far as I can tell.”
Malaria blushes.“Oh. Well. And how does one become a transstormer?” She sits down next to him.
“It’s genetics. I didn’t even know I had it in me until the shade on the mountain told me so.”
“Well, he told me nothing about it. There has to be a reason behind this, right? You are one and I aren’t, and that is that.”
The silence is deafening.
“And does it give you any skills? Something that can break us out of here?”, she adds.He shakes his head. She sighs.
“You know, having to save the world shouldn’t be this hard.”
“Agreed. It’s like it doesn’t even want to be saved.”

They sit in silence.
Malaria closes her eyes again. Maybe now the fog father will appear. But in her mind, she cannot even see proper gray. She really got used to it over the course of the last year. Maybe it will return someday. Actually, she hopes it does. But no shade of a guy makes an appearance. No godly voice. Just a singular thought belonging to her flies about. She manages to catch it. There it is. What is the thought? Oh!

“Wait! How did you enter here in the first place?”, she exclaims as she returns to the real world.
Pete shrugs.“Oh, I sort of dug a tunnel. In the corners of the room are lamps put in the ground instead of obsidian. They can be broken easily, and that’s what I did on my way here. Look, I entered the vault right there where the shard still lay about.”
“Why didn’t you say so!? We can get out of here this way!”
“Nah, I’m good.”
“Pete, let’s go. Now.”
He awkwardly looks at his feet. “You know, I, ahm, kind of realized on the way here that I am claustrophobic. I’d rather just stay here.”
Malaria’s look tells him to reconsider.

Frisenius sits down with a sigh. He has shown them folk who’s boss. He has reason to be proud of himself. It took him awfully long to climb this cursed staircase all the way back up, then navigate his way through the corridors and halls of his, but now he is back where he ought to be in the first place. His teeth sink in the still luke-warm meat of the dead chicken. He has earned this. He needs this. If he cannot eat a proper meal, what good are all those riches down there? Exactly. Those two lovebirds, or whatever is going on with them, had it coming for them. They can rot down there. To be stupid enough to involve him in their schemes. The audacity! Saving the world isn’t worth it if it means financial ruin for him. And also if he won’t find love along the way. Ah. It does not matter anymore.There is quiet. It’s all over now. The fat is dripping down his chins. Just as he is about to swallow, a horrible noise kills the peaceful silence outside. He chokes on the chicken, finally manages to spit it out and stands up to see what’s going on. Beyond the windowpane, there is nothing. Then, just as he is about to refocus on his meal, a golden lightning bolt tears the afternoon sky apart and hits a tower some ways off in the distance. The building staggers as though it were a man hit with an arrow in the knee, then it theatrically collapses in on itself.
“By the gods, what is the meaning of this?”, he exclaims, though no one is near. Also, he dreads to know the answer. Deep down, he already knows. The end of the world. Bugger.

The tunnel is dug as amateurish as it gets. It’s as narrow as a - well, a narrow tunnel. Its crooked, the dirt gets everywhere, and also, there is no light. On top of that, Malaria has to constantly push the petrified Pete forwards. He really needs to stop walking every few steps and whimper like a beaten dog. A transstormer. Stupid word. Stupid everything. She just wants to go home and have a good rest - just like a normal person does every so often. But no, she has to be a chosen one or whatever. There is no fighting against fate. She sighs. Somewhere in front of them,  a slither of light comes creeping around a bend in the tunnel.
“Come on, get a move on! Let’s get this over with.”

They emerge out of the ground behind the outhouse. Frisenius was right: It actually is impressively small, Malaria notices. It is located somewhere in the vast garden surrounding Frisenius’ Mansion. Plenty of flowers poke out of the grass. Beautiful. And there is the unholy stench of feces that noone cared to get rid of for weeks. Not so beautiful at all. Maybe, the cleaning staff is underpaid as well. 
“What now?”, Pete interrupts Malarias train of thought. He has laid down and pants as though he just escaped a giant rolling boulder. In this case, the boulder is called claustrophobia. 
“You tell me, storm guy.”
“Transstormer.”
“Whatever. See, you apparently got more information than I did. The message kind of just stopped in the middle when I received it.”
“I also just got told to go to this treasury, and that I was a Transstormer. That’s it. There was no explanation for any of these things, either. Maybe the reception was bad or whatever.”
They stare at each other.
“You didn’t meet that grey bloke on a proper mountain, did you?”
Pete smirks. “Well, there aren’t a whole lot of those around, are there?”
“Maybe that was the problem! The lower we are, the worse the reception.”
“But there are no Mountains here.”
Malaria looks up to the facade of the mansion. At one window, she swears she can see a movement. But her gaze wanders further and further upwards. How many floors are there? A whole lot. And on top of it, there is a tower that still goes up, up, up. She smiles.

“I think this will do just fine.”

Frisenius sees them down there. He sees how they talk. He sees how they jump at the sudden sound of another lightning bolt that probably just killed a tree somewhere. And then there is another one, much closer. He watches them as they run inside, how they hold hands while doing so. He does not like that at all. What does that boy has to offer her, he wonders.  It’s me who’s rich, after all! Frisenius has never been denied anything. Until today. He does want that girl. Those hips, those lips and that red hair, though it seems a bit less red as before. It might be the weather changing, but Frisenius could swear her hair is somewhat turning grey. No, can’t be. It surely is just the strange lightning from the dimmed sun above. Once the two disappear inside, he returns to the table. You do not want to have anything to do with them, he reminds himself. They are strange. That girl is strange. They are poor and they are thieves. No, this day will soon be forgotten. They will leave on their own, for sure. For now, Frisenius just wants to eat his god-damned chicken. He picks up a bone and takes a bite.  It has gone cold.

That’s it for him. He has had it. Frisenius storms out of the room. And behind him, outside the window, an actual storm starts to form over the city. And this storm looks like it is angry. Real angry.

“These sure are a lot of stairs.”, Pete pants and puffs.
“Hurry!”, Malaria yells from quite some ways further up. They need to climb that cursed tower all the way up, and the staircase just won’t stop. Like a divine snake, it just goes round and round and round… Now she has to stop for a moment, too. She feels dizzy and wants to vomit. She really could just, for a moment…
“Get your act together! You said it yourself. That storm outside is no coincidence. It's the thing we need to prevent, I’m sure of it!”, Pete says while he overtakes her. She sighs, then gets moving again. 

The view is magnificent. Between the battlements, they can see the whole city as it stretches out in all directions. The tiny little roofs and chimneys, and oh! like ants, people move about on the street. How cute! For a moment, the two of them completely forget what they are even doing here. They regain their breath and take in the view. That is, until an especially huge bolt of thunder hits the outhouse they were standing before mere minutes ago. Shit flies about.
“If there is no reception here either, we are screwed!”, Malaria states the obvious. She closes her eyes. Please, she begs. I am literally doing this because of you! Don’t let me down, you, you bloke! Thunderman, or whoever you are, show yourself, and show yourself now! But nothing happens. All is lost. She opens her eyes. There he is.

A grey mist in the rough shape of a human hovers over the floor.
“I am glad you did what I told you in your dream, child. Listen ye, and listen carefully.”
Malaria realizes that this is the exact same phrasing as she has heard it before. This is not live! This is prerecorded!
“There is a quest you must venture on. You need to save the world. Listen: You need to find yourself the richest individual around. Find his treasury and enter it. You must -oh, most importantly: If you receive this message, you are a transstormer. You are half human, and half storm. Don’t worry about it, it’s genetics. It will come in handy later.”
This is the part she didn’t receive yesterday. Now she knows: She too is a transstormer, after all!
“The world is in danger because of - me. If you hear this, I have lost control and want to smash something. Sorry in advantage. This happens sometimes So what you have to do is meet with the other transstormer”, Malaria and Pete share glances.”, join forces and stop me from, well, destroying the world. Calm me down a bit.  Again, I am terribly sorry. When I get like this, I am usually drawn to gold and stuff. You know, electricity? This is why I need you to meet there and defend it. Seriously: I don’t want to rob the rich! They are some of my most dedicated donors.” Oops. “So, when an angry mass of clouds arrives, just do your thing! You are transstormers after all. You just have to, oh wait, the battery is almo-”

The apparition disappears. Silence.

Even more silence.

An unbearable amount of silence.

Malaria says what both are thinking. “Shit.”

“At least we now know that you are a transstormer! Look, your hair even starts to turn grey!”
She grabs a streak. He is right. “So what are we supposed to do?”, Malaria starts to panic. “I didn’t ask to be a whatsitsname! I don’t have the qualifications! By the gods, my name is Malaria!”
They notice that the storm is now heading directly at the mansion. Directly at the tower on which they stand on. So much golden lightningbolts extend from this unnatural stormcloud that it seems as though it walks across the city. And destroys it with every step.
“Listen, when I was in the vault, I tried a lot to activate whatever powers I might have. I guess there must be some magic words to say. Everything else didn’t work out.”, Pete suggests.
“Okay, okay. Words. Uhm.” 

The storm draws nigh. It does look real angry.

Malaria just starts to speak.
“Alakazam! Shazam! Open sesame! Cock-a-doodle-doo! Abracadabra! I want!”
Pete joins in. “Avengers assemble! Wakanda forever!”
“It’s a-me! Malaria!”

The storm-thing now hovers directly in front of the tower.

Now three things happen at the very same time.

First of all, Frisenius appears at the top of the tower. He is drenched in sweat and holds a golden spear in his hand. He is almost crying. “I hate you! If I can’t have you, then noone can!” With this, he thrusts the spear directly at Malarias chest.

Secondly, out of the living and very angry stormcloud, a thunderbolt emerges, aimed directly at Malaria and Pete. 

Thirdly, and most importantly, Malaria guesses for the last time. 
With more luck than anything, she yells: “Please!” With this, she and Pete transform into storms. Into living, breathing, not at all corporal storms. Having struck at air, Frisenius stumbles forwards into the thunderbolt and gets a roasting. His scorching body collapses to the ground.

Malaria cannot think. There is only grey. She just is. She just does. Grey. The evil cloud throws lightning about. The cloud that is she and the cloud that is Pete fuse together and swirl about as one. The evil cloud roars furiously and inspects the herocloud. This is the moment! The herocloud aims, gets ready, vibrates with all the power in it, and spews - not lightning, but hail. Plain and very small balls of hail. They fall down flatly. This is embarrassing. The hero-cloud swivels about, evading the missiles now shot at it. The evil cloud seems to smile. Not in an evil way, though. More in a pitying way. They continue this airborne dance a bit, downwards-bound hail against the mighty thunder. What a waste of time. Finally, a majestic and familiar voice comes a-booming. “Fine, fine, let’s just stop this nonsense. This is pathetic. I mean it! You two, disperse!” With no fault of their own, Malaria and Pete disconnect as humans and flop down on the wet cobblestone of the tower. 

“This was no perfect storm at all.”, Malaria groans, holding her head.
“An okay-storm, at best.”, Pete agrees in agony.
“No, that was a barely-enough-storm if I ever saw one.”, the storm itself corrects them. It doesn’t seem so angry anymore. Instead, it sighs so loud that dead birds start falling out of the sky.
“But it was enough, I reckon, sir?”, Malaria asks, slowly getting back up. 
“It appears to be so. I just planned for you to stop me with sheer force, but, well, apparently there is another way. Not very heroic, but still. Look at me, all calm again.”
“Okay, so are we done now? Can we go?”, Pete asks.
The storm frowns. “Don’t you want to hear why this happened? You see, as a storm-god, I am always stressed, and then, ever since Susan left me…” He sees the looks they give him. “Fine. But at least take the reward. You can ask me one question, and I shall gift you divine truth.”
Before Pete can even think, Malaria already asks what has been bugging her ever since her birth: “Why am I named after a disease!?”

“Oh, that’s easy: You aren’t. Your father was illiterate. He wanted to call you ‘Malenia’ but messed up the paperwork. It’s hard to change, really.”
Without another word, they turn and start the long descent. Malaria says what both are thinking: “What a fucking waste of time.”

THE END