Second part of Slayers PERSIST, ep one... obviously.
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Around the time Zelgadiss arrived at the quaint out-of-the-way town of
Biatz, Lina Inverse was crawling out from under her covers, sliding her
thin legs off the bed, stretching her arms over her head and yawning in the
cutest way possible. She blinked her eyes, rubbed them for good measure,
and hopped to the floor.
The inn they were staying in was a good one, in the middle of a large
resort town named Daningu. Thusly, each room came with a first-rate bath,
and so she slid out of the cute little pink slip she wore and hopped in,
turning the medieval faucet and basking in the warm, sparsely sudded liquid
that filled the tub around her.
She slid her hands behind her head to brace it against the hard
surface of the tub's edge, made a content vocal that sounded sort of like
"Ahhhh!" but was more abrasive and Hayashibara-sounding, and closed her
eyes.
She didn't think about much of importance. She did, however, reflect
back to that big river snake yesterday, and wondered why in hell that stuff
always happened to her. Her life was always that perilous, whether she was
saving the world or just trying to get from one village to the next. She
paid no attention to the fact that she usually invited these things, by
attacking bandits or blowing up towns while trying to show off, because
that made her sound much less like fate's poor victim.
She raised a foot up out of the water, the rest of her leg raising
after it, moist from its submergence. She sighed, and sunk lower so that
her cheeks were kissed by the clear liquid, raising the leg a fraction
higher and resting it along the rim of the tub.
The above was done not as enrichment to the world, to the set the
scene, or to symbolize that deep down, beneath all her hectic and violent
spells, her wild personality, and her happy-go-lucky visage, she was
actually just a normal girl with normal girl wants and needs and even
goals. Instead, the above was mostly done as fan service to overly hormoned
adolescent males.
Something began pounding at the door, snapping Lina out of her quasi
reverie. Her leg dropped back into the water to the disappointment of teens
everywhere as she sat upright and gave a couple of owlish blinks.
Whoever it was knocked again. Lina reached out and grabbed her towel,
no longer startled and now simply annoyed. As she began to climb out of the
tub, the scene changed to one of the fist knocking a third time, and
everywhere teens like the author shouted protest.
The door opened just a tiny tiny tiny little crack, and a tiny tiny
tiny portion of Lina's eye showed up between the two bodies of wood that
made up the doorway. "What do you want?" she demanded, and then, seeing it
wasn't Gourry, opened the door a little wider and glared furiously. "And
what made you think you could interrupt my bath?"
The man standing there was short, stocky, clean-shaven, and had short
cropped hair that hung off his head with a distinct lack of life. His
clothes were roughly the ugliest things in existence, but his face wasn't
so bad, and his eyes were wide and black. When he smiled, his pure white
teeth reflected enough light to blind a person.
"I have a warrant for your arrest, fiend," the man said, indeed not
smiling.
"Excuse me?" Lina asked, throwing open the door and moving her hands
into the Fireball casting motion. Then she remembered two things, both
equally important. One, she needed to conserve her energy for an emergency,
and two, she needed her hands to hold up her towel.
The man in the hallway, who it could now be noted was holding an ax
and was also accompanied by four ruffled looking guards, took a step back
and broke into a heavy nosebleed. The guards soon followed suit, once they
figured what was going on, but by then Lina had wrapped herself in her
arms, slunk to her knees and shrieked loud enough to cave the roof down on
them all.
"HENTAI!" she screamed, tugging the towel back into place, picking up
a chair with one hand, and hurling it at the axe-wielder. Then she slammed
the door, and scurried around the room to get her clothing on.
The door burst inward just as she had cinched the last of her costume
into place, the man with the ax rubbing his head and leaning on the
doorknob for support.
"You dare to attack me after you murdered my child?" he cried, his
eyes ablaze.
Lina was silent, with staring, wide eyes. Then her mouth and tongue
met a mutual decision, and she shot back, "Murdered your child?" She didn't
like the taste of that.
"Don't play innocent, you heartless killer!" he screamed, stomping his
foot, and swinging his ax in her direction to indicate her to the guards
for effect. "She killed my little Pochie!"
"Now hold on!" she cried and leaned forward, arms flailing. "I never
killed anyone's child!"
By now the guards were beginning to file in the room, looking wary and
somewhat lusty. She could tell by the uniforms that they were tacky, low
rank grunts, and thusly surmised that if this was the best this wealthy
town felt was needed to go after her, the allegation wasn't all that
serious. But murder was a serious offense. She drew herself into an
apathetic stance and smiled.
"Look," she said, trying to keep a level head about this. "I may have
done a lot of things, but I've never murdered." A pause. "Well, at least,
not anyone who didn't deserve it."
"Oh, you murdered her, all right!" The man placed the head of the ax
to the ground, leaned on it with one arm and wiped his eyes with the other.
"You slaughtered her right through! When I found her body, I used magic to
replay the last moments of her life, and--"
Lina sighed, cutting him off. "Can the performance, Ghim. At least
tell me the real reason you came."
"Denial to the end," the man cried, raising the battle-ax. "Death to
you, abominable fiend! Death to Lina Inverse!"
"Li-Lina..."
"...Inverse?"
The last two paragraphs of dialogue came from two of the four guards.
The other two were already retreating.
The man with the ax blinked and looked at the first. "Uh, hai..." he
answered. "That's what the memories of my beloved Pochie displayed to me...
She was talking to her companion on this grassy knoll, and..."
Lina blinked, suddenly very much confused. First, about this magical
talent the man said he possessed.. replaying visions was a very complex
spell, and, in fact, a myth. And then the fact that he knew what she was
doing yesterday.
"Lina Inverse!!!" the two guards yelled, and hugged each other. "Oh
God, spare us, spare us!"
Lina shook her head in exasperation. "For crying..." She turned to the
two cowering guards, hefted another chair, and prepared to fling it. "Get
out of here!"
The guards fled happily enough, one of them on all fours. She then
turned to the man who was wearing a confused expression and a large sweat
drop.
"Okay. Now you mind telling me your name?" Lina casually slipped into
a chair, crossed her legs, and shot her gaze at him.
"I, um," he began. "They call me Halgon."
"Ah," she nodded. "Halgon, do you know why those men ran off?"
Halgon shook his head.
"To sum up, it's because I'm pretty famous."
"Famous?" He blinked.
"Yeah. Well, more like 'infamous,' unfortunately, but you get the
idea."
"Wow, and here I thought you were just a small, flat-chested little
punk!" he said, sincerely impressed.
The chair Lina had been sitting in found its way over Halgon's head.
He collapsed, a large tear forming in his left eye.
"So you've never heard of me?" Lina asked, rubbing her hands together
in that famous job-done gesture.
"No," he gasped, looking up.
"Well, I guess that's okay." She knelt in front of him. "So you mind
telling me what you're doing here?"
"I told you," he said, and said it so vehemently that she finally
believed him. "You killed my Pochie. I am here to get revenge."
"Look, uh, Halgon." Lina drew herself up and looked down at him, not
smirking, but not exactly radiating sympathy either. "I never murdered any
Pochie."
Halgon stood, backed up a step for the room he needed, grabbed his ax,
and pointed it accusingly at her. "You did, so says I! My baby Pochie, the
poor little lake dragon, was brought to an early doom by YOU, girl!"
Lina picked herself off the floor. "L... lake dragon?"
"Yes!" Halgon cried, drawing his ax back and preparing to swing. Well,
Lina figured as she panicked, that explained why the local officials hadn't
felt like sending more adept troopers to look after the matter. Halgon
cried out and struck, obviously now beyond the idea of lawful dealings and
instead looking for a more bloody resolution.
"N-now look!" she said, drawing her thin blade and just barely
parrying the first thrust. "Oi! Oi! Watch it!"
Halgon swiped the ax across in a horizontal sweep, growling. "Have you
any final words, fiendish Lina?"
"Y-yeah I do!" she said, suddenly realizing this guy had the brute
strength of a pack of boars and she did not and that now TIME was the best
life insurance she could get. "Um, _I_ didn't kill that river snake!" Duck,
parry, duck. "It was Gourry!"
Halgon stopped swinging. "Gourry? Who's--"
"Lina-san?" Gourry asked from the hallway. He was wearing his blue
night outfit, peering into the room with half-closed eyes, and scratching
the top of his blond head. "Is something going on in there?"
"YES, SOMETHING'S GOING ON IN HERE!" she shouted madly, and took the
opportunity to duck past the oaf with the ax and club her sidekick with a
slipper. "THIS GUY'S TRYING TO KILL ME!"
"Oh, I remember you!" Halgon said, renewing his stance. "YOU are the
one who killed Pochie!"
"Make up your mind," Lina growled, the heel of her hands against her
forehead.
"DIE, NOTORIOUS GOURRY!" Halgon ran at him, swinging his ax.
"Hereyagogoodluck!" Lina said, tossing the half awake man her sword
and scrambling to the side.
"Ano?" Gourry asked, grabbing the sword handle and lightly moving his
wrist to the right, parrying the sudden blow.
Halgon, reared, slashed again. Gourry blinked lazily, yawned, and
lifted the sword four inches and gave a slight out-thrust to send him
tottering back on his heels. "What's going on, Lina?"
"Uh, you remember that lake dragon you killed?" Lina asked with a fake
smile. "Well, uh, I guess it was this guy's pet or something."
"Pochie was no pet!" Halgon said, drawing back and venting
frustration. "I'll have you know, she was my god daughter!"
"He's insane," Lina pointed out calmly.
"Hai," Gourry agreed, and thrust in quickly, knocking the ax out of
the man's hands and unbalancing him with a jab of the handle. Halgon fell
on his keister with a groan and a generic sound effect.
"And now that we're all comfy," Lina murmured, walking back in, "maybe
we could have a little chat about common courtesy towards our fellow man."
Halgon sat up, crossed his arms, and sulked.
"To start off, never interrupt a girl's private time." She ticked
these off on her fingers. "Second, never do so and then have the balls to
say you're going to arrest her. C, never do so and then say the reason is
because her partner killed a river snake in self defense."
Gourry, who was rubbing his eyes and now partially more awake, gave a
little yawn. "Hai, it did attack us first. I mean, I agree, I wouldn't want
people killing off my god daughters, but..."
"Gourry!" Lina snapped, and he obligingly shut up.
"You're right," Halgon murmured, staring at the floor. "You're right,
of course! She always had a mean streak in her, I always knew she did! But
I couldn't accept the truth!" He rose to his feet, tears streaming down his
eyes.
Gourry smiled and clapped the man on the back. Lina, simply annoyed
his innocent little talk had once again done more than her bravado,
muttered "Dammit" a couple times.
"...take it so hard," Gourry was saying. "Everyone has a black sheep
in their family! I have my rogue Grandpa Raudy, Lina has her mean sister
Luna, Zelgadiss has his great-grandfather Rezo..."
Lina threw the previously mentioned slipper at Gourry's head, watched
as it did more damage than it should have, and turned to look Halgon square
in the eye. "Look, we're busy people. We don't need insane yahoos showing
up all the time, ne? Just... go on your way, we'll forget this whole
ordeal."
"I cannot!" Halgon said, grabbing Lina's hands in his and smiling
through his tears. "You have shown me the error of my ways, Lina Inverse! I
must make it up to you."
"Oh, God," Lina groaned, but did so to herself. To him, she said with
a bright smile, "No, no, that's okay, Mr. Halgon Sir, there's no need for
that! Just don't let it happen again!"
"It might be kind of fun having a new companion," Gourry said
thoughtfully, standing up and rubbing his slipper inflicted bruise.
"You're not helping," Lina stated flatly.
No, that wasn't a joke about her cleavage.
"Then it's settled!" Halgon cried with a bright smile. "I'll devote my
life to the two of you, doing whatever you need done!"
Gourry was all smiles. "Yosh! A new friend! Isn't this great, Lina? We
can be a trio!"
Lina's scream filled the noon air.
Somewhere outside the inn was a person with a black cloak. She slid
smoothly through the doors into the lobby, smiling to herself in a wide,
sultry kind of way. She carried an artifact of great importance, an
artifact that would change Lina and the other two in her room forever. She
held it in her hand, in the light of day, uncaring if any of the people
hustling about in their day-to-day lives saw it or not. Puny weaklings, the
woman in the black cloak thought with a sneer. They won't be alive much
longer, no. Soon indeed, they will get what's coming to them. Soon, soon
judgment will rain from above! Black death will seep into their skin like a
plague, eating their bodies and corrupting their minds. She smiled, then
laughed, as her booted feet carried her up the stairs... after, of course,
she had checked with the desk to see which room the girl was staying in.
She heard the scream, and was, for a moment, caught off guard. Had
someone already reached her prey? Was this one, this Lina Inverse, this
plague of destruction, was she already dead? The woman rushed up the rest
of the stairway in a hurry, looking around with uneasy eyes. Her feet
carried her past a couple closed doors, and she paused to sneer at the
amount of work that had been put into furnishing them. Silly mortals,
foolish mortals, to waste their short and puny lives with such
ridiculousness. At the least, they could be conspiring to build an empire
of world domination, but no, they just scurried around with desk jobs and
expected everything to be fine, despite their lack of any integrity or
other redeeming value. The woman in the black cloak hurried on, remembering
the girl and the artifact, and wanting to make sure she wasn't too late.
She wasn't. When she arrived at the door, the girl was busy hitting
some blond buffoon over the head with a slipper, and some stocky short man
with an ax was laughing as if he thought the whole thing was part of an
end-of-episode-laugh moment. The cloaked person sneered, drew raised the
artifact over her head, and called clearly, "This is for YOU, Lina Inverse!
This, this sacred artifact, will allow me to defeat you, and through
defeating you, I shall rule over all!"
Lina blinked. Gourry raised his head and blinked. Halgon, not wishing
to stop a trend, blinked as well.
Gourry strode forward and peered at the item in the woman's hand.
"Um."
"What do you want, you foolish human?!" the woman cried.
"It just looks like an ordinary envelope to me," he said, poking it
with a finger.
The woman drew the envelope away from him and clutched it to her
breasts. "Ah, but it's what is INSIDE the envelope that makes it
important!" she informed.
"So what's in it?" Lina said, folding her arms and allowing herself to
forget about Halgon for the moment.
"Ah, my dear Lina-san," she said with a smile. "I can't tell you
that."
"It's got my name on it," Lina pointed out with a frown.
"Oh." The woman blinked, and looked at the item. "Oh yeah. Well, here
you go, then."
"Jeez," Lina cried, snatching the letter away from her. "One weirdo
after another!"
"What's it say, Mistress Lina?!" Halgon asked excitedly.
"None of your business," she snapped, and turned away to read it.
Gourry looked at the woman with a smile while his partner read
whatever it was she had been addressed. "Konnichiwa, I'm Gourry Gabriev."
The woman blinked, looked him over as if she hadn't seen him before,
and shrugged. "Good for you."
Gourry, not used to the cold shoulder, was at a loss for words. "Do
you have a name?"
"Yes," she said grandly, turning to him and placing her hands on her
hips. "It resounds throughout the heavens and the hells. I am the one, the
inheritor of the world! The minions of the lands flock to me, for I am--"
"Yuu Watase?!" Gourry asked, psyched out.
"No," the woman said. "I am of much more stamina and importance than
she!"
"No way!" Gourry said, very impressed. "That's really something!"
"Yeah," she agreed with a nod. "For I, dear sir, am known as..." She
paused for dramatic effect. "Raleic Deontri!"
Gourry blinked.
"You know," Raleic prodded.
"Afraid not," Gourry apologized.
"Oh, forget you," Raleic grumbled and crossed her arms.
"So, um..." Gourry looked over at Lina, abandoning the strange
envelope girl. "What's the letter say?"
Lina looked up with a shrug, and handed it over. "Read for yourself."
Gourry blinked, took it, and Halgon and Raleic crowded next to him and
read as well.
Dear Lina-san,
Seiruun is in great need of you. We've run across a problem that is
much too complicated for words on paper to convey. I wish I could explain
it all now. Please come to Seiruun, our royal Postal Worker, Miss Raleic,
will escort you personally. Daddy isn't sure about this, but I know you'll
be able to help us, with all your great power and wisdom, defeat evil and
vanquish bad guys! Oh, and bring Gourry and Zel if you can.
Ja,
Princess Amelia Wil Tesla Seiruun
"Wow," Gourry said. "What's the problem there, Raleic?"
"I don't know," she said with a shrug.
Gourry looked at her. She was very pretty, with dark eyes and pure
black hair and a matching robe which covered her entirely from the neck
down. However, for some reason Gourry was nearly oblivious to all romantic
and sexual effects, so he didn't really give her physical form all that
much note.
"So you're just a Postal Worker?" Halgon asked.
"Only for disguise!" she shouted grandly. "For soon I shall sweep the
globe with my fist of might, and all of humanity will sway to my will and
demands! They will bow before me, their almighty goddess!"
"Uh huh," Lina said, suddenly exhausted, never minding that she'd just
gotten up. "All right, all right. What we've got here is a mysterious but
urgent letter from Amelia, a megalomaniac postal worker, and a freak with
an ax."
"Yep!" Gourry nodded. "So when do we leave?"
"Augh," Lina cried, throwing up her hands. "Get out of here! All of
you!"
"You dare to ignore our Princess's royal summons?" Raleic demanded.
"That is worse than blasphemy!"
Lina's glare would have shot directly through her body, if glares were
scientifically able to do such things. "We can make it to Seiruun without
help from a delusional mailgirl!"
"I'll be downstairs," Gourry announced, hurrying out the door as
energy began to gather around both women.
"A runaway Orihalcon demon?" Zelgadiss asked, sipping the tea that the
robed man had prepared for him. Wasn't bad.
"More like a monster," the town's mayor, that old guy with the twisty
cannon-ish hair, corrected. "It nearly killed us all, but thanks to
Lina-san and Naga-san, we were able to..."
"Naga?" Zelgadiss raised a brow.
"Hai. Do you know her?" The old man smiled. Oddly, he didn't seem to
open his eyes very much, reminding Zelgadiss of a couple other people he
wished he could forget.
"Afraid not," he answered.
"Ah." The old man nodded. "Well, the two of them managed to defeat it,
and in turn we put the members of Xain to work." Now he gestured to the man
in the robes, whose name was Galef Kainzard.
This man was pretty impressive, really. He had an impressive mustache,
an impressive twinkle to his eye, impressive clothes. He had one gold
tooth, it looked like, and Zel was sure that if he ever wanted to, he could
look like one hell of a dangerous man. But his looks is as far as that
would get.
"Xain, eh?" Zelgadiss sipped his tea.
"You've heard of my organization?" Galef asked with excitement. "I
didn't know we were that famous!"
"Xain, hai." Zel took another sip. "The joke of all of evil's empires.
The most ludicrous attempt to take over the world since the Legions of
Fishmen. Galef the Eternally Impaired." Zel nodded. "Hai. You're quite
famous."
Galef, a large number of tears streaming down his cheeks, turned away
and wept loudly. Selena rubbed the back of her head, put a hesitant hand on
his shoulder, and began trying to soothe his spirits.
"Ah, anyway," the old man started again, rubbing his hands with a
cloth, "you didn't get around to telling us why you're here."
Zelgadiss looked at him for a moment. He didn't see any reason not to
tell this man, but then, he didn't see much reason to do the opposite.
There wasn't much he could do to help.
He glanced at the others in the room. The dim looking man with the
bandana had disbanded and was out working the field, or something, but the
others from his encounter on the street were in fact here; the old man, who
was actually the mayor, and Selena, who was actually his daughter. Galef,
the impressive looking one, had joined them with the soul purpose of
bringing them tea, but their conversation had apparently enraptured him so,
he'd decided to stay.
Zel looked back to the old man, who was chewing the end of a thin
stick of wheat or some other such country thing. "Could I have your name
first, Ojiisan?"
"Certainly," he answered, and bowed a little without getting up. "It's
Jer."
Zel nodded. "Jer Biatz?"
The old man laughed. "Naw. When this town was founded, they didn't
believe in that whole naming towns after oneself shtick, like they do in
Seiruun." He glanced at the wounded Galef and the soothing Selena, and
leaned in conspiratorially. "If you ask me, it's just a way for the writers
to skip around thinking up additional names for their characters."
Zel said nothing.
The old man, or ojiisan if you want to be cool, righted himself in his
chair. "No, the family name is Dyne. That makes me Jer Dyne, all together."
"Your family didn't found this village, did they?" Zel asked suddenly
but slowly.
Jer blinked, except that his eyes were still closed, and so he didn't.
"Excuse me?"
"Call it a hunch," Zel shrugged lightly.
"I'm quite sure they did," Jer said at length.
"Do you have any records?" Zel asked. "Anything dating back along your
family's history?"
"We do." This was from Selena, the pretty one with the circlet.
Zel looked over at her. A little more closely than he needed to.
"Could I see them?"
"Ah..." she looked at her father.
"I don't see why not," he said, and turned to the gold toothed tea
bearer. "Galef, get me some sake."
"Yeah," Galef mumbled, shuffling out of the room.
Jer looked back at Zelgadiss. "But I don't see why you'd want them."
"Would it be enough for me to simply ask you to trust me?" Zel asked
without much hope.
"I'm afraid not," he said apologetically. "These records are kind of
confidential, you see."
"Confidential?" Zel's eyes narrowed. "Why?"
Selena and Jer exchanged looks. "Ano..." was all that was said, but it
was said simultaneously from both of them, so that should count for
something.
"Neither of you has any idea, do you?" Zel looked at them with a
slight tinge of sour humor.
"Now that you mention it..." Selena said, and give a kawaii little
nervous chuckle.
"Have either of you even ever seen these records?" Zel asked with the
subtle pointedness of a syringe.
"No," Jer admitted. "They say not to let even us look at them."
"I think," Zel said, with a light smile, "that I'd like a look at
these documents."
The wall of the inn was destroyed following a sudden cry of
"FIREBALL!" Clumps of plaster, wood, and brick tumbled to the street below
and sent a number of people running off in panic.
"How does she expect to fight when she's lost her magic?" Gourry asked
to the raining chunks of residential material. "That temper of hers is
ridiculous."
Halgon, arms flailing, flew out of the hole in the wall and crashed by
Gourry's side. "You're not kidding."
"Oi, let me help you up." The swordsman extended a hand down toward
the bruised and battered axewielder, who gratefully used it to stagger to
his feet.
"Is that all you can do, you pathetic young thing?" Raleic cackled,
Ray Winging it to the ground. "I expected more from a girl summoned by her
Majesty!"
Lina, not bothering with a spell of flight, leapt from the giant
crater in the inn's wall and landed neatly on Raleic's face. The two
tumbled to the ground, and with a shout of "Mono Volt!" Lina sent a
staggering flow of electricity through her opponent's fallen body. Halgon
and Gourry winced in respect.
"Who's a pathetic young thing?" Lina smirked, dusting her hands
together.
"Jeez, you're violent!" Gourry groaned. "How'd you manage to do that
when it's your time of the month, anyway?"
"G-Gourry!" Lina cried, waving her arms. "I thought you said you
wouldn't talk about that!"
"Whoops," he replied, and offered a sheepish smile. "Sorry about
that."
"Time of the month, eh?" Raleic, her cloak a bit blackened by that
shock she'd just been put through, snickered. "No wonder you're such a
weakling."
"I beat you down, didn't I?" Lina winked.
Before there was any time to reply to this, the ground beneath them
began to tremble. The rubble about the street danced skittishly in place,
and Gourry felt the sections of his armor clink together alarmingly.
"Earthquake?" Halgon asked, blinking up at the sky.
"Mazoku!" Lina shouted, rearing back with a frightened look skyward.
Glaring down at them from over the roof of the inn was the grim face
of a skeletal monster, eyeless sockets peering, lipless mouth twisting into
a grin. Giant wings unfurled from its back, two massive displays of
fleshless infrastructure.
"M-Mazoku?" Gourry stammered, backing up a step or two. "What's a
Mazoku doing here?!"
"Why, hunting for you two, of course."
The adventuring pair blinked, and look back to see the smiling face of
Xelloss regarding them with those rarely open eyes.
"Augh!" was the only response Lina could think of in answer to this,
and swirled around to see the skeletal monstrosity push the inn out of its
way like it was playing with model sets. "This is one seriously bad day!"
"Leave this to me, foolish girl!" Raleic perked in, jumping forward
and striking a dramatic pose. "No Mazoku can stand before the great Raleic
Deontri, master of all Shamanism!"
"Do you even know what a Mazoku is?" Lina shot.
"What's the difference between one evil thing and another?" Raleic
haughtily protested, drawing her hands together. "Freeze Arrow!"
"Oya, oya," Xelloss commented with a resigned little grin.
The flung spell of ice shot its way towards the awaiting beast, which
batted it aside and scooped up the raven headed sorceress with a crooked
little smirk.
"You can't defeat Mazoku with tiny spells like that," Xelloss
commented. A bit late, of course.
"What an idiot," Lina grumbled while Raleic kicked frantically to get
out of the thing's grasp.
"But I don't have the Hikari no Ken," Gourry mumbled. "And Lina
doesn't have her magic."
"Ah," Xelloss admonished, raising a finger. "You don't think Lina's as
weak as she used to be a few years ago, do you?"
Gourry blinked, and saw that his partner had closed her eyes, and was
preparing for what looked to be a giant of a spell. "What do you mean?"
"When you first met her," the priest explained, "she could only cast
weak Lighting spells during her time of the month, correct?"
"Yeah, I think so." Gourry rubbed at his head, apparently under the
impression that doing so would help his memory, and then it hit him. "You
mean...?"
"Hai," Xelloss responded, and raised a hand towards the chanting
sorceress.
Lina stood solidly, feet planted firm amidst the rubble. Although her
chanted words were lost beneath the wild screams of the captured Raleic,
the magical orbs adorning Lina's costume had begun to glow with the
gathering of her energy and the focusing of her concentration. As they grew
brighter, she looked up into the hideous face of her Mazoku, took a single
step forward, and shouted the two final words that thing was ever going to
hear.
"Dragu Slave!"
In the moments before the spell ripped the Mazoku apart, Gourry was
almost sure he heard Xelloss chuckle.
Bits and pieces of houses fell down around them. Dust was screening
the air, and Raleic landed on top of Gourry with a shriek.
"Nicely done," Xelloss commented.
Lina looked around and grinned, a little impressed herself. "Yeah,
thanks."
"Don't you think it was a little overkill, though?" Halgon asked,
dismally surveying what was left of the town they had been in moments
before.
Lina's eyes widened as she saw through her pride and into reality.
"Oops."
"I keep telling you you have to control yourself," Gourry reprimanded,
pulling Raleic and himself to their feet.
"Oi, it wasn't my fault!" Lina shouted. "I didn't have any choice!
It's not like Xelloss would have done anything!"
"You never even asked him!" Gourry pointed out.
"Since when has he ever helped us out of these messes?"
"Well, that's a good point." The blonde turned to the priest and
frowned in confusion. "But I still don't get it. Why was Lina able to cast
Dragu Slave when the Fireball she cast yesterday..."
"Fizzled out?" Xelloss supplied. Gourry nodded.
"It's all a matter of concentration," Lina answered with a sigh. "What
I want to know is why you decided to show up again." She cast Xel an acidic
glare. "And why you said that thing was hunting us."
"Ah, Lina-chan." The trickster priest smiled and waved a finger,
before disappearing. "That is a secret."
"Damn, I hate him," Lina snarled.
Raleic groaned, blinking her eyes and forcing herself to regain
consciousness. Her jaw dropped as she came to. "What did I miss?"
"Nevermind that," Halgon shouted, pointing into the distance. "Let's
get out of here before that angry mob catches us!"
"This is becoming a familiar formula," Gourry commented, scooping the
dizzy Raleic into his arms and making a break for it.
"Why do I always get caught up in these ridiculous things?" Lina
wailed as the four of them dashed for the hills.
And somewhere else, later that night, a lone chimera in a small
village was lost in fitful slumber and bad dreams.