Roy/Belkar

The thing is split up into little episodes of varying length, and I think that I managed to get it such that any one of them could be considered complete enough make about as much sense as any of these crack pairing bits. You can read them all in order, take them each separately over time, or just pick one at random and move on with your busy day, and it should still work pretty decently. 'Should' being the operative word.

1: The intro. Maybe a bit creepy, especially if taken alone.
“Woo-hoo! Belkar gets to be in another crack pairing!”

Carrying a large box labeled 'fetish' in front of him, our favorite halfling pushes through the door into what appears to be a featureless, beige room.

“Alright, baby, let's get cracking!” Belkar says as he puts down the box and reaches inside, producing a montage of skimpy, feminine 'outfits.' “Take your pick! I've got your standard Elvish Chainmail, the T-shirt of Wetness, a Cellophane Spacesuit…”

Belkar looks up to see what sort of curves he has to work with, only to see a fully-clothed Roy standing in front of him. He stares, wide-eyed, bewildered and speechless.

“Hmm, I think I might have to go with the bright red studded leather bikini,” Roy teases.

2: Revolves around a pretty formulaic joke. Much less creepy.
Belkar throws his arms up in the air, striding past Roy. “Aw, hell no! This is NOT happening! The Belkster don't swing that way!”

“Yeah, well, I'm not exactly chomping at the bit, either,” says Roy.

“Man, that's it! They've gone too far! I'm gonna hunt down whoever made that random relationship table and rip their - ”

“Oh, cool it. Now listen, I've talked to Elan on the subject-”

“Yeah, I bet you have, if you know what I mean,” Belkar adds instinctively.

“…and he says that these exercises aren't all about spiked brassieres and character derailment. Apparently, slash-fic is a pretty wide umbrella, and I think that if we come to some mutual understanding that leads to a greater bond of friendship between us, it would be enough to qualify.”

They both fall silent. A vague, muffled cheer can be heard outside, followed by a groan. Perhaps another pairing has been announced in the lobby. More silence.

“Pfft!” Belkar bursts, and both smile and laugh.

“Aw, man,” Belkar says, wiping a tear from his eye. “You had me going there for a minute!”

“Heh, alright. Let's go see what the Random Event Table has to say.”

3: A longer one, with a few gaming jokes and a small existential crisis.
Roy and Belkar proceed to a wooden table, on which is engraved a short list of messed-up plot devices. A large, twenty-sided die sits atop the furniture piece.

“What's this malarkey?” Belkar asks.

“The Random Event Table. It's a way that this thread can determine what direction a pairing goes in. It's still bound to be disgusting, but at least it'll give us something to go on, and there's a chance that it will give us a way out of the situation entirely.”

“Well, what are we waiting for, then? Roll it already!”

Roy picks up the die and stares into it for a moment. He then sighs, grits his teeth, closes his eyes and gently tosses it onto the table. After the distinctive rattling has halted, he braces himself and looks sideways at the result, one squinting eye open.

The die shows a two.

Suddenly, the corresponding line in the table's engraving glows, and a clear glass of pink liquid comes into being with a *Pop!*

Roy leans down to examine it from the side. “Huh.”

“That's it? All that drama for a cup of strawberry lemonade?”

“What? No, it's a love potion, see?” Roy indicates the relevant text in the tabletop.

“Well it smells like lemonade,” Belkar says, sniffing the air around the glass. “With maybe some mead mixed in…”

“Well, we can't split it, so drink up.”

“What?! Screw that! Why don't YOU drink it?!”

“For a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is that I don't trust you not to kill me while I'm charmed with you. Besides, like I've said, all we have to do is be friends for a minute. Once it sets in, we should have no trouble leaving straight away.”

Belkar sighs. “Alright, fine. Let's get this over with.” He grabs the potion and gulps in down in one swig, then stares blankly in Roy's general direction.

“…well?”

“DAMMIT! OF ALL THE TIMES FOR ME TO FINALLY MAKE A FRIGGIN' WILL SAVE!”

4: Not that funny on its own, but oh well.
“Hmm…”

Roy and Belkar each pace across the room, trying to think up a way out of this idiotic slash fiction exercise.

“Now don't get me wrong,” says Belkar, “I mean, if you were a woman I'd probably do you in a minute…”

It's hard to tell whether he's kidding. Roy is annoyed. “…no comment.”

Silence. More pacing.

“Alright, I've got another idea,” says Roy.

“Finally.”

“Anyone outside doesn't have much to go on besides what we look like once we get out, right? And we're both in warrior classes, so a good sparring match should leave us both glowing and exhausted…”

“I like where you're going with this…”

“Cool. Go get your daggers.”

“Awesome.” Belkar walks off-panel, grinning.

5: A battle! Relatively long.
“You ready to die, chump?” taunts Belkar.

“Gods, I have wanted to do this for so long… alright, on the count of three-”

“OnetwothreeCHAAAARGE!” Belkar leaps at Roy, daggers flashing. Roy parries, not all that surprised.

However unrealistic it would be considering the weapons they're using, the fencing goes on for a round or two before Belkar lands a dagger right in Roy's gut. “Augh! Belkar, what the hell?!”

“What? We're fighting, aren't we?”

“Sparring, you idiot!”

“There's a difference?”

“It means that you're not supposed to deal lethal damage.”

“You told me to use my daggers! And you're not exactly wielding some candy-ass throw pillow, yourself…” Belkar, maintaining his philosophy that a good offense is the only truly satisfying defense, continues to be all up in Roy's business throughout the conversation.

“So what? You just hit with the flat part of the blade, like… this.”

WHACK! Roy's subdual sword strike sends Belkar flying into the table, knocking it over. From there, a familiar die clatters across the floor…

“Rrrrgh! Why, you… RRRRRRGH!” Belkar charges again, swinging his blades a bit more slowly this time.

“Alright, that's not bad. I know that the penalty sucks, but if we work on that technique a bit…”

“I'm not trying to deal nonlethal damage, jackass! I just… rrrgh… can't…” Belkar squints, his view of Roy getting a little blurry.

Roy, in dodging a clumsy knife swipe, unexpectedly stumbles into a wall. “Oof! What? How did…” He is now forced to squint, too. “Hey, what's going on? What did you…” He just barely makes out the shape of the scattered die on the other side of the room. “Oh, no…”

A minute later, the two are sitting on the floor against the wall, a nearby d20 showing a 3.

“(hic) See, it's funny because I was a woman, (hic) for a little while…”

“Heh heh… yeah, I (hic) kissed V, once… V is a (hic) woman, right?”

“Dude, I… (hic)… (hic)… I don't even know, man.”

“(hic)”

“(hic)”

6: The finale, I guess?
“Well, (hic), I guess that's that, then… we've exchanged secrets, (hic) so they should probably let us out now…”

Roy is sitting against a wall as Belkar examines an overturned table. “Yeah, alright… but hey, you mind if I (hic) roll up a few more random events before we head out? Some of them look like they might be kind of (hic) fun…”

It should be noted that being drunk can make a lot of things look fun. It can also make something horrible and risky not sound so bad.

“Yeah, alright, (hic). Shoot,” says Roy.

Soon, the two are sitting in desks, in the snow, a palm tree waving in the breeze over them. A little green one-eyed blob spouts gibberish at them from nearby.

“Please stop,” says Wookiee Roy, too sick to move. His leather maternity armor bears what seems to be a police insignia.

Vampire Belkar, wearing a frilly pink maid's uniform, doesn't seem to be listening. He looks much like he did when the greater mark of justice was active, his head spotted and surrounded by beer bubbles. The die on his desk shows an 11. “Whoo-hoo! Another pregnancy! I hope you like triplets!”

7: The epilogue, and probably the best when taken alone.
“…and that's the story of how we were conceived,” concludes the short, poofy-haired boy, his human-sized cloak trailing comically on the ground.

“Actually,” replies his brother, apparently an abnormally tan dwarf with a buzz cut, “we were just talking about the logistics of combining two XY chromosome pairs. Also, that story doesn't even make any sense.”

The first brother hangs his head in disappointment.

Their sister, a dark-skinned, elf-eared blond, goes on with her own explanation. “So, of the three remaining viable combinations, two are XY and one is XX, making a male conception twice as likely as a female one.”

“Right, so, if two males conceive three times through whatever means, one will be a girl and two will be boys?”

“Well, not necessarily, but it would the most likely prediction if you were to make it before knowing about either of the first two.”

“Ah.”

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