Cut Rate Slayers
Dark Crystaline Eschaton

6: Hospitality! Adventurers Sometimes Need to Get Well Soon.





Quorinelya Tierce (who was doing her best to perform the role of Lina Inverse in the present fly-by-night no-budget Slayers fic) lay staring up at the plain wooden ceiling of the dormitory that she'd gone to in order to rest. The rest of the party had gone belowstairs to inspect the dungeon which lay below the Temple von Height.
"As long as I don't try to rejoin the others," the subpar Lina said to herself, "the evil plot complication that has to result from our splitting up like this won't necessarily manifest." She considered. "As long as I don't go looking for them." She considered some more. "And as long as they don't come looking for me, to make sure I'm all right." She looked at the open door into the dormitory. "Perhaps I should go bar the door, so that they can't find out that Something Awful has happened to me." She sighed. "Schrodinger's cat is such an elegant thought experiment," she said to herself. "Sucks to be living it, though."
She sat up on the miserable excuse for a bed. ("Trestle table" would have been a much more accurate description for what she was lying on.) "I never got to ask about that thing that was bothering me," she complained to herself. "Somebody besides me should have noticed and remarked on it by now, but since I'm supposed to be the titular character, it really should've been me. For all I know, the whole production is still waiting around for me to mention it." She sighed. "Doing so in a soliloquy is just wrong. Of course, that's no guarantee it won't happen that way." She waited. Nothing happened. "OK, so screw the dramatic imperatives: This is supposed to be a temple that's owned and operated by an order of Airhead Shamans. So how come Victor von Height takes us on a Grand Tour of the whole ediface and during that tour, we meet a grand total of zero inhabitants? That's zilch. Nadie." She shrugged.
"We really could've used a reaction shot of Vic looking momentarily nervous before pouring himself a double brandy and looking, once again, the picture of a perfectly placid English butler. Or, with his name, of a perfect Nazi heirloom. Or whatever." She sighed. "There's nothing for it, I guess. I can't hide from the separation forever. I'm just going to have to bring on the Dreaded Plot Complication by trying to rejoin the gang." She got up and went over to a prie dieu. Resting on it was a copy of the temple brochure. She skimmed the thing, noting the pictures of happy worshippers, the paragraphs about airheaded shamanism, and, especially, the floor plan of the temple (complete with You Are Here arrow). "I'm here," she murmured, finding the arrow. "And they're there," she added, considering the very large multi-chambered wine cellar which the brochure claimed that the temple possessed. "So, to get there, I'd just go out that door and along that corridor and through that antechamber to those stairs and then down them... Definitely the way I'm expected to go... But I'm a sorceress. I don't have to do the routinely expected thing..."
Soon after Lina had that thought, a dark, dank, underground chamber suddenly had a sorceress appear in it. The sorceress was very small. She was also naked.
"Damn!" Quorinelya muttered. "That is so inconvenient." She sighed and conjured the usual garish Lina costume for herself. "Other wizards are able to gate about without leaving behind everything they've got," she thought to herself, then braced herself for expansion to Lina's height, more or less. "Whuff!" With a slight puff of displaced air, she was bigger -- and staggering at the effort. "Why can't I figure out how to --?"
Her thought was broken off because something slammed into her, sending the waifish sorceress (shaped like a stick no matter what size she took) flying several feet before she hit a wall and crumpled to the floor.

Lina (which is to say Quorinelya) awoke to find herself lying on a cold, stone floor and wrapped in a blanket. Her body felt like one uninterrupted bruise. Princess Amelia (played by the understudy to all the Muses, Malehelicon) was sitting on the floor beside her. Somewhere close by she could hear a noise that sounded like a horrendous giggling which was being muffled.
"Th' art awake," Princess Amelia said, seeing Lina's eyelids flutter and hearing the soft groan escape the sorceress's lips.
"Maybe," Lina groaned.
"Would you like to retire back to one of the dormitories to continue your recuperation?"
"I would," Lina mumbled, "but I don't much care right now for moving. Besides, I don't think the beds in the dormitories are any softer than what I'm lying on right now."
"I think wooden planks are a little more yielding than flagstones," the Princess suggested. "Both would be unacceptable for me, of course --"
"Wrong fairy tale," Lina interrupted.
"Oh. Really? I thought princesses were very particular about the beds they sleep in."
"No. They're very particular about the princes they sleep with. Being particular about the furniture is optional and --"
"So I'm taking that option."
"Then how come you were chipper and spouting the yards of overwrought prose when we got to this temple after several days' journey --"
"I was glad to get to get in out of the worsening weather."
"-- including several nights of camping on the cold, hard ground?"
"Oh," Princess Amelia said. "Well... OK, I guess I'm giving back that option."
"Good," Lina sighed. "The less discussion about bedding we have in this story, the better off we'll all probably be."
"What are you going to say about bedding?" Zelgadis (portrayed by the production executive, Fafred the Optimistic) asked, coming up to the two women. "I think you'd better tell me, in case it becomes relevent to our rating."
"It's hard," Lina said.
Zelgadis coughed delicately. "I think I'm going to need a context for that remark."
"The bed I'm lying on," Lina clarified. "It's hard."
"You're lying on a stone floor," Zelgadis observed, then broke off, yelling "Gourry! Come over here, please?"
Nothing happened. Zelgadis looked up, then sighed. "Amelia," he said wearily, "Gourry's watching the prisoner. Would you please...?"
"Certes." Amelia got up and disappeared from Lina's limited field of view. Soon, though, Lina heard a loud whack! This was followed immediately by a yelp from Gourry. Shortly after that and a scrap of low conversation, a red-faced Gourry (played by a realistically red-faced Gaurry) turned up. The redness in his face seemed roughly shaped like a palm- print. Gourry, Lina noticed, was holding the end of a length of chain which he might well have forgotten about.
"Gourry," Zelgadis said, "would you do us all the favor of describing the sort of bed that Lina is lying in just now?"
Gourry glanced down at Lina, then frowned. "She isn't lying on a bed, Zelgadis," he said. "She's lying on a cold, hard, stone floor."
"Thank you, Gourry," Zelgadis said.
"That's it?" Gourry asked.
"That's it," Zelgadis agreed. "We all have our own specialties and one of yours is descrying the obvious."
"Oh. Okay, Zelgadis," Gourry said. Handing the stony-skinned chimera the piece of chain, the swordsman ambled away toward its other end.
"What's with the chain, Zel?" Lina asked.
"This?" Zelgadis said absently. "It's attached to the prisoner who was pounding on your unconscious and battered body when we found you in here."
"Oh," Lina said. "Well, that explains a lot."
"Uh huh. She knows you, by the way."
"She? Knows me?" Lina asked.
"You're very famous, remember?" Princess Amelia said.
"Right." Lina sighed. "Found out who she is?"
"She's famous, too," Zelgadis said.
"But only because of her family connection," Amelia added. "You were getting slammed around by my sister, Gracia Wil Edison Saillune."
"Really?" Lina asked.
"Well, no, not really," the princess admitted. "Skinflint here couldn't afford genuine casting for this part any more than he could for any other part. Actually, the part's being played by Mary Sue."
"Mary Sue?" Lina repeated.
"Mary Sue of the Self-Insertion Stylistic Device," Amelia elaborated.
"Oh, that Mary Sue."
"But don't worry: It all works out really well --" Zelgadis said.
"I'm so glad," Lina said. "Or I would be, if I cared."
"You see, this particular cell block in this temple is for housing the criminally insane."
"How nice."
"My sister's just here for a little rest cure," the princess insisted.
"Uh huh. You're referring to the role or the actress?" Lina asked.
"You know the one about distinctions which make no difference being no distinction at all, right?" Zelgadis asked.
"Well..."
"I wouldn't say that logic was anyone's strong suit around here," Gourry called in from the green room.
"Hey!" Zelgadis exclaimed.
"Well, you said it's my shtick: Descrying the obvious?"
"All right, but just don't overdo it," Zelgadis sighed. He consulted a hint he'd etched into the plasticene on his wrist and then resumed the conversation: "That applies here, since, whichever we're talking about, the lady's stark raving bonkers. Deluded and denuded --"
"Just what has this Mary Sue been up to?" Amelia roared. "I know my sister has a deeply rooted aversion to clothing, but I think you'd better tell me where this Mary Sue has been inserting herself --"
"Never mind the denuded bit," Zelgadis mumbled. "I was just messing around with the insanity plea."
"So I wandered into Mary Sue's quarters and she took the opportunity to try to beat the stuffing out of me?" Lina said. "Well, in that case, perhaps I should try to move myself to somewhere -- anywhere -- else." She got to her feet. This involved a fair amount of wincing and pain, but none of the movements involved proved impossible. Zelgadis and Amelia watched.
"Thanks for the help, guys," Lina said, when she was at last wobbling on her feet.
"Striving is good for the soul," Amelia advised.
"And I was wondering if you were going to act any less wimpy than you were at the beginning of this epic," Zelgadis said. "Also..." He indicated the chain he was holding. "I thought it unwise to shake this thing around and perhaps attract MSN's attention --"
Amelia glanced at him. "MSN?" she asked.
"Mary Sue Naga."
"Oh." Amelia sighed. "So many possible techie jokes. So little point to any of them. But enough about that --" She hoisted herself up onto a conveniently nearby (and extremely sturdy-looking) rack. "We have a quest to rededicate ourselves to, a mission to focus on, a script to find the right page of --" She broke off and glanced at Zelgadis. "Are we on- or off-book right now?"
"Does it matter?" he asked her.
"And how could we tell, anyway?" Lina asked.
Zelgadis glared at her. "By reading the damned thing?" he suggested icily.
"Never got a copy," Lina replied sweetly. "I'm just supposed to feel the part. Boy, do I feel the part. Anyway, I'm going to focus on what my character's quest would be right now and go find the refectory --"
"You're feeling hungry, Lina?" Zelgadis asked hopefully.
"For a quarter of an apple, sure," she answered. "But I was also thinking that a bowl of whipped cream would be lots more comfortable to lie in than this floor."
Zelgadis looked as though he wanted to take a moment. "I realize that there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for wanting to wallow in whipped cream," he sighed. "But, out of concern for the rating this story is ultimately going to get ... CUT!"

The refectory was a bright, airy, cheerful place, at least by comparison with the dark, dank, cell the last scene had occurred in. Large windows looked out hopefully upon the temple courtyard and the extremely moody night. Flickering light from the sconces which Gourry was happily lighting illuminated fitfully the polished wooden paneling on the walls and the rows of empty wooden tables and benches. Sitting on the table in one corner was a large bowl of whipped cream. Sitting on the bench in front of the bowl, still wrapped in a blanket and too tall to fit in the bowl, was the simulacrum of everybody's favorite heroine, Lina Inverse. "Damnit!" she exclaimed, and spattered a large serving spoon into the bowl. "That looks so luxurious!"
"That's because it is," Zelgadis griped. "Keep ordering that sort of thing, Lina, and we'll be having budgetary problems again."
"I missed it," Lina said sourly, fingering her blanket. "Just when was the moment that we weren't having budgetary problems?"
There was a financial silence. Gourry finally broke it, more or less:
"Um, Lina," he asked slowly. "How come you're not sh-- I mean, at mealtimes, when you're eating you make yourself s-- I mean, you know how sometimes you're able to walk around on the dinner table even though there's lots of plates of food all over the place and you don't knock any of them over or anything because, um --"
"Because I'm small, you mean?" Lina asked him.
"You said it; I didn't!" Gourry said quickly.
"Yeah," Lina sighed. "And you want to know why, with this bowl of luscious, soft, whipped cream right here in front of me, I don't shrink down to my real size and jump in."
"Uh, well, yeah," Gourry said.
"Perhaps because she's aware that if she tried something like that," Zelgadis said darkly, "her little romp would wind up on the cutting room floor and I would be very displeased with her for the wasting of camera stock."
"Couldn't care less, cuddles," Lina said to him.
"Well then," Amelia spoke from up on a bench, "perhaps it's because the bold but experienced adventuress has perceived that, though the bowl of frothed cream offers pleasure to her flesh --"
"Much pleasure to my flesh," Lina agreed.
"Careful, Lina," Zelgadis warned.
"What?"
"-- this location wherein she finds it is suspect with uncertainties and perhaps hidden dangers, the thwarting of which would require her to retain her keenest perceptions and most sensitive senses."
"I wouldn't count on me for keen senses now, if I were you," Lina said. "My senses, keen or otherwise are all prudently hiding out in the green room, hoping to avoid notice by any of the aches and agonies that have taken up residence in me since my introduction to Mary Sue. Besides, I thought I had Gourry around to handle watching for stuff."
"Huh?" Gourry asked.
"Or not." Lina sighed. "Anyway, I'm staying too big for this bowl not because I'm such a clever or prudish adventurer but because I can't get small right now."
"You can't?" Gourry asked. "Why not?"
"Because Sweetie Pie over there --" Lina began, indicating the gagged and chained woman who was sitting on the bench next to Gourry. Said woman was drop-dead gorgeous -- and that even if one doesn't find the combination of chains and feminine flesh a turn on. If one did, and Zelgadis had his suspicions about Gourry, the sight was simply one to set way too many of the wrong synapses all misfiring at once.
Although, again, Zelgadis had to wonder: With Gourry, how could one tell?
Sweetie Pie had curling brunette bangs and the usual huge, expressive brown eyes, which, right now, were eagerly following the conversation. Sweetie Pie also had (unlike Lina, the real thing or the substitute) a figure. To say that the figure was attractive is like saying that a flapping red cape piques a bull's interest...
It should also be noted that a great deal of Sweetie Pie's attractive figure and her enviably clear and perfectly smooth skin were on display. This is not to say that she wasn't dressed to go out in public places. She was, if the public place was, say, a European beach that actually had a dress code.
"That's Mary Sue Naga," Zelgadis said.
"Whatever," Lina sighed.
"Actually, she's Gracia Will Naga," Gourry said. "According to the bio sheet."
"No," Amelia said. "Her name, properly, is Gracia Wil Edison Saillune, the Dread Black Sorceress, Naga, the White Serpent."
"Oh," Lina said. She looked at them; they all looked at each other.

"But she's still Mary Sue to me!" they all chorused.

"All right, where were we?" Zelgadis asked.
"Mary Sunshine over there beat the crap out of me for nobody knows how long," Lina said, "since it was during a scene change."
"But she could not have done you that much harm, Miss Lina," Amelia said. "My sister is sweet. My sister is gentle. My sister is kind --"
"Your sister is stark raving bonkers," Zelgadis said. "Remember? She was about to slam that iron spike into Lina when we interrupted her."
"How do you know she was only 'about to'?" Lina asked.
"Lina, you weren't that badly hurt when we found you," Zelgadis said. "Unconscious and bruised, sure, but nothing like you would've been if she'd actually gotten you with that spike."
"If you like." Quorinelya shrugged and abandoned all pretense of being the notorious Miss Inverse. "Here's the story: Mary Sue hurt me. I'll get better, eventually. I'm not hurt as badly as Mary Sue intended because my magic intervened. My magic's busy, having intervened to protect me from Mary Sue, so I can't work any spells now. My body couldn't support the amount of harm Mary Sue tried to do to me if I were only 13 inches tall, so I can't become small until I get better."
"How long's it going to take you to get better?" Gourry asked.
"Depends how badly she hurt me," Quorinelya replied. "And whether I get any R & R."
"That's not likely," Amelia said. "We're in the middle of a quest."
"To find the wagoner and his boy, I know," Quorinelya said. "So, anyway, that's why I'm not swimming in whipped cream --"
"Then I guess I'll have to heal you, Miss Inverse," Amelia said.
"That's OK," Lina said quickly. "I'll get better soon enough, I promise."
"'Soon enough' isn't soon enough," Amelia said. "We are on a quest to uphold love and justice and our mission cannot wait upon you even a moment --"
"But I wasn't asking you to wait upon me even a moment -- except whoever whipped up this bowl of cream."
"That was me," Gourry said dreamily. He was smiling. His gaze was where one would expect it to be. (Hint: Not Quorinelya or Amelia.)
"Thank you, Gourry," Lina said. She glanced at the swordsman, then muttered, "Talk about wasted gratitude. Look Amelia, I'm in for the quest. I'll come along wherever we decide to go next."
"But, Miss Inverse, you don't have your magic and don't know when you'll get it back."
"Well, yes, that's true --"
"What if we should have need of it? What if we should have need of your Dragon Slave spell?"
"But --" Lina began, then thought better of it. "That's academic now, anyway."
"But what?" Zelgadis asked. "What about the Dragon Slave spell?"
"I don't think I can cast it," Quorinelya admitted softly.
"You don't think you can cast it?" Zelgadis echoed. "That's only Lina's signature spell, you know. Leveling multiple city blocks at the cost of reciting a simple little poem. If you're going to play Lina Inverse, you cannot not know the Dragon Slave spell."
"It's not a question of knowing it," Quorinelya said. "It's of being able to cast it. Magic, as I know it, is tiring, and something like the Dragon Slave would be so tiring that I don't think I could cast it."
"Well sure!" Gourry exclaimed. "If you're going to look like a Barbie doll any time you do magic, of course you're not going to have the -- the whatever to level a whole city block."
"Actually, I'd say that a Barbie doll has plenty of the whatever to level a whole city block," Zelgadis said thoughtfully, "especially if she moved -- but that's neither here nor there. Lina hasn't got any of the -- um -- other whatever ... uh --"
"Now is about the time when I should be hitting you with something very magical and very painful, isn't it?" Lina asked.
"Yeah...." Zelgadis smirked.
"You think I won't remember what I owe you?" Lina asked. Zelgadis shrugged. Lina stood up. "Staring at this whipped cream is not giving me any vicarious pleasure," she allowed. "So I'll let the rest of you have a go -- perhaps even eat the stuff. Whatever. I'll just move over to this other bench -- not out of sight, so there's no arguing that the party's split up again --"
"Wait a minute, Lina," Amelia resumed her pose on her bench. "I must still endeavor to soothe the pains that your body has suffered this day. I must repair the wounds which have beset you. I must restore your body to its hale and magic-wielding wholeness: I shall HEAL you!"
"Um, I'd rather not," Quorinelya murmurred, backing away from the princess.
"But it's for the best," Amelia protested. "Don't you want to be all better and able to work your magic?"
"Of course I do," Quorinelya said. "I just want to do it my way."
"How can you want that?" Amelia exclaimed. "This is the Healing Power of White Magic I'm talking about. The most wonderful sensation in the whole world. It's even better than whipped cream!"
"Nothing is better than whipped cream!" Quorinelya insisted. "Except chocolate whipped cream, I guess," she allowed.
Everyone took a moment to consider the merits of chocolate whipped cream.
"Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...."
Then, everyone just took a moment.

"Chocolate whipped cream or no chocolate whipped cream -- " Amelia began.
Everyone looked at Zelgadis, who shook his head.
"No," he said.
"It'd be fun," Lina cajoled.
"No."
"I'll stop complaining about the lack of a costume budget."
"No you won't -- or Amelia will just do it for you. The answer is no chocolate whipped cream. And you really don't want to know what that white stuff in the bowl actually is."
"What's the rating for this production?" Gourry asked. Everyone stared at him.
"That's disgusting," Amelia said.
"He started it," Gourry pointed at Zelgadis.
"Me?" Zelgadis allowed himself to look righteously indignant. "I was just letting people imagine guargum and carageenan."
"Huh?" Gourry asked.
"Never mind," Amelia said. "You'd get a headache trying to imagine that stuff anyway. Lina, I am still obliged to HEAL thee."
"I really think we'd be better off..." Lina resumed her retreat to another part of the large room.
"Gourry..."
The swordsman grabbed Lina.
"Hey!" Lina exclaimed. "Owww! That hurts!"
"Sorry, but it's for your own good, Lina," Gourry said to her, dragging the currently-non-sorceress over in front of the princess. "And ours," he realized, "supposing that your magic's good for the rest of us."
"Well of course it -- Owww!" Lina screamed as Amelia attempted to lay healing hands on her. "Haven't I made it clear to you guys that I hurt everywhere?"
The healing princess seized Lina in a bearhug around her blanket. "Now Lina, this is going to hurt me -- well, maybe not..." Amelia went ahead and chanted:

"By the humours drawn unto me,
By the pain not soothed by Tums,
By the shores of Gichy-goony,
By the pricking of my thumbs:
Something healing this way comes!"

There was a puzzled silence, broken only by Lina's ragged breathing.
"That was perhaps the lamest incantation I have ever heard," Zelgadis said at last.
"Really?" Gourry asked. "I kind of feel like I might've heard it before."
"You make a habit of listening to doggerel?" the chimera asked him. "Don't bother saying anything," he quickly added. "Did it work, Amelia?" he asked. "She is better, I hope."
"Not really --" Confused, Amelia let go of Lina, who staggered. "I mean ..." Amelia's face clouded over. "You're not hurt at all, Lina!" she shouted. "You lying weasel!"
"I am not a lying weasel!" Lina insisted quietly. Her attention was on propping herself up against the table and keeping her blanket wrapped around herself. "I never said I got harmed by what Mary Sue did to me. I just got attacked a lot ... She clobbered me. I'm hurting everywhere. All right?"
"She attacked you and hit you repeatedly and you feel awful but she didn't do anything to you?" Amelia asked.
"Uh, yeah," Lina sighed. "That's kind of how it went."
"But that doesn't make any sense!" Amelia shouted.
Lina looked up at her. "So?" she asked.

Story copyright 2002 Alan Lauderdale, parodied characters copyright H. Kanzaka / R. Araizumi.