CHAPTER 10
"Lina?" Buffy shook her head. "Lina's a slayer? Are you kidding me?"
Lina shot an indignant snort Xellos-ward. "Who are you?"
Zelgadis, meanwhile, had seized Xellos' cloak by the collar and was pulling the small purple man slowly towards him, a look of pure loathing etched into his cold blue eyes. "I don't know exactly who you are, but I'm sure that I hate you!" he announced to all present.
"Ne, Zelly, you needn't be so judgmental. Most people learn to love me!"
This of course only seemed to antagonize the chimera further.
"Zel, please stop it. Maybe he's someone important." Lina did her best to imagine a purple-haired diplomat.
"Will someone please inform me when we have figured out what the blue thing is and why it's trying to strangle the purple one?" Cordelia threw up her hands in resignation and vacated to the study table where they had spent the last few hours.
"Cordelia, for once, has the right idea." Giles spoke up, over the mini mob. "Let's all just sit down and we can discuss this all, calmly and rationally. And maybe then someone will tell me why it wasn't dramatic enough to come through the door." Giles added, under his breath.
"Rupert-kun is right!" Xellos announced, trying to look away from the very menacing face that was very much invading his personal space. Zel consented to that and released Xellos grudgingly. The troupe meandered back to the tables. As he passed, Giles shook his head regretfully.
"I do wish we had insurance on that window."
"GRANTED!" a very shrill little voice exploded through the library. The fluorescent lights flickered rapidly and two miniature tornadoes erupted out from Amelia's palms and wreaked minor havoc over Giles' carefully sorted papers and articles.
Finally the tornadoes retreated back towards their master and the lighting stabilized into an irritating glow. The library was in a horrid state of disarray. Papers carpeted the floors, books carpeted the papers and four rather heavy bookshelves had toppled over on one another. Giles looked as though he were one the brink of a coronary. Buffy caught him and helped him over to the table, which Willow had removed the contents of the Dewy Decimal System from only seconds before.
"Now Rupert-kun, that was a very poor choice of wishes, wasn't it?" Xellos gave Giles a disappointed look, which he quite immediately shrugged off. "Well, what's done is done. No point in crying over wasted wishes. But on to business. The first matter at hand concerns my Slayer."
"Who's that?" asked Lina.
"You, of course."
"I'm not a slayer!" Lina growled at the purple man.
Xellos sighed and rubbed the back of his head. "This gets so tiring. I want to have a bubble bath. Let me explain a little more, simply because I do not wish to repeat exactly what I have already said for the ninth time.
"2016 years ago, on an entirely different dimension, there existed an utterly magical and mysterious world. Its name is of no consequence, but it bares resemblance in several ways to feudal Europe, round about medieval times. This world was created by, to quote a quaint piece of literature already recited for us by Rupert-kun, ' the Almighty supreme Lord of Chaos and Balance, the Mother of Creation and Harmony and Black Magic, the Lord of Nightmares.' I am really not interested in the recanting to you all the history of this world, but suffice it to say that this age was truly turbulent, what with magic and mazoku and kamizoku and all the rest."
"Mazoku? What the hell's a mazoku?" Buffy asked.
Giles furled his brow. "It sort of means 'monster', but not entirely, if you understand. From what I know of Japanese, mazoku is really a bit more than a monster. It's a demon or ghost or magical, somewhat evil entity, or all of the above."
"Oh." Buffy didn't really understand, so she decided it was best to keep silent.
"Before I was interrupted, I was noting that there were great celestial wars and what have you, aside from human bickering and the rest. Among humans, however, were an…shall we say, extraordinary bunch. Just as it was written, four exceptionals stand out in history, particularly for me, as I knew them well. A swordsman that wielded what is undeniably the most powerful sword in creation, for it was crafted of light and pure energy."
"Ooooo, full-on lightsaber." Xander mused dryly.
"Yes, I rather enjoyed that movie too. Anyway, another was a slight girl of noble blood, heroic and righteous with powers denoting to goodness and purity. The white magician of the group. A third was a young man who had the misfortune of being quite related to Akahoshi Rezo, and was cursed to share his humanity with the form of two other creatures; the golem and the demon. But he was not to follow their evil; just doomed to a constant state of self-pity." Xellos grinned madly at Zel, who was gritting his granite teeth. "The last was a elfin sorceress with amazing powers, a short temper and a uniquely mind-boggling appetite. These four would challenge a powerful Dark Lord, Deep Sea Dolphin, and that's really how the whole thing got started. Any questions?"
"Yeah, actually, would you mind repeating all that? In English, perhaps?" Buffy crossed her arms impatiently.
Xellos sighed. "Yare, yare…why did my mistress send me to do this? Why are twentieth centaury humans so hopelessly dense? Why did I leave my hand cream back at the motel? Why?" he moaned to himself for a moment longer before resuming his rather long narrative. "Very well. Long time ago. Other dimension. Sorcery, magic. Four people pick fight with a demigod. Four people almost lost. But they got lucky. Am I being understood?"
"Yes, but it makes no sense! Who are those people, and what do they have to do with us? Or with anything?" Willow asked.
"Those four people are the ones you see before you right now. Gourry the swordsman, Amelia the princess, Zelgadis the chimera and Lina the sorceress!" Xellos announced their identities as though broadcasting to a live studio audience for some kind of twisted game show. And right on queue, things seemed to click.
"Gourry!" Amelia exclaimed.
"Amelia!" Gourry exclaimed.
They hugged and Amelia sniffled.
"Zelgadis!" Gourry launched himself at the rather private chimera, which Zelgadis allowed for only a moment before peeling the big blond fool off him like a rather intrusive leach.
"Zelgadis-san!" Amelia shrieked, pummeling onto Zel like a virtuous fungus and attaching herself to his waist where she proceeded to wail about how much she had missed him and how kind he had been two millenniums ago and so on and so forth. Amelia being sweet and of the female persuasion, Zel allowed this intrusion on his much prioritized personal space a moment longer than he had with Gourry before removing her and setting her down beside the swordsman. He then turned to Lina.
"Lina, I always wanted to tell you, I've always know it, but I didn't feel like…"
"Always known what? Since when?" Lina frowned. "Do you guys all know each other?"
"Y-you don't remember anything? Anything at all?" Zel looked as though someone had stolen his favorite cape.
"OOOOOOOOha ha ha ha! She does so! Lina is simply embarrassed that I, Naga, her most powerful, sexiest Ultimate Rival is here, stronger and more breathtaking than ever, ne Lina?"
Zelgadis cringed. Apparently this bosomy broad was well acquainted with Lina. The question was could he tolerate her maniacal laugh?
"Who are you?" Lina stared up at Naga with a mixture of disbelief and horrified fascination.
Zelgadis had had it. He turned to Xellos, who was of course grinning stupidly as always. "What the hell is wrong with her? WHY CAN'T SHE REMEMBER?!!!"
Xellos sweatdropped, rubbing the back of his head nervously. "Ne, Zel-kun, she must take her time. If you knew what she has been through…"
"What she's been through!" Zel cried incredulously. "Was it torture? Was it a nightmare? Was it sucking the blood out of living beings just to stay alive?"
With that Buffy's spider sense tingled and she brandished a rather pointy stake from Giles' storeroom and attempted to plunge it into Zel's chest. Lina leapt from her seat.
"Nooo!" Lina screamed.
The stake split down the center, splintering in Buffy's hand. She looked sidelong at Zelgadis. "What are you?"
Zel was forced to smile and he grasped Lina's hand. "I'm a chimera. And it's moments like these I'm proud to be part rock." He grinned as Lina's face, contorted with worry, morphed into a blissful smile.
Zel turned to Xellos. "Why can't she remember? What ordeal have you put her through? How did she end up here?"
Xellos waved his index finger to and fro. "Take it easy, Zel-kun. One thing at a time."
Zel growled. "Mazoku bastard."
Buffy's eyebrows raised and her hand quite immediately gripped another stake. "Mazoku?" she asked. "As in, monster?"
A strange, uncharacteristically quirky smirk trickled across Zel's lips. "Yes. Yes, Xellos is a mazoku. Aren't you, Xellos?"
"Why, yes. Of course I am. But-."
At that precise moment, Xellos was interrupted as stake met gaudy purple cloak and Xellos vanished instantly.
"Ha! Dustage!" Willow announced.
"You didn't kill him." Zel countered.
"Quite right, Zel." Xellos' disembodied voice haunted to cold library room. "Although, it wasn't very polite of you to let them stake me."
"You let them stake me!"
"That's different." Xellos replied, without further explanation. "If you apologize promptly, I will come back."
Zel snorted. "What kind of a bargain is that?"
"The kind where if I don't come back, Lina doesn't remember you, you don't learn what you are up against and you will all die horrible, tragic deaths that could be prevented if only you just said you were sorry."
Zel decided his main precedence involved Lina getting her memory back, followed (some ways down the road) by trying not to sacrifice innocent lives. "I'm sorry." Zel muttered sheepishly.
"I beg your pardon? I didn't quite catch that."
"I said I'm sorry." Zelgadis repeated, through very unapologetic gritted teeth.
"And exactly why are you sorry, Zel-kun?"
"I'm sorry that you didn't drop out of existence 12,000 years ago and that your carcass isn't rotting in a pit of your own vomit."
"Very well, good enough." Xellos materialized on top of a table with Buffy's stake protruding grotesquely from his chest. Xellos turned to Buffy. "Did you want this back, or can I keep it?"
"By all means…" Buffy started.
"No one's apparently going to ask why these people are here, how they got here and what we've got to do with them." Giles played with his stereotypical British pocket watch.
"Very well." Xellos continued. "The Slayers (and please note the modern ironic twist of the similarities in your Names) were…I guess in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they managed to find themselves in the company of a rather eccentric Dark Lord and were challenged to a battle to the death. Well, it was more of a massacre when you think about it; a child sorceress cannot be expected to best a goddess in battle. That aside, our protagonist had only one hope: to use the most powerful kind of dark magic, calling upon the powers of The Lord of Nightmares Herself. Only something went wrong. I could feel it before it happened. You see, to blunder that spell can destroy a planet, or corrupt it beyond imagining. Well, I'm sorry to say that it was corrupted beyond imagining. However, I foresaw this dreadful event and managed to salvage Lina, Gourry and Amelia in time, holding them in a sort of suspended animation until the blast cleared. I don't know what my Mistress' will was, but I did know it was of little consequence to her. I could not get Zel in time, but some sort of shield formed around him that was not my doing, nor was it his. So he was alive and I let him be. No I had to decide what to do with the rest.
"The world was dark. Scary. Evil. It wasn't good. Deep Sea Dolphin, the dark lord in question, was very, very angry and managed to locate some kind of wildly distorted magic portal caused by the spell that allowed her to entrance to Earth Two, this world. It is lucky and delightfully in our favor that fate chose this dimension for her to access. Any other dimension and we'd all surely be dead by now. But with only her power to work with, Deep Sea Dolphin had to be ridiculously resourceful. That aside, Deep Sea Dolphin knows that I helped Lina and company and now has a rather ugly grudge against Xellas-sama, my mistress. Normally that would be of little consequence, but she planned to train an army and manifest her own mind into the mind of the Most Powerful Sorcerers In Both Dimensions and then attack Xellas with that. Perhaps if that only meant humans it would not be so bad, but I am susceptible to attack as well. So I asked Xellas-sama if I could use Lina and Gourry and Zelgadis and Amelia to attack Deep Sea Dolphin and she told me to use anything within my means. She also told me I could keep two people in that nether realm, but I had to do something with the rest. Zelgadis was easy. I could just shift him between dimensions without him even knowing. Amelia I imprisoned as a genie and that left Lina and Gourry to suspended animation, which was fine by me. I awakened them only a few weeks ago with slightly…altered memories so that they wouldn't have too many questions. You must also understand, although the portal in the Slayers World in left unguarded, Xellas has given me reason to believe that Deep sea Dolphin is in possession of the other portal that we will need to return to that world."
"You can't possess a portal!" Willow protested.
"I keep forgetting I'm up to my earlobes in magical experts." Xellos' tone was a great deal gentler than his words.
"Well, I am Wiccan."
"So you worship a pair of gods and revere nature. Your Wiccan powers, though useful they are, are no precious little to aid the immediate battle."
"Well, what can we do then? And what does it matter?" Buffy stood up, pulling her shiny blonde hair into a slender ponytail. "This isn't our fight. You can all go back to your little world and we can get all get on with our lives."
Xellos shook his head, almost somberly. "I aforementioned Deep Sea Dolphin's eccentricity and it is no exaggeration. She is planning to use, in addition to all magical entities within her reach (which is plenty, do believe), she plans on inhabiting anyone strong enough to get rid of anything that crosses her path quietly and passively. In an army, pawns are every bit as important as the Queen, just not as powerful. So that puts you at risk, Buffy-chan. Anything with fighting potential she will put at her disposal. She isn't very sane." He added, smilingly.
"Yes, well, all in favor of sacrificing Buffy to an evil goddess for the sake of Sunnydale?" Xander polled. Cordelia raised her hand. "All opposed?' The opposite reaction.
"Good. Now what?" Buffy asked.
"Now he brings Lina's memory back." Zel, who had been waiting very patiently, now demanded.
"Certainly, Zel-kun." Xellos grinned.
Lina blinked. First her small, adolescent face exhibited a very blank, vacant look. That morphed into a frown which in turn became a pout."
"Someone tell me when the monster guy stops playing musical face." Cordelia requested.
Lina's face lit up. Her eyes opened wide and she smiled. "Okay, the first thing we need to do is form a plan of action! We need to strategize who exactly is with us and who our adversaries are. We need a plan of attack and some sort of chart to map out our team's strengths and therefore the most efficient station for them to cover! But first I have to go to the bathroom!" Lina turned from the very flabbergasted breakfast club and headed down the long corridors.
Zel followed in hot pursuit.
"Thinking of joining me, Zel?"
Zelgadis blushed. "About what happened…I didn't know it was you at the time, but I always wanted to tell you that…that's what I've always wanted." Zel paused and then his eyes widened in embarrassment. "Not the…the thing of course, but the emotions that go with it, if you understand. I always wanted you to know that's how I felt, that's what I dreamed."
Lina looked blankly at Zel. "What're you talking about?"
Zel's jaw hit the floor. "Well, the thing that we…." He felt very unfamiliar tears sting his eyes. "You don't remember. You don't remember."
"Don't remember what?" Lina asked brightly.
"That…I told you that I missed you while you were gone. That's it. That's all." Zelgadis had never felt so weak in his life. L-sama, let the world swallow me up, he thought miserably. What's the point of living? Now that my angel…
"Well, I'm just gonna use the facilities then." Lina smiled at him. "Aren't flush toilets great? And Zel? Nice wings." She winked at him and skipped on down the empty hallway towards the girl's bathroom, not feeling as though her life had fallen apart and now everything was meaningless.
Zel stood alone in the empty school corridor for a moment, reflecting on the source of his misery. He wondered if he would ever love anyone the same way as he loved her. He could tell her, he realized, but what if she never really felt that way about him, and it was only Xellos' spell that made her do what she had done? It would be like taking advantage of her, and if she wasn't really in love with him, their friendship would end forever and Zel could never forgive himself for hurting her so deeply. Then he went to kill Xellos.
"What the HELL did you to her?!!" The library doors slammed violently behind Zelgadis as he snatched Xellos up by the collar and shook him ferociously.
"Calm down, Zel-kun." Xellos seemed entirely unimpressed and cruelly unmoved by Zel's uncharacteristic show of emotion. "I warned you."
"You didn't!" Then he paused. "Warned me about what?"
Xellos frowned. "Oh. You're right, Zel-kun. I didn't actually warn you, but I did mean to. I always have the best of intentions, you know. Well, I meant to warn you that Lina will remember only what she chooses. You see, the identity she knows in this world is a part of her - a repressed part of her soul that only becomes apparent when the dominating part is dormant or unconscious, which may occur after a trauma, physical or otherwise. In her case, the submissive and less self-serving side arose after the time she spent in suspended animation, which was a huge shock to her internal system. You suffered minor effects to, Zel-kun. You cared about her. You cared about her alone, in the dark, on the street when she could have been anyone and you didn't have to help her but you did. Part of you has changed, Zelgadis. Maybe you'll never be the same."
"Why? Why did she have to go through that?" Zelgadis muttered, his eyes downcast and his teeth clenched. His and everyone else's lives where in the hands of a man who couldn't even take himself seriously.
"Through what?"
"Trapped, alone for thousands of years. Why? Answer."
"Can you think of a better way? We knew what Deep Sea Dolphin was planning. You could go through time as mortals and die as mortals and then thousands of years down the road the world would be vanquished by an insane goddess. Or I could some way to make all immortal and save our world. You're all the best to come along in hundreds of years. Ever since."
"We don't want to help. We could be dead, peaceful, happy by now and instead we've had to live eternity alone and over again."
Xellos leaned hard on his staff and opened his eyes slightly. "Are you better for it?" He paused. "If that part of her wants to remember, it will. This is not a game, and this is the biggest game of all." And with that, he turned and left Zelgadis standing, silenced and shaken with loneliness.
"Lina?" Buffy shook her head. "Lina's a slayer? Are you kidding me?"
Lina shot an indignant snort Xellos-ward. "Who are you?"
Zelgadis, meanwhile, had seized Xellos' cloak by the collar and was pulling the small purple man slowly towards him, a look of pure loathing etched into his cold blue eyes. "I don't know exactly who you are, but I'm sure that I hate you!" he announced to all present.
"Ne, Zelly, you needn't be so judgmental. Most people learn to love me!"
This of course only seemed to antagonize the chimera further.
"Zel, please stop it. Maybe he's someone important." Lina did her best to imagine a purple-haired diplomat.
"Will someone please inform me when we have figured out what the blue thing is and why it's trying to strangle the purple one?" Cordelia threw up her hands in resignation and vacated to the study table where they had spent the last few hours.
"Cordelia, for once, has the right idea." Giles spoke up, over the mini mob. "Let's all just sit down and we can discuss this all, calmly and rationally. And maybe then someone will tell me why it wasn't dramatic enough to come through the door." Giles added, under his breath.
"Rupert-kun is right!" Xellos announced, trying to look away from the very menacing face that was very much invading his personal space. Zel consented to that and released Xellos grudgingly. The troupe meandered back to the tables. As he passed, Giles shook his head regretfully.
"I do wish we had insurance on that window."
"GRANTED!" a very shrill little voice exploded through the library. The fluorescent lights flickered rapidly and two miniature tornadoes erupted out from Amelia's palms and wreaked minor havoc over Giles' carefully sorted papers and articles.
Finally the tornadoes retreated back towards their master and the lighting stabilized into an irritating glow. The library was in a horrid state of disarray. Papers carpeted the floors, books carpeted the papers and four rather heavy bookshelves had toppled over on one another. Giles looked as though he were one the brink of a coronary. Buffy caught him and helped him over to the table, which Willow had removed the contents of the Dewy Decimal System from only seconds before.
"Now Rupert-kun, that was a very poor choice of wishes, wasn't it?" Xellos gave Giles a disappointed look, which he quite immediately shrugged off. "Well, what's done is done. No point in crying over wasted wishes. But on to business. The first matter at hand concerns my Slayer."
"Who's that?" asked Lina.
"You, of course."
"I'm not a slayer!" Lina growled at the purple man.
Xellos sighed and rubbed the back of his head. "This gets so tiring. I want to have a bubble bath. Let me explain a little more, simply because I do not wish to repeat exactly what I have already said for the ninth time.
"2016 years ago, on an entirely different dimension, there existed an utterly magical and mysterious world. Its name is of no consequence, but it bares resemblance in several ways to feudal Europe, round about medieval times. This world was created by, to quote a quaint piece of literature already recited for us by Rupert-kun, ' the Almighty supreme Lord of Chaos and Balance, the Mother of Creation and Harmony and Black Magic, the Lord of Nightmares.' I am really not interested in the recanting to you all the history of this world, but suffice it to say that this age was truly turbulent, what with magic and mazoku and kamizoku and all the rest."
"Mazoku? What the hell's a mazoku?" Buffy asked.
Giles furled his brow. "It sort of means 'monster', but not entirely, if you understand. From what I know of Japanese, mazoku is really a bit more than a monster. It's a demon or ghost or magical, somewhat evil entity, or all of the above."
"Oh." Buffy didn't really understand, so she decided it was best to keep silent.
"Before I was interrupted, I was noting that there were great celestial wars and what have you, aside from human bickering and the rest. Among humans, however, were an…shall we say, extraordinary bunch. Just as it was written, four exceptionals stand out in history, particularly for me, as I knew them well. A swordsman that wielded what is undeniably the most powerful sword in creation, for it was crafted of light and pure energy."
"Ooooo, full-on lightsaber." Xander mused dryly.
"Yes, I rather enjoyed that movie too. Anyway, another was a slight girl of noble blood, heroic and righteous with powers denoting to goodness and purity. The white magician of the group. A third was a young man who had the misfortune of being quite related to Akahoshi Rezo, and was cursed to share his humanity with the form of two other creatures; the golem and the demon. But he was not to follow their evil; just doomed to a constant state of self-pity." Xellos grinned madly at Zel, who was gritting his granite teeth. "The last was a elfin sorceress with amazing powers, a short temper and a uniquely mind-boggling appetite. These four would challenge a powerful Dark Lord, Deep Sea Dolphin, and that's really how the whole thing got started. Any questions?"
"Yeah, actually, would you mind repeating all that? In English, perhaps?" Buffy crossed her arms impatiently.
Xellos sighed. "Yare, yare…why did my mistress send me to do this? Why are twentieth centaury humans so hopelessly dense? Why did I leave my hand cream back at the motel? Why?" he moaned to himself for a moment longer before resuming his rather long narrative. "Very well. Long time ago. Other dimension. Sorcery, magic. Four people pick fight with a demigod. Four people almost lost. But they got lucky. Am I being understood?"
"Yes, but it makes no sense! Who are those people, and what do they have to do with us? Or with anything?" Willow asked.
"Those four people are the ones you see before you right now. Gourry the swordsman, Amelia the princess, Zelgadis the chimera and Lina the sorceress!" Xellos announced their identities as though broadcasting to a live studio audience for some kind of twisted game show. And right on queue, things seemed to click.
"Gourry!" Amelia exclaimed.
"Amelia!" Gourry exclaimed.
They hugged and Amelia sniffled.
"Zelgadis!" Gourry launched himself at the rather private chimera, which Zelgadis allowed for only a moment before peeling the big blond fool off him like a rather intrusive leach.
"Zelgadis-san!" Amelia shrieked, pummeling onto Zel like a virtuous fungus and attaching herself to his waist where she proceeded to wail about how much she had missed him and how kind he had been two millenniums ago and so on and so forth. Amelia being sweet and of the female persuasion, Zel allowed this intrusion on his much prioritized personal space a moment longer than he had with Gourry before removing her and setting her down beside the swordsman. He then turned to Lina.
"Lina, I always wanted to tell you, I've always know it, but I didn't feel like…"
"Always known what? Since when?" Lina frowned. "Do you guys all know each other?"
"Y-you don't remember anything? Anything at all?" Zel looked as though someone had stolen his favorite cape.
"OOOOOOOOha ha ha ha! She does so! Lina is simply embarrassed that I, Naga, her most powerful, sexiest Ultimate Rival is here, stronger and more breathtaking than ever, ne Lina?"
Zelgadis cringed. Apparently this bosomy broad was well acquainted with Lina. The question was could he tolerate her maniacal laugh?
"Who are you?" Lina stared up at Naga with a mixture of disbelief and horrified fascination.
Zelgadis had had it. He turned to Xellos, who was of course grinning stupidly as always. "What the hell is wrong with her? WHY CAN'T SHE REMEMBER?!!!"
Xellos sweatdropped, rubbing the back of his head nervously. "Ne, Zel-kun, she must take her time. If you knew what she has been through…"
"What she's been through!" Zel cried incredulously. "Was it torture? Was it a nightmare? Was it sucking the blood out of living beings just to stay alive?"
With that Buffy's spider sense tingled and she brandished a rather pointy stake from Giles' storeroom and attempted to plunge it into Zel's chest. Lina leapt from her seat.
"Nooo!" Lina screamed.
The stake split down the center, splintering in Buffy's hand. She looked sidelong at Zelgadis. "What are you?"
Zel was forced to smile and he grasped Lina's hand. "I'm a chimera. And it's moments like these I'm proud to be part rock." He grinned as Lina's face, contorted with worry, morphed into a blissful smile.
Zel turned to Xellos. "Why can't she remember? What ordeal have you put her through? How did she end up here?"
Xellos waved his index finger to and fro. "Take it easy, Zel-kun. One thing at a time."
Zel growled. "Mazoku bastard."
Buffy's eyebrows raised and her hand quite immediately gripped another stake. "Mazoku?" she asked. "As in, monster?"
A strange, uncharacteristically quirky smirk trickled across Zel's lips. "Yes. Yes, Xellos is a mazoku. Aren't you, Xellos?"
"Why, yes. Of course I am. But-."
At that precise moment, Xellos was interrupted as stake met gaudy purple cloak and Xellos vanished instantly.
"Ha! Dustage!" Willow announced.
"You didn't kill him." Zel countered.
"Quite right, Zel." Xellos' disembodied voice haunted to cold library room. "Although, it wasn't very polite of you to let them stake me."
"You let them stake me!"
"That's different." Xellos replied, without further explanation. "If you apologize promptly, I will come back."
Zel snorted. "What kind of a bargain is that?"
"The kind where if I don't come back, Lina doesn't remember you, you don't learn what you are up against and you will all die horrible, tragic deaths that could be prevented if only you just said you were sorry."
Zel decided his main precedence involved Lina getting her memory back, followed (some ways down the road) by trying not to sacrifice innocent lives. "I'm sorry." Zel muttered sheepishly.
"I beg your pardon? I didn't quite catch that."
"I said I'm sorry." Zelgadis repeated, through very unapologetic gritted teeth.
"And exactly why are you sorry, Zel-kun?"
"I'm sorry that you didn't drop out of existence 12,000 years ago and that your carcass isn't rotting in a pit of your own vomit."
"Very well, good enough." Xellos materialized on top of a table with Buffy's stake protruding grotesquely from his chest. Xellos turned to Buffy. "Did you want this back, or can I keep it?"
"By all means…" Buffy started.
"No one's apparently going to ask why these people are here, how they got here and what we've got to do with them." Giles played with his stereotypical British pocket watch.
"Very well." Xellos continued. "The Slayers (and please note the modern ironic twist of the similarities in your Names) were…I guess in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they managed to find themselves in the company of a rather eccentric Dark Lord and were challenged to a battle to the death. Well, it was more of a massacre when you think about it; a child sorceress cannot be expected to best a goddess in battle. That aside, our protagonist had only one hope: to use the most powerful kind of dark magic, calling upon the powers of The Lord of Nightmares Herself. Only something went wrong. I could feel it before it happened. You see, to blunder that spell can destroy a planet, or corrupt it beyond imagining. Well, I'm sorry to say that it was corrupted beyond imagining. However, I foresaw this dreadful event and managed to salvage Lina, Gourry and Amelia in time, holding them in a sort of suspended animation until the blast cleared. I don't know what my Mistress' will was, but I did know it was of little consequence to her. I could not get Zel in time, but some sort of shield formed around him that was not my doing, nor was it his. So he was alive and I let him be. No I had to decide what to do with the rest.
"The world was dark. Scary. Evil. It wasn't good. Deep Sea Dolphin, the dark lord in question, was very, very angry and managed to locate some kind of wildly distorted magic portal caused by the spell that allowed her to entrance to Earth Two, this world. It is lucky and delightfully in our favor that fate chose this dimension for her to access. Any other dimension and we'd all surely be dead by now. But with only her power to work with, Deep Sea Dolphin had to be ridiculously resourceful. That aside, Deep Sea Dolphin knows that I helped Lina and company and now has a rather ugly grudge against Xellas-sama, my mistress. Normally that would be of little consequence, but she planned to train an army and manifest her own mind into the mind of the Most Powerful Sorcerers In Both Dimensions and then attack Xellas with that. Perhaps if that only meant humans it would not be so bad, but I am susceptible to attack as well. So I asked Xellas-sama if I could use Lina and Gourry and Zelgadis and Amelia to attack Deep Sea Dolphin and she told me to use anything within my means. She also told me I could keep two people in that nether realm, but I had to do something with the rest. Zelgadis was easy. I could just shift him between dimensions without him even knowing. Amelia I imprisoned as a genie and that left Lina and Gourry to suspended animation, which was fine by me. I awakened them only a few weeks ago with slightly…altered memories so that they wouldn't have too many questions. You must also understand, although the portal in the Slayers World in left unguarded, Xellas has given me reason to believe that Deep sea Dolphin is in possession of the other portal that we will need to return to that world."
"You can't possess a portal!" Willow protested.
"I keep forgetting I'm up to my earlobes in magical experts." Xellos' tone was a great deal gentler than his words.
"Well, I am Wiccan."
"So you worship a pair of gods and revere nature. Your Wiccan powers, though useful they are, are no precious little to aid the immediate battle."
"Well, what can we do then? And what does it matter?" Buffy stood up, pulling her shiny blonde hair into a slender ponytail. "This isn't our fight. You can all go back to your little world and we can get all get on with our lives."
Xellos shook his head, almost somberly. "I aforementioned Deep Sea Dolphin's eccentricity and it is no exaggeration. She is planning to use, in addition to all magical entities within her reach (which is plenty, do believe), she plans on inhabiting anyone strong enough to get rid of anything that crosses her path quietly and passively. In an army, pawns are every bit as important as the Queen, just not as powerful. So that puts you at risk, Buffy-chan. Anything with fighting potential she will put at her disposal. She isn't very sane." He added, smilingly.
"Yes, well, all in favor of sacrificing Buffy to an evil goddess for the sake of Sunnydale?" Xander polled. Cordelia raised her hand. "All opposed?' The opposite reaction.
"Good. Now what?" Buffy asked.
"Now he brings Lina's memory back." Zel, who had been waiting very patiently, now demanded.
"Certainly, Zel-kun." Xellos grinned.
Lina blinked. First her small, adolescent face exhibited a very blank, vacant look. That morphed into a frown which in turn became a pout."
"Someone tell me when the monster guy stops playing musical face." Cordelia requested.
Lina's face lit up. Her eyes opened wide and she smiled. "Okay, the first thing we need to do is form a plan of action! We need to strategize who exactly is with us and who our adversaries are. We need a plan of attack and some sort of chart to map out our team's strengths and therefore the most efficient station for them to cover! But first I have to go to the bathroom!" Lina turned from the very flabbergasted breakfast club and headed down the long corridors.
Zel followed in hot pursuit.
"Thinking of joining me, Zel?"
Zelgadis blushed. "About what happened…I didn't know it was you at the time, but I always wanted to tell you that…that's what I've always wanted." Zel paused and then his eyes widened in embarrassment. "Not the…the thing of course, but the emotions that go with it, if you understand. I always wanted you to know that's how I felt, that's what I dreamed."
Lina looked blankly at Zel. "What're you talking about?"
Zel's jaw hit the floor. "Well, the thing that we…." He felt very unfamiliar tears sting his eyes. "You don't remember. You don't remember."
"Don't remember what?" Lina asked brightly.
"That…I told you that I missed you while you were gone. That's it. That's all." Zelgadis had never felt so weak in his life. L-sama, let the world swallow me up, he thought miserably. What's the point of living? Now that my angel…
"Well, I'm just gonna use the facilities then." Lina smiled at him. "Aren't flush toilets great? And Zel? Nice wings." She winked at him and skipped on down the empty hallway towards the girl's bathroom, not feeling as though her life had fallen apart and now everything was meaningless.
Zel stood alone in the empty school corridor for a moment, reflecting on the source of his misery. He wondered if he would ever love anyone the same way as he loved her. He could tell her, he realized, but what if she never really felt that way about him, and it was only Xellos' spell that made her do what she had done? It would be like taking advantage of her, and if she wasn't really in love with him, their friendship would end forever and Zel could never forgive himself for hurting her so deeply. Then he went to kill Xellos.
"What the HELL did you to her?!!" The library doors slammed violently behind Zelgadis as he snatched Xellos up by the collar and shook him ferociously.
"Calm down, Zel-kun." Xellos seemed entirely unimpressed and cruelly unmoved by Zel's uncharacteristic show of emotion. "I warned you."
"You didn't!" Then he paused. "Warned me about what?"
Xellos frowned. "Oh. You're right, Zel-kun. I didn't actually warn you, but I did mean to. I always have the best of intentions, you know. Well, I meant to warn you that Lina will remember only what she chooses. You see, the identity she knows in this world is a part of her - a repressed part of her soul that only becomes apparent when the dominating part is dormant or unconscious, which may occur after a trauma, physical or otherwise. In her case, the submissive and less self-serving side arose after the time she spent in suspended animation, which was a huge shock to her internal system. You suffered minor effects to, Zel-kun. You cared about her. You cared about her alone, in the dark, on the street when she could have been anyone and you didn't have to help her but you did. Part of you has changed, Zelgadis. Maybe you'll never be the same."
"Why? Why did she have to go through that?" Zelgadis muttered, his eyes downcast and his teeth clenched. His and everyone else's lives where in the hands of a man who couldn't even take himself seriously.
"Through what?"
"Trapped, alone for thousands of years. Why? Answer."
"Can you think of a better way? We knew what Deep Sea Dolphin was planning. You could go through time as mortals and die as mortals and then thousands of years down the road the world would be vanquished by an insane goddess. Or I could some way to make all immortal and save our world. You're all the best to come along in hundreds of years. Ever since."
"We don't want to help. We could be dead, peaceful, happy by now and instead we've had to live eternity alone and over again."
Xellos leaned hard on his staff and opened his eyes slightly. "Are you better for it?" He paused. "If that part of her wants to remember, it will. This is not a game, and this is the biggest game of all." And with that, he turned and left Zelgadis standing, silenced and shaken with loneliness.