Disclaimer: I don't own Slayers, DotA or any of the associated characters in this fanfiction. I am merely writing it for my own enjoyment.
Chapter one: Daylight robbery
"Hot dogs!" Lina squealed, handed over what seemed to be a gold coin and quickly stacked several in her hands and crammed one in her mouth. With an air of childish excitement she moved swiftly off into the crowded fairground. With a sigh Gourry asked the vendor how much those hot dogs cost.
"Far less than the good lady paid for them." The vendor stared happily after Lina. "It's the festival air, makes folks feel generous." With a smile he looked down at his hand to find the gold coin replaced by a pebble that smiled back at him. His face fell into shocked dismay and before his feelings could advance to rage Gourry quickly cut in.
"So about how much did they cost?" The vendor was distracted by the question and replied quickly
"Half a crown…ah…I mean two! Two crowns, that should about cover it." The vendor sputtered as he appraised Gourry's worn yet sturdy traveller's cloak.
"I'll give you one then." As the vendor protested he backed off. "Hey, it's not like I chose to buy them."
Despite the gaudy and crowded nature of the festival, Gourry spotted Lina as easily as if no-one else was there. When he caught up with her she was staring down a hungry dog over one of the hot dogs. Finally, after a prolonged and skillful competition, Lina won.
"Hah! Take that you mangy beggar! Your pathetic charms will not work on one who has refused even the mazoku." Lina celebrated her triumph with an oversize bite, filling her cheeks like a squirrel.
"Hey Lina, can I have one?" Gourry asked as the mutt slinked off soulfully.
"Hmm…." She chewed thoughtfully.
"Thanks." Gourry didn't wait for her answer; he helped himself and ignored her outraged expression.
Satisfied, the pair moved swiftly through the fair. Lina bound hyperactively from one attraction to the other with Gourry loping complacently in her wake. Despite their carefree air the pair was combing the fair with a purpose. Strange happenings had been following the fair and Lina had garnered from their pattern that an Eye of Malus must be hiding among the props.
"So why are we trying to find this eye of mouse? I've got to admit, this one sounds really gross and …tiny! What are you going to do with it anyway?" He paused and gasped in distress. "You're not going to eat it Lina!"
Lina groaned.
"No, you idiot! It's the Eye of Malus, not mouse. And it's the size of a small plum, weren't you listening earlier? I showed you a sketch of the object while I explained the triangulation of the probability densities."
Gourry vaguely recalled a wobbly circle drawn in honey over breakfast. Lina had been talking with her mouthful at the time and his attention had been on the bacon. He was very partial to bacon.
"…And can grant the ability to see the optimized path to that which holds boundless value. It's the perfect accessory for a treasure hunter. Now do you see meat-head?"
"Where? Is it a bacon head?" Gourry spun around quickly. Those hotdogs hadn't been enough. There was no bacon-heads around, not that Gourry was sure what one would look like but if Lina made any hungry looking moves towards anything he'd be sure to beat her to it. Lina didn't make any hungry moves but she did look very angry.
"No, you idiot! We're looking for the Eye of Malus which for the last time is an orb the size of a small plum!"
Several fair-goers nearby slowed and began to move away from the shrieking teen. Lina was eighteen but she still acted like a very spoiled kid. Among those backing away was a clown. As he backed away he stumbled and as soon as he did he turned and began to flee.
Both Lina and Gourry took after him.
"His nose, Gourry, his nose is the Eye!"
Gourry's long strides brought him ahead of Lina but a small family meandered into his path and he was forced to stumble out of their way. He lost track of their quarry until a high voice called "Flare Arrow!" and a nearby tent caught fire. Lina had missed but she'd redirected the clown into Gourry's path. Just as Gourry drew his sword the clown squeezed something in his pocket and a puff of glittery powder ejected from a flower in his lapel.
As Gourry breathed in the world started to sing in twinkly voices and soften into pastels. Time seemed to move so slowly but Gourry fixed his blurring eyes on the clowns red nose and shot his hand out for the grab.
All of a sudden he was buried under a pile of show-prizes as the clown shot up on stilt like legs and stepped over him.
Meanwhile as Lina gave chase she passed a small building she'd assumed was an out-house. The door burst open and out of the tiny space spewed at least a dozen clowns identical to their quarry. "Burst Rondo! Gourry, where are you?"
Most of the clowns were thrown from her but not all were incapacitated. A perimeter of spectators began to coalesce about them. As Lina bounced a fireball in her palm she spotted Gourry staggering through the crowd which parted before his loosely held sword. Some of the fair-goers were cheering as if this were a Punch and Judy special. "Gourry!" Lina shrieked. She wasn't sure if she felt concerned or infuriated. "What's wrong with you, you idiot!"
While her attention was diverted three of the clowns tossed a net over her. Her forgotten fireball immediately burned a smouldering hole directly in front of her and she squirmed free. "Hah!" she called with her fists raised in victory. Immediately she found herself overburdened with at least 10 more. As she struggled to get her hands into position she kept entangling herself further.
"Enough!" Gourry shouted above the sinister chuckling of the clowns and their creepy background music. Surprisingly, at the sound of his voice the clowns, their mood music and the excited crowd hushed. He was originally going to announce he was Lina's protector and that nobody touched her except him. But a preserving fragment of sense overrode it with the fact that a) he'd look like a creepy cradle snatch and b) Lina would kill him. What came out of his slurred mouth was "We are looking for a mouse eye and one of these clowns thinks it's his nose."
The crowd paused and looked at each other in complete puzzlement. If he were a comedian he'd have been in torture at the scene of a joke falling flat. A guttural scream broke the silence and a beach-ball sized fireball shot straight at his back. Despite it's size the flaming projectile did minimal damage since despite all evidence to the contrary, Lina was capable of being subtle. Much of her common spells and feats of magic were more about distraction and slight of hand than true sorcery. The fireball, for instance, only had a thin shell of flames stretched across its surface and did Gourry no more damage than a sizzling of his hair and a faint blackening of his clothes. It had, however, been held for long enough to disintegrate the net around Lina who stormed out of the pile and grabbed him by the ear. The sight of her raised another cheer from the crowd and a surge inwards of the clowns. Laughter ensued as Gourry sloppily yet effectively dealt with the clowns as Lina berated him and chased the more distant clowns with humorous fireballs to their butts and miniature fireworks. One of the clowns seemed to hang back a bit and looked to be genuinely trying to escape rather than dodge.
Gourry flicked an eye towards the hesitant and Lina acknowledged him with a slight smirk. Striking a pose she began to mutter and the crowd drew closer, effectively becoming an in impenetrable wall. The clown by the edge began to sweat. Suddenly Lina flung out her arms and thick black bands of shadow streaked out in all directions.
"Shadow Web!"
All whose shadows were now joined with Lina's found they were unable to move anything but their face. In the midst of her web Lina walked straight over to the cringing clown and plucked off his nose. "I'll have that, thank you very much. You clearly have no idea what to do with this." She deftly peeled away a thin covering of red wax to find an opalescent orb spattered with black. "An artifact like this should be used by someone who knows what holds boundless value and is not afraid to take it. Its potential was wasted here." The clown screwed up his face and barked in a surprisingly young sounding voice.
"No, you clearly have no idea what to do with it! You have no idea what holds boundless value. Take it, I don't care. I've already got what I wanted. I only kept the stone to show others what they need to see." He paused in the oddest pose, his body frozen in a cringe yet his expression reminiscent of Amelia's self-righteousness. Then his face slumped "For a fee of course." he muttered. "Can't run a set up like this without dough…"
"Hah!" crowed Lina. She hadn't fully understood what he'd been implying about the orb but it was hers now and she held it high above her head for all to admire "At last the eye is free to do what it was made for, point the way to treasure!" Gourry watched in puzzlement and the crowd burst into applause. Wasn't what they'd done essentially daylight robbery? He shook his head, Lina was happy and that's as far as he wanted to think about it.
The audience laughed and applauded until the thin shadow bands from the spell began to creep into their midst holding them in place. Lina whipped a large hat out of her cloak.
"Alright, show's over. Cough up! Come on, we don't do this for free." Lina snapped at them and with much grumbling and a couple of angry words the crowd tossed money into the hat and. As the spell weakened, they wandered off to the rest of the frivolous attractions.
As Lina eyed the bulging hat Gourry quickly and artlessly scooped it up and handed it to the round-shouldered clown. Immediately the clown's expression brightened, his red smile spread right across his face. Before Lina could snatch it back Gourry observed
"We sure put on quite a show. You can keep the hat since we're taking the mouse eye. Who knows, maybe after we've found the treasure we'll come back and do it all again."
"Thanks buddy." Replied the clown, his voice once again sounding very young. "The eye was one of our most important attractions." He considered for a moment. "Would you like to meet the rest of the crew?" Gourry took one look at Lina's annoyed expression and declined. She liked to be the one making the decisions and he was probably already going to pay for his audacity. "Yeah, definitely come back, it'll be great!" the clown continued, the hat forgotten in his arms. "Although next time maybe your friend could skip the trap-spell at the end, even though they might not have been as much they still would have given. It's something about the festival air, it makes people generous." Gourry nodded, wondering why the line seemed familiar.
"Ah yeah, well…so long!" Gourry laughed and stauntered off with his hands behind his head. What ever was in the festival air sure didn't seem to work on Lina.
