Dr. Yotaria's Sanity is Going, Going... Gone!

      I stared at the clock that hung across the wall from me. It was a Techo Clock my owner, extreme_fj0rd, had obtained from the Advent Calendar last year. The Techo's face made up the clock's face; two yellow eyes stared out from above the one and the eleven, and green hands wrapped around the edges near the three and the nine. The Techo's tail hung down below the clock, and it swung back and forth. It was almost mesmerizing, and I started to tilt my head back and forth in time with its swinging.

      The door opened, and I jumped and hastily pretended that I'd been attentively sitting for the whole time. To my surprise, it was not Lyrian to tell me that another client was here, but rather the client himself. When I saw who it was, I nearly jumped again.

      "Jeran!" I said, halfway between a disbelieving whisper and an excited scream.

      "Er... um..." said the most famous of Meridell's knights. "I, um, saw your advertisement." He was in full battle armor (and looked quite good in it, too, I noted), and his sheathed sword hung at his side. "At least, I think I did. You're Dr. Yotaria, right?"

      I nodded, uncertain of what he was trying to get at.

      "Oh. Um... I hadn't expected you'd be this... er... colorful."

      Affronted at the slight to my Disco color, I folded my Kau hooves over my chest. "Take a seat, then," I said in my best icy tone, and glared at him.

      The Lupe sat down without making any jokes about "I think it's too heavy for me to carry back to Meridell"--a point in his favor, in my opinion. He didn't seem to notice the stain, either, which was good.

      "What seems to be the matter?" I asked, quickly whisking a small notepad and pencil off the desktop and looking inquisitively at Jeran.

      "Well--" He shifted uncomfortably, though the desk chair was, in fact, quite comfortable. "See, the thing is, I never really wanted to be a hero."

      "You what?" I exclaimed.

      He glanced around the room as if he expected someone to be trying to sneak through the windows, and told me, "Shh!"

      "You what?" I said in a whisper.

      "I never wanted to be a hero," Jeran repeated. "When I went back in time, to Meridell--"

      "Hey, wait a minute. If Meridell is in the past, how can you be in the present here?" I interrupted.

      Jeran glared at me and kept talking. "When I went back in time, the first people I met were some soldiers. They took me to Skarl, and I thought he was evil, because he was so grumpy. I found out eventually that he was just bad-tempered, and I was pretty disappointed. Just a few days before my sister and her friends came to Meridell, I decided to leave and find someone more evil. It took me a while to plan, so by the time I was going to sneak out of the castle, Lisha was there." He sighed. "It would've disillusioned her terribly if I'd snuck off the very night she came, so I stayed in the castle--just for a while, I thought. Then Darigan attacked, and everyone was applauding me and saying I was such a hero, just because I was strong. But you see, I wanted to be on the evil side. I wanted to be strong so they'd accept me."

      "And why did you, erm, want to be evil?" I asked meekly, huddling behind my notepad as if it was a shield.

      "I wanted to win," he replied absently.

      I must've looked suprised, because he added, "'Evil always wins, because good is stupid.' Isn't that what they say?"

      I shrugged noncommittally.

      "Isn't it?"

      "Well--yes," I admitted, and scribbled a bit on my notebook to make it look like I was taking notes intelligently.

      Jeran nodded, like he was expecting that answer--which he had been, obviously.

      "So why didn't you leave after Darigan was defeated?" I asked to get the discussion again.

      "Then there wasn't any evil lord around," Jeran said, and sprang up out of the chair, gesturing for me to be quiet. I, of course, did no such thing.

      "Really? What about Kass, or the Three?"

      Jeran crept over to the window, which had been covered with a shade. He snapped the shade down and let go; it rolled itself up, revealing a crowd of pets which all had only two things in common: they were all female, and they all wore pins, red on blue, bearing the motto, "Jeran is Our Hero!"

      "Fangirls," Jeran said disgustedly--or at least I think that's what he said. When the shade came up, all the fangirls started making noise. Some screamed, some cheered, and a few fainted--I'll grant that that isn't very noisy, but they soon revived to add their own sound to the din.

      "Do you have any good hiding places in this house?" Jeran screamed over the noise to me.

      I shook my head. "At least, none that I know of," I yelled back.

      Jeran yanked the shade down again, depriving the rabid fangirls of their hero's image. They fell sulkily silent.

      The door opened again, and Jeran and I both jumped. I think we were both expecting a horde of fangirls to stampede in, but instead, my owner walked in, looking slightly puzzled.

      "Yotaria," she said, "could you tell me why there are several hundred Jeran fangirls on our front lawn?"

      I glanced at Jeran, which attracted my owner's attention to him.

      "I see," Fj0rd said. She pushed her glasses up on her nose to look properly at him. "I have no idea why you're here," she began, and I heaved a sigh of relief, "but I think it'd be a good idea if you left now. The fangirls are getting excited, you see," she added apologetically.

      Jeran glanced at me. "Erm," he said. "Perhaps we can conclude our discussion some other time, Dr. Yotaria."

      "That's perfectly fine with me," I said, and gave him my best charming smile. "I don't suppose you'd consider paying me for half a session?"

      "I don't have any Neopoints on me--"

      "No, no, nothing like that," I interrupted. "Just an IOU." I flipped to a new sheet of paper in my notebook and wrote down 'I, Jeran, owe Dr. Yotaria payment for half a session of psychoanalysis' and added a line underneath the writing with an X on it. "Sign here," I said sweetly, handing him the paper and a pen.

      Jeran looked puzzled, but scribbled down a signature.

      "Thanks," I said cheerfully. "Have a nice day!"

      Fj0rd escorted Jeran out of the house; I heard my owner asking, "You wouldn't consider appearing for a group of Neopian Times writers some time for a small fee, would you?" as the door closed behind them. I didn't hear his reply; I was too busy staring lovingly at the small piece of paper.

      If fangirls will congregate in front of a small house in Neopia Central, I pondered, how much would they pay for a copy of their idol's signature? It was one of those math problems I'd never liked, but the answer, when I arrived at it, was quite satisfactory.

The End

Author's Note: Thanks to Fay and Aries (wacky_wolves and year_of_the_fox, respectively) for helping come up with the title. You guys pwn.